Karma

"Taoism tries to dissuade people from killing with the notion of Karma. According to Taoism, if people are kind of everything, they will have good karma, and bad karma, if they are not."

"The Masters are, in a sense, the Higher Self of humanity and watch over, protect, and guide its unfoldment. They cannot interfere with karmic law, but have the power, at crises, to hold back to some extent the action of accumulated karma that otherwise might destroy civilization or shatter the planet itself. But in the end every iota of karmic law must be fulfilled. Devastating epidemics, great wars, destruction of cities in past or present times with their toll of death, the sudden breaking up and submergence of continents, as in the case of Atlantis, are instances of karmic forces operating on a large scale, and where such forces could be held back no longer by the administrators of nature's laws, the Masters of Wisdom, lest a greater spiritual damage be done to the people of those cities, nations, or continents affected. Where spirituality and morality have departed beyond a certain measure, humanity can only be brought back to a recognition of its spiritual foundations by some great shock or series of shocks driving the personal consciousness inward to the eternal verities, to its inherent divinity, and so preventing a further descent into the lure and glitter of outer falsities and sense illusions."

"The conscious process is reflected in the imagination; the unconscious process is expressed as karma, the generation of actions divorced from thinking and alienated from feeling."

"'There's a huge difference between being arrested and being guilty … the law changes and I don't. How I stand vis-à-vis the law at any given moment depends on the law. The law can change from state to state, from nation to nation, from city to city. I guess I have to go by a higher law. How's that? Yeah, I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma."

"Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. If we can bring ourselves down by our karma, surely it is in our power to raise ourselves by our own karma."

"The Law of Karma is a constant reminder that it is never too late to mend. All we need to do is to reflect upon our own innate purity and divinity, and follow the laws of nature, of which the Law of Karma is the law of divine goodwill and justice."

"The misery which is not yet come is to be avoided. Some Karma we have worked out already, some we are working out now in the present, and some is waiting to bear fruit in the future. That which we have worked out already is past and gone. That which we are experiencing now we will have to work out, and it is only that which is waiting to bear fruit in the future that we can conquer and control, so all our forces should be directed towards the control of that Karma which has not yet borne fruit. Chapter 2, Sutra 16."

"The theory of Karma is that we suffer for our good or bad deeds, and the whole scope of philosophy is to approach the glory of man. All the Scriptures sing the glory of man, of the soul, and then, with the same breath, they preach this Karma. A good deed brings such a result, and a bad deed such a result, but, if the soul can be acted upon by a good or a bad deed it amounts to nothing. Bad deeds put a bart to the manifestation of our nature, of the Purusa (soul), and good deeds take the obstacles off, and its glory becomes manifest. But the Purusa itself is never changed. Whatever you do never destroys your own glory, your own nature, because the soul cannot be acted upon by anything, only a veil is spread before it, hiding its perfection. Chapter 4, Sutra 4."

"Karma is of two kinds, soon to be fructified, and late to be fructified. By making Samyama on that, or by the signs called Aristha, portents, the Yogis know the exact time of separation from their bodies. When the Yogi makes a Samyama on his own Karma, upon those impressions in his mind which are now working, and those which are just waiting to work, he knows exactly by those that are waiting... when he will die, at what hour, even at what minute. Chapter 3, Sutra 23."

"One of the benefits of the prayer wheel is that it embodies all the actions of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the 10 directions. To benefit sentient beings, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas manifest in the prayer wheel to purify all our negative karmas and obscurations, and to cause us to actualize the realizations of the path to enlightenment."

"For those who want to purify negative karma, they can turn the Prayer Wheel and recite these mantras – Mitrugpa, Kunrig, Namgyalma, the Lotus Pinnacle or Amogapasha (wish granting wheel mantra) and the Stainless Pinnacle mantra."

"May anyone who hears, sees, touches, or talks about this [Prayer Wheel] be able to spread the practice of turning the Dharma wheel to numberless sentient beings, so that they will never be reborn in the three lower realms. May they be liberated from disease, spirit harms, negative karma, and obscurations, generate bodhichitta, and achieve enlightenment. May they then liberate numberless sentient beings."

