anyone with a belief in reincarnation and activism, how does it compute?

"it's best to have a certain amount of suffering, because the happy and exalted life of say, a god, might make you forget that existence is suffering." - this still sounds circular. I prefer systems where one can choose what one aims for. Wanting to be happy and help other people be happy, instead of accepting suffering and then ceasing to exist, is a bad thing? I don't like this system. And the second kind of thing is what suicide is in the short term. but we have wandered far from the original questions, and there is no obligations for me OR for buddhism at large to cease our differences. :/

 

All right so having looked this over and being Buddhist...I can say that karma and rebirth is a complicated matter. So first I'm going to try and describe karma from a Theravada Buddhist perspective. Karma means "action" as some have mentioned. Each act you commit generates karma. Each and every last one. Because for every action there must be a reaction, and nothing happens for no reason. Say you drop a ball. The ball is not just going to hover in the air, is it? No, because the law of gravity is a thing that exists. That is what karma is. It is a universal law of action and causation.

Some acts generate negative karma. Some generate positive karma. Some generate null karma. And some generate liberation karma which is used to reach Enlightenment and blow out all your other karma.

How karma gets weighed is also complicated. It's a four part equation at its base. First you have the situation. Where are the people involved? What is happening? Why? Next is intention. What is the state of mind of the person committing the act? What do they intend and feel by committing it? Did they intend to commit it at all? Next what is the act? How was it committed and upon whom or what? Finally what is the result? Is something broken? Is someone happy? All that gets calculated and then your fruit grows. Eventually it will reach fruition and drop, causing the karmic reaction.

This sounds very simple but you have to keep in mind that you are constantly generating new karma and that you have a huge backlog of old karma. That is how beings are born actually and what sustains us. Karma. It is the flame the burns and brings us into being. So with that in mind figuring out exactly what's going to happen is very, very, very hard. For humans I would say that, unless you are Enlightened, it is in fact impossible to make any sort of accurate judging of what any one karmic act may result in.

Now Morven said that it is what is fated to happen. In terms of Buddhism this is not really the case. Buddhism has what is called conditional determinism. Because the karma flow is changing all the time and because there are all these other beings with karmic threads you are interacting with nothing is set in stone. Instead what you end up with are a series of potential outcomes, that are then changed accordingly as things go on. You can potentially outweigh the bad karma from murdering someone with so much good karma that it doesn't actually do much to you. The fruit will still drop. It'll just dropped with a bunch of other, more pleasant fruits.

So, yes, things like getting robbed from are results of your karma. That is true. The point is that karma isn't necessarily punishment. There is no god meting it out. It is simply a law of reality. That is all. The important thing is that pain is pain and pain is to be avoided. Sentient beings all feel pain and pain is unpleasant. Thus all sentient beings should strive to prevent pain to others and themselves. They should also all understand the pain of others because you yourself do.

Buddhism is a radical force for love and activism, actually. Does it get misused for hate? Definitely. However this I think is counter to one of the most important things in the faith: metta. Metta is loving kindness. It is an unconditional and boundless love for all sentient living beings. It is a wish for all living beings to avoid hurt and to be as happy and healthy as they can be.

ALL.

Not just "Humans" or "The humans that don't hurt other people". Every last living being is worthy of metta and an equal amount of metta. This is why you meditate upon those you hate and wish for them to be happy, healthy, and peaceful. Because those people are worth it no matter what they may have done. And you are not above what wrongs they have committed. You might have done similar or worse things in a past life.

But pain is pain. And karma is a relentless system. Note that I said that karma is a universal law and that there is no sentient being guiding it. You generate karma for each act you commit and all karma must come to fruition! There is no avoiding that. But let's say that someone's negative karma results in them leading a life of suffering. It's hard and they don't get the things they want and abuse is what they know. They are hurting and let's say they turn to hurting other people. To get back at the world, to get food, or because it's what they know. Whatever the case they turn to hurting others which generates MORE bad karma. Which results in a worse next life which may lead to MORE bad karma.

It's a downward spiral. And it is very, very hard to crawl out of it on your own. You'll have to ultimately be the one to crawl out, but it's hard to do that on your own.

Which is where that metta thing comes in. There is a man named Angulimala. He was a notorious serial killer, but the Buddha took mercy on him and taught him. Angulimala became a monk and reached Enlightenment, and all because a man helped him out. Then there are the numerous pained wives who were abused by their husbands that they were forced to marry. The Buddha taught them and took them in and they too reached Enlightenment, and really they were treated comparatively very well. His metta knew no bounds because it was metta and people were helped for it.

So karmically I do believe that my gender dysphoria is a result of my having fucked up in the past. However it was I fucked up. But the important thing is metta and how the system is a huge dick to us all. So from a Buddhist perspective it only makes ALL the sense to be against transphobia and to be all for helping trans people or supporting them.

No one deserves suffering. Everyone deserves to be liberated and everyone deserves help and care.

Buddhism also operates under a system wherein happiness as we call it isn't really happiness at all. We can call it this, but in the end all happiness gives way to suffering. As a result some monks and nuns have taken to considering happiness as just being a very subtle form of suffering, which is my personal take on the matter as well. True Happiness meanwhile comes only from Enlightenment. It is eternal and can't be broken and it leads to escaping this cycle of rebirth.

At its best I think that Buddhism is very radical. It is about crushing the status quo and helping and liberating EVERYONE. To just go "Oh well suffering is inevitable" or "Oh well these people deserve it" is to miss the point completely. Reality isn't fair. Society isn't fair.

Rebel against both. Question both. Break and reshape both. Best to make a better world that is easier for us to reach Enlightenment in than to live a shit on shit just because we know that we can't make it perfect.