Ever wondered why one person inherits so much wealth that he/she probably cannot even fathom just how much money they have, while another person has problems finding the next meal...............?
Hindu thought has an explanation - karma. Karma is, at its simplest, all about cause and effect. The theory is that with our limited perspective, we can only see our actions in this life, whereas our past and future extend (indefinitely?) and so does our karma.
IMHO, this is a good theory - explains things satisfactorily (the Vedas get into the details).
BUT.......do we
know that?
Drop aside everything that you have been told. Everything that you have learnt. Everything that the religious background you are from tells you. Basically everything that you have acquired over the years.
What do you really,
really, REALLY know?
As a friend of mine often asks, "do you know that in your bones?" or, as I'd like to ask, "What do we know, for sure?".
What is the Mind?
What are memories? Events of the past stored in our Minds? And what
is the Past?? What is Time?
No, don't try to answer what you read in a Physics book or what you read in a Philosophy book. What do YOU know?
To me, it seems, increasingly, that we are all put here (by Whom? for What?) and we just go about our lives like automatons.
Automatons. That has been my buzz word for quite some time now.
Where do our desires spring from?
Why do some of us pursue those desires with a perserverance that astounds others so much?!
While some of us sit back and say: "Eh, whatever" to most of our desires and whine about what happens (or does not happen) in our lives.
Why do some of us complicate our lives unnecessarily while others manage to keep it simple?
Why are some of us endowed with some qualities/talents that make others green, while some of us lack even basic limbs/organs that allow us to go through life in a normal, somewhat easy manner?
With the feeling of being an automaton, it follows that....the automaton has no real choice! Everything has already been determined. Even the questioning. :)
This is what my mind tells me. But of late, I suspect that my mind itself is not to be trusted to answer these questions. So where do I look for answers, then??????
And here is an article that triggered some of today's thoughts:
( Richest Royals )
The western and US media has a long and ugly tradition of trying to exoticize and marginalize Asian Americans in this country. This is just the sort of story that helps to perpetuate the notion that Asians are "strange" and helps to further the misguided notion that caucasians are morally "superior." The long and sordid history of European colonization of Africa, Asia, etc was in part justified by the false notion that Europeans/caucasians were morally superior and were civilizing the indigenous populations of Africa and Asia.
I am very skeptical of this "research." Let's see the data.