"There are many types of wheels – from the traditional ones turned by hand, to those turned by water or wind, even electric wheels are used. Another, though rare type of Tibetan Prayer Wheel is one that is turned by a candle. It is believed that the light emitted from the candle removes negative karmas from those who touch it."

"As a nation, we have slithered like snakes across the floor to whatever hole where money lay, sacrificing the depths of our own humanity as we did so. And we are surprised now at the various crises among us? What should surprise us is that this didn't happen sooner. Just as the face of a fascistic president could have belonged to anyone, so the consequences of our spiritual malfeasance could have come in any form. Am I saying that America is reaping its karma? You bet I am, but that is never the end of the story. For just as the law of cause-and-effect is inviolable, so is God's mercy. When we come clean with the God of our own understanding—atoning, owning, admitting, all those words that ultimately mean the same thing—the darkest storm clouds are dissolved by light. But not immediately, and not until then. America is down on its knees this time. But that's not the bad news; it's the good news."

"Karma [represents] intentional actions that affect one’s circumstances in this and future lives. The Buddha’s insistence that the effect depends on volition marks the Buddhist treatment of karma as different from the Hindu understanding of karma."

"Buddhists believe that the rebirths that arise are a result of the karma we have. Karma is the idea that every action has a reaction. If people do good then good will follow. If people choose to do evil, then evil will follow or as you sow so will you reap. The results of the karma can be experienced in the present lifetime, even day by day."

"In Buddhism, karma can go from one life time to another and therefore it is vital that people try to live the best life they can, as they will often have the bad karma of previous lifetimes to deal with. Karma will determine whether people reach enlightenment or have to live 1000 lifetimes of a lesser animal in order to get to the truth."

"Karma just does not work for individuals but can also have an effect on the whole nation or the whole planet. Buddhists talk about collective karma, when the consequences of action taken by whole countries can often change things. For example, Buddhists would argue that the way rich nations treat the poor nations of the world may well affect the karma of a whole country or a group a such as the United Nations."

"You will be both worshiped and reviled, elevated and denigrated, honored and crucified."

"Problems or successes, they all are the results of our own actions. Karma. The philosophy of action is that no one else is the giver of peace or happiness. One's own karma, one's own actions are responsible to come to bring either happiness or success or whatever."

"It is the philosophy of Siddhartha-Buddha again that Pythagoras expounded, when asserting that the ego was eternal with God, and that the soul only passed through various stages to arrive at the divine excellence; meanwhile the thumos returned to the earth, and even the phren was eliminated. Thus the metempsychosis was only a succession of disciplines through refuge-heavens to work off the exterior mind, to rid the nous of the phren, or soul, the Buddhist... principle that lives from Karma and the Skandhas (groups). p. 287, Part II, Religion"

"It is the latter, the metaphysical personations of the “deeds” of man, whether good or bad, which, after the death of his (physical) body, incarnate themselves, so to say, and form their many invisible but never-dying compounds into a new body, or rather into an ethereal being, the double of what man was morally. p. 287, Part II, Religion"

"Thus the disembodied Ego (Soul), through this sole undying desire in him, unconsciously furnishes the conditions of his successive self procreations in various forms, which depend on his mental state and Karma, the good or bad deeds of his preceding existence, commonly called merit and demerit. p. 320, Part II, Religion"

"Thus, like the revolutions of a wheel, there is a regular succession of death and birth, the moral cause of which is the cleaving to existing objects, while the instrumental cause is karma (the power which controls the universe, prompting it to activity), merit and demerit. “It is, therefore, the great desire of all beings who would be released from the sorrows of successive births to seek the destruction of the moral cause, the cleaving to existing objects, or evil desire.” p. 346, Part II, Religion"

"Both of the Mimansas, treating of the most abstruse questions, explain Karma as merit, or the efficacy of works; Isvara-Parasada, as grace; and Sradha, as faith. p. 591, Part II, Religion"