Buddhism

Buddhism is a dharmic, non-theistic religion, a philosophy, and a life-enhancing system of psychology. In Sanskrit or Pali, the main ancient languages of Buddhists, as Buddha Dharma or Dhamma, which means the teachings of "the Awakened One."

Karma is one of the most important concepts in Buddhism. Karma is an imprint in one's Mind. When one performs a good deed out of good intentions, the good intentions come from the Mind. Having done that good deed, the residues of these intentions stay in one's Mind as "imprints", and that is "good karma". The opposite goes for evil deeds (or what the Buddha would call "unwholesome deeds") done out of greed, hatred etc.

A person's karma affects a person in two ways. The first is his/her disposition. If a person is angry performing many deeds with anger, his/her mind will be imprinted with experiences and intentions of anger. Because of this imprint, in a similar situation, he/she would be more likely to feel angry. In a sense, the imprint creates and reinforces a sort of mental habit that causes a person's mind to react in a certain pre-disposed way.

The second and more important way karma affects a person is by affecting his/her experience. Our experiences, our feelings of joy or sufferings, come mainly from our reaction to perceptual inputs. Using an angry person as an example, in many situations, he/she feels offended, angry and that seriously affects his/her state of mind. He/she often feels the pain of anger, very little peace. But if that person practices meditation, develops his/her mind, etc., such that he/she develops peace and love. He/she may live the same life anew and he/she may not experience the anger or the pain of anger etc. in those same situations. In a sense, his/her karma is one of the main determinants of his/her experiences. In this sense too, we may say that our sufferings comes from our karma and our states of mind.

The underlying factor in the formation of Karma is Intentions. What gets imprinted into one's mind is largely decided by one's intentions. If I accidentally stepped on a spider, for example, squashing it to death, and let's say I didn't even notice, there was no intention, how can there be an imprint into my mind? But if say I stepped on it out of "fun", the desire to cause harm now gets imprinted. In later life, I may become less sensitive to the value of life, I may be bothered by this experience, I may find myself more likely to be hateful, etc. etc. That, friend, would be my karma. In a similar way, let's say I lost $20 while touring the slums of India. The money is nothing to me, so I won't even notice. But somebody found the money and fed his family for a month, saving a dying child's life. If I wasn't even aware that I lost the money, how can there be good karma for me?

This concept of Karma was one of the main differences between the teachings of Buddhism and Jainism. Mahavira Jain taught that all actions, intentional or not, creates karma. The Buddha, speaking from his insights into the mind, taught that the Intention plays the deciding role. From my experience as a mediator, I verified Buddha's position for myself.

Metaphysics - The Nature of Reality

By Dorothy M. Neddermeyer, PhD

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The term metaphysics originally referred to the writings of Aristotle that came after his writings on physics, in the arrangement made by Andronicus of Rhodes about three centuries after Aristotle's death. Meta a Greek word meaning ("after", "beyond"), is a common English prefix, used to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to analyze the latter. For example: "metaphysics" refers to things beyond physics, and "meta language" refers to a type of language or system which describes language.

Metaphysics is a philosophy that brings understanding to the fundamental nature of all reality, whether visible or invisible. It seeks a description basic, essentially simple, all-inclusive that it applies to everything, whether divine or human or anything else. It describes what anything is like in order to be at all.

To call one a metaphysician in this traditional, philosophical sense indicates nothing more than his or her interest in attempting to discover what underlies everything. Old materialists, who said that there is nothing but matter in motion, and current naturalists, who say that everything is made of lifeless, non-experiencing energy, are just as much to be classified as metaphysicians as are idealists, who maintain that there is nothing but ideas, or mind, or spirit.

Perhaps the best definition of materialism is that of Charles Hartshorne (Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers, p. 17): "the denial that the most pervasive processes of nature involve any such psychical functions as sensing, feeling, remembering, desiring, or thinking." Idealists assert what materialists here deny. Dualists say that mind and matter are equally real, while neutral monists claim that there is a neutral reality that can appear as either mind or matter. Philosophers generally are content to divide reality into two halves, mind and matter (extended and unextended reality) and do not emphasize such distinctions within the mind half as spirit and soul.

Popular Metaphysics includes a wide range of controversial phenomena believed by many people to exist beyond the physical.

Popular metaphysics relates to two traditionally contrasted, if not completely separable, areas:

(1) mysticism, referring to experiences of unity with the ultimate, commonly interpreted as the God who is love

(2) occultism, referring to the extension of knowing (extrasensory per-ception, including telepathy, clairvoyance, pre-cognition, retrocognition, and medium-ship) and doing (psychokinesis) beyond the usually recognized fields of human activity. The academic study of the occult (literally hidden) has been known as psychical research and, more recently, para-psychology. Both New Age and New Thought emphasize mysticism and its practical, pragmatic application in daily living, but New Thought discourages involvement in occultism.

The terms metaphysics and metaphysical in a popular sense have been used in connection with New Thought, Christian Science, Theosophy, and Spiritualism, as in J. Stillson Judah, The History and Philosophy of the Metaphysical Movements in America (The Westminster Press, 1967), as well the New Age movement, and in the name of the Society for the Study of Metaphysical Religion (see below). Some of the varying understandings of metaphysics held by some founders of New Thought and Christian Science are given in the opening pages of Contrasting Strains of Metaphysical Idealism Contributing to New Thought.

Pure and Applied Metaphysics

There is another way of dividing metaphysics: theoretical and applied. This distinction is like the division between science and technology; one describes; the other applies the description to practical problems, putting knowledge to work. Gathering knowledge (alleged knowledge, critics of metaphysics would say) in metaphysics traditionally is by rational thought; in a more popular understanding, knowledge gathering may be either mystical or occult; in either case the pure knowledge is to be distinguished from the practical application of it.