Does God forgive suicide?

[KnightOfEnceladus]

@WideAwake, that is not what I meant. Not even close (though you raise an interesting point, that Heaven as commonly understood is just another Hell).

Thing is, though, you're essentially saying that good can't exist without evil, which fatally undermines just about all theism one can think of, since God is defined as all-good.

@Shamana, okay, that's your choice. But that arrogates a tremendous amount of knowledge you might not have to yourself. I believe I have seen evidence otherwise, and evidence overrides dogma any time. I personally don't expect to find endless peace/bliss by committing suicide: what I expect is to end up in some state of "Bardo" and have at least the chance of either liberating myself or, if forced to reincarnate somehow, doing a better job at picking my circumstances this time. I have no doubt that my last death ended a life that was far less well-informed than this one, and perhaps less morally-lived than this one as well.

 

[Shamana]

So maybe 99 incarnations before I committed suicide and in this life I will CTB for last time :D Or at least I will be closer to the end of suicide cycle.

This is what i'm hoping. Basicly if 1 suicide leads to hundreds of suicides then it's a endless loop isn't? In buddhism being reborn as a human is very rare and very precious, because we have the ability to accumelate merit and wisdom which is impossible in the lower realms of animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings. In buddhism there is no garauntee that we will be reborn again as a human in our next life or next lives unless we work up alot of goodness and wisdom.

@WideAwake, that is not what I meant. Not even close (though you raise an interesting point, that Heaven as commonly understood is just another Hell).

Thing is, though, you're essentially saying that good can't exist without evil, which fatally undermines just about all theism one can think of, since God is defined as all-good.

@Shamana, okay, that's your choice. But that arrogates a tremendous amount of knowledge you might not have to yourself. I believe I have seen evidence otherwise, and evidence overrides dogma any time. I personally don't expect to find endless peace/bliss by committing suicide: what I expect is to end up in some state of "Bardo" and have at least the chance of either liberating myself or, if forced to reincarnate somehow, doing a better job at picking my circumstances this time. I have no doubt that my last death ended a life that was far less well-informed than this one, and perhaps less morally-lived than this one as well.

What kind of experiences have you had?

 

[ExitTheDay]

I always thought this was just a pathetic excuse to prevent people from ctb, in my opinion a benevolent god wouldn't punish someone for making decisions he allowed us to make in the first place unless it was to hurt others or animals

 

[WideAwake]

@WideAwake, that is not what I meant. Not even close (though you raise an interesting point, that Heaven as commonly understood is just another Hell).

Thing is, though, you're essentially saying that good can't exist without evil, which fatally undermines just about all theism one can think of, since God is defined as all-good.

I believe good and evil are relative and subjective, and they exist independent of each other in all of our minds. Most would say it is wrong to steal, even evil. But to steal a loaf of bread to feed one's starving child, is that evil? I am not so black and white in my thinking. There is Yin and there is Yang and there is balance. But again, life is a gift, and suffering can also be thought of as a gift ... to a degree.

 

[BipolarExpat]

Has anyone read any of the "Conversations with God" book series by Neale Donald Walsch?

It is presented as a modern answer to "Why did God stop talking?" (As in, since the bible).
Guy is at his wits end with life, writes a question to God, and an answer rises up and seems to formulate through him, and on it goes.

The "God" of this book series continually emphasizes: "Don't worry if I'm actually God or not - just ask yourself if my answers to your questions make sense / serve you."

In (perhaps) book 2, the question of death, the afterlife, homicide, etc. is posed. I think this was after "God" bluntly stated in a previous chapter,

"Look, Hitler went to heaven, ok? Once you wrap your head around that, we can move forward."

At any rate, when these types of questions were posed, the "God" of the book series likens the moment of death to a curtain closing on stage at the end of a play or production.

God claims: Earthbound enemies return to being loving souls at the flick of a switch. In other words, I'm chasing someone, trying to kill him and we both fall off a ledge - we die and the next thing you know, we're thanking each other for the part the other played (on the other side).

In this theory, life and death do appear to be cheap, in a sense.

As I recall, suicides aren't "treated" differently in any way but the arriving soul may have some of its own realizations to work up to i.e., you can create your own hell-like place but no sentences are passed down.

Judgement from an almighty doesn't exist in these books, yet self-judgement can be an obstacle that gets worked through.

Of course the obvious premise that our souls do indeed live on would turn away a lot of seekers immediately.

 

[KnightOfEnceladus]

@Shamana: among other things, a medium i went in with intend to unmask as a fraud/deceive not only seeing through it while reading for me but giving me unexpected information I didn't know how to make sense of until I talked to my mother. It was a message from a grandfather who had died 4 years before I was born, and included a phrase I'd never heard of but that my mother then told me he used to use almost daily. I've also been following a spiritist group in the UK whose "control" is named Salumet (and who says he's actually a composite of several beings, as are all of us when we're in spirit).

I am not trying to get you to drop Buddhism, rather modify some of what you were taught. Besides which, one thing that medium and various circles have said is that we don't retrograde (i.e., humans don't reincarnate as animals) though we can "stall out" for indefinite periods if we're not spiritually conscious, don't know we've died, and/or reject or don't accept "God"/Source/etc. Also: there is no separate realm of the pretans ("hungy ghosts") or asuras ("antigods/titans") as these are just different types of earthbound spirit, and there is no actual Naraka realm as such, rather, "Hell" is a state of mind, and no one spends kalpas and kalpas in it.

 

[Shamana]

@WideAwake, that is not what I meant. Not even close (though you raise an interesting point, that Heaven as commonly understood is just another Hell).

Thing is, though, you're essentially saying that good can't exist without evil, which fatally undermines just about all theism one can think of, since God is defined as all-good.

@Shamana, okay, that's your choice. But that arrogates a tremendous amount of knowledge you might not have to yourself. I believe I have seen evidence otherwise, and evidence overrides dogma any time. I personally don't expect to find endless peace/bliss by committing suicide: what I expect is to end up in some state of "Bardo" and have at least the chance of either liberating myself or, if forced to reincarnate somehow, doing a better job at picking my circumstances this time. I have no doubt that my last death ended a life that was far less well-informed than this one, and perhaps less morally-lived than this one as well.

I understand how you feel, but I don't have a lot of knowledge, about how the bardo works for suicides. My buddhist teachers wife whom I consider to more or less to be a truly enlightened bodhisattva says that the Bardo is terrifying and that even she is afraid of it even though she's practiced her entire life. Unless you are a truly advanced adept you don't get to choose your rebirth. Your mind/soul get's sucked into whatever womb, egg or existence your karma blows you toward. But that doesnt mean you might not get a chance to attain some insight and gain some purification. I don't know everything, I just now that almost every buddhist source I've consulted says that suicide leads to bad rebirth and more suffering unless you are a Arhat, which I certainly am not.

Like I said, I wish personally it wasnt so, because I consider my life destroyed and a personal nightmare and wish that dying would end it all. I just have no good reason to believe that is works that way from everything I learned in this is life. I'm still fixated on suicide, because I just want this life to end, even though I know i'm deceiving myself.

 

[Dead beat dad]

Personally, I am terrified about the idea that if one commits suicide, they will go to hell. I do not know why one would go to hell after they suffered so much on Earth though. It seems really unreasonable and unfair that only more pain awaits after death. But still, the question remains if God would forgive people like me.

God must have a lot of time on his hands to judge everyone on their own merit on whether they qualify for heaven or hell.
If you look at your life, on balance against the multitude of awfulness that takes place on earth then you're probably not that bad and might slip through the net.
But if it's just a blanket 'nope' to all sinners then God sounds like a bit of a D-Bag and heaven is probably not going such a nice place anyway.
Let's face face it, most of the fun stuff sends you to hell, don't do it on earth, you 'aint doing it in heaven brother.
Oh and don't be gay, or an unbaptised baby, you burn for that anyway.
Maybe God could spend some time building a better humanity, maybe we need some micro management!

 

[WideAwake]

God must have a lot of time on his hands ...

Infinite.

 

[Tally]

I'm not a believer, but why would anyone want to be around a god, who could not understand the pain of suicide?

 

[Shamana]

@Shamana: among other things, a medium i went in with intend to unmask as a fraud/deceive not only seeing through it while reading for me but giving me unexpected information I didn't know how to make sense of until I talked to my mother. It was a message from a grandfather who had died 4 years before I was born, and included a phrase I'd never heard of but that my mother then told me he used to use almost daily. I've also been following a spiritist group in the UK whose "control" is named Salumet (and who says he's actually a composite of several beings, as are all of us when we're in spirit).

I am not trying to get you to drop Buddhism, rather modify some of what you were taught. Besides which, one thing that medium and various circles have said is that we don't retrograde (i.e., humans don't reincarnate as animals) though we can "stall out" for indefinite periods if we're not spiritually conscious, don't know we've died, and/or reject or don't accept "God"/Source/etc. Also: there is no separate realm of the pretans ("hungy ghosts") or asuras ("antigods/titans") as these are just different types of earthbound spirit, and there is no actual Naraka realm as such, rather, "Hell" is a state of mind, and no one spends kalpas and kalpas in it.

Ghosts are highly clairvoyant and can pass as any ancestor if they want to. They often do it because they are bored. I discussed this with my teacher last time I saw him, when I questioned him about mediums and dead ancestors. On the subject of retrogradtion you are free too believe whatever mediums, shamans or spiritists you have faith in.

I'm pretty much of the opinion that new-age spiritualists, mediums, spiritists, shamans or whatever teach that we don't fall into lower realms and states, because it gives them and the people they teach comfort.

I am not of the opinion that Samsara is comfortable. It's endless suffering one way or another until we teach liberation. There is no good rebirth or happiness after death unless you've earned it. All the animals we eat daily have been humans before and we might be someones supper in a future life. The masters I know are the closest thing I've experienced of more or less omniscient people and extremely compassionate, which Is why, I trust their words over nearly anyone else.

I would rather believe what you believe though.

 

[KnightOfEnceladus]

Well, both of us are biased somewhat. But it's not a case of me believing what I want to believe; based on the research I've done, and yes I've considered the "ghosts are clairvoyant" angle, thank you very much, I simply do not believe that the things you're saying are the entire story.

I should mention: my girlfriend remembers her past life and what happened between then and now. This was right around the boundary between the Muromachi period and the one that came before it, I want to say Kamakura? She was apparently orphaned as a child and became a ruthless, murdering, arsonous bandit, with by her own estimate somewhere between 100-200 deaths on her record. She was also a Buddhist then. When she died, she met Enma Daiou, who told her in no uncertain terms he had no problem with her drinking, eating meat, or being a lesbian, but was very upset indeed about what she did to other people. She was then sentenced to be boiled alive over and over in Hell.

Which lasted about 7 weeks, and she is very specific about this. 7. Weeks. Not years, decades, centuries, millennia, or kalpas. Just under 2 months.

The rest of the 600-some-odd year gap, she tells me, was spent in a kind of learning journey. She would travel "through Hell," and described it to me as manifesting as a bunch of small sealed-off caves or spaces, one person to a space, each of them judging themselves, with literal "inner demons" manifesting from that judgment and tormenting them. From this, she says she realized that we judge ourselves and are completely, 100% unsparing, tormenting ourselves with the precise amount of pain we caused others before having even the possibility of moving on/reincarnating, and that she took so long because she hated herself. Essentially, she could have moved on any time after those 7 weeks, but could not forgive herself, and constantly wondered why she wasn't tortured more.

Today she's something like me, not Buddhist but of the opinion it's the least-wrong religion and has a lot of important insider information the others don't.

 

[Oblivion]

lol, there's no god.

 

[ZomGuy]

I really really hope he does. It wouldn't be fair to send someone from one hell to another.

 

[BipolarExpat]

I really really hope he does. It wouldn't be fair to send someone from one hell to another.

But then, when has anything seemed fair?

 

[Shamana]

Well, both of us are biased somewhat. But it's not a case of me believing what I want to believe; based on the research I've done, and yes I've considered the "ghosts are clairvoyant" angle, thank you very much, I simply do not believe that the things you're saying are the entire story.

I should mention: my girlfriend remembers her past life and what happened between then and now. This was right around the boundary between the Muromachi period and the one that came before it, I want to say Kamakura? She was apparently orphaned as a child and became a ruthless, murdering, arsonous bandit, with by her own estimate somewhere between 100-200 deaths on her record. She was also a Buddhist then. When she died, she met Enma Daiou, who told her in no uncertain terms he had no problem with her drinking, eating meat, or being a lesbian, but was very upset indeed about what she did to other people. She was then sentenced to be boiled alive over and over in Hell.

Which lasted about 7 weeks, and she is very specific about this. 7. Weeks. Not years, decades, centuries, millennia, or kalpas. Just under 2 months.

The rest of the 600-some-odd year gap, she tells me, was spent in a kind of learning journey. She would travel "through Hell," and described it to me as manifesting as a bunch of small sealed-off caves or spaces, one person to a space, each of them judging themselves, with literal "inner demons" manifesting from that judgment and tormenting them. From this, she says she realized that we judge ourselves and are completely, 100% unsparing, tormenting ourselves with the precise amount of pain we caused others before having even the possibility of moving on/reincarnating, and that she took so long because she hated herself. Essentially, she could have moved on any time after those 7 weeks, but could not forgive herself, and constantly wondered why she wasn't tortured more.

Today she's something like me, not Buddhist but of the opinion it's the least-wrong religion and has a lot of important insider information the others don't.

I respect your friends experience. It's difficult to tell which past life memories are truly real/accurate and what is our minds fictional creation. I'm open to the idea that her memories are real, but I dont have the ability to tell. No hell doesn't have to last for billions of years. In a former life when Buddha was a Bodhisattava he killed a man intent on mudering lots of people on a boat. Because he killed someone, he still had to purifry that karma in hell, but his time there was extremely brief and I believe only his feet were burnt.

But I agree that self-hatred and self-torment is part of the problem. Naraka can last for billions of years though. Imagine what happened to Hitler and his crew after they died.

The karmic consequenses of suicide is more grave for buddhist tantric initiates than it is for non-initiates though, because when you have been initiated into buddhist tantra, you have been empowered to view your body as the mandala of deities. When you kill that it is more grave than when a "normal" person kills his body.

 

[Meretlein]

I believe good and evil are relative and subjective, and they exist independent of each other in all of our minds. Most would say it is wrong to steal, even evil. But to steal a loaf of bread to feed one's starving child, is that evil? I am not so black and white in my thinking. There is Yin and there is Yang and there is balance. But again, life is a gift, and suffering can also be thought of as a gift ... to a degree.

Why did you join this website?

 

[KnightOfEnceladus]

What happened to Hitler and his crew would be over in, by my back of the envelope calculations, something on the order of 10,000-1,000,000 years. Not billions. As horrible as the things they did were, they do not compare to constant uninterrupted torture. Remember, we're speaking here of people getting exactly the amount of pain they caused others, out to a few degrees of separation (so also some guilt for things like modern murders committed by modern neo-Nazis inspired by the originals).

If anything, about 50 straight days of endless torture during which you cannot black out or otherwise lose consciousness sounds about right for 100-200 murders, many involving edged weapons or fire, as well as the grief suffered by relatives, loss of livelihoods and other knock-on effects like a child starving or a mother being forced to prostitute herself because a provident father-figure was killed. So use that as a meterstick to do a "Fermi estimate" as I did.

I don't actually think a single human is capable of causing so much suffering as to merit a billion years in Hell. It doesn't seem possible, based on what humans can do and based on how much humans can suffer. It would require some otherworldly scenario like "one madman unleashes a plague virus that infects all 7.5 billion of us and causes us all to spend 6 months of agony and pain before death."

Be proportionate here! Anything else that "you get exactly the amount of pain you cause, no more and no less" is evil, not justice or balance.

 

[Shamana]

What happened to Hitler and his crew would be over in, by my back of the envelope calculations, something on the order of 10,000-1,000,000 years. Not billions. As horrible as the things they did were, they do not compare to constant uninterrupted torture. Remember, we're speaking here of people getting exactly the amount of pain they caused others, out to a few degrees of separation (so also some guilt for things like modern murders committed by modern neo-Nazis inspired by the originals).

If anything, about 50 straight days of endless torture during which you cannot black out or otherwise lose consciousness sounds about right for 100-200 murders, many involving edged weapons or fire, as well as the grief suffered by relatives, loss of livelihoods and other knock-on effects like a child starving or a mother being forced to prostitute herself because a provident father-figure was killed. So use that as a meterstick to do a "Fermi estimate" as I did.

I don't actually think a single human is capable of causing so much suffering as to merit a billion years in Hell. It doesn't seem possible, based on what humans can do and based on how much humans can suffer. It would require some otherworldly scenario like "one madman unleashes a plague virus that infects all 7.5 billion of us and causes us all to spend 6 months of agony and pain before death."

Be proportionate here! Anything else that "you get exactly the amount of pain you cause, no more and no less" is evil, not justice or balance.

Karma does not work that way according to Buddha's teaching. If you commit a violent act with hatred that karma you receive back will be 7 or 8 fold. Similary if you are in a band of soldiers who commit killing, even if you do not kill "enemies"/civilians, but you support your fellow soldiers and do not try to stop them, then the karma you recieve in potentiated by number of humans killed and potentiated by the number of soldiers in the group. This is why it said that soldiers generally do not attain higher rebirths (human or higher). On a similar note intentionally injuring a buddha is said to cause instant rebirth hell as will murdering your parents.

Karma is not quite as simple as an eye for an eye.

 

[BipolarExpat]

Karma does not work that way according to Buddha's teaching.

C'mon....

Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, Pure Land, Tantric, Zen, etc...?

 

[Empty Smile]

According to christians, suicide is the greatest sin committed against god. If you ask them where in the bible it says that, they don't have an answer.

 

[KnightOfEnceladus]

Have you ever even asked yourself who or what is enforcing this karma? I find almost no one even thinks about the foundational pillars of their religion in any depth.

Karma is a law of nature/existence/reality/what-have-you. That means it is dependent on something for its operation. What--or who--is that something? If it's a "who," then we have a serious problem: anything other than "an eye for an eye" is unjust, and what or who makes up for that injustice against the person/entity perpetrating it? If it's a "what," then Buddhist revelation is woefully, indeed spiritually dangerously incomplete, and is missing some extremely fundamental concepts about the nature of reality.

 

[WideAwake]

Why did you join this website?

Because I am suicidal. You can review my posts and read them if you like.

 

[Shamana]

C'mon....

Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, Pure Land, Tantric, Zen, etc...?

No karma is not as simple as eye for an eye. No buddhist schools teaches it that way although alot of people believe it to be that way.

Have you ever even asked yourself who or what is enforcing this karma? I find almost no one even thinks about the foundational pillars of their religion in any depth.

Karma is a law of nature/existence/reality/what-have-you. That means it is dependent on something for its operation. What--or who--is that something? If it's a "who," then we have a serious problem: anything other than "an eye for an eye" is unjust, and what or who makes up for that injustice against the person/entity perpetrating it? If it's a "what," then Buddhist revelation is woefully, indeed spiritually dangerously incomplete, and is missing some extremely fundamental concepts about the nature of reality.

The full workings of karma is generally said to be an imponderable meaning that it cannot be comphrended by dualistic mind. You pretty much need to have super-clairvoyance of Buddhahood to see the full workings of karma. Karma and samsara is generally not really fair which is why buddhas and bodhisattavas want us to get out of it immediately. Good actions are also said to outweigh bad actions. Is that really fair?

 

[KnightOfEnceladus]

@Shamana: so you don't see the problem here?

You have no way of verifying the above statements you made. Absolutely none. You have no way of knowing if, after your death, Buddha will pop out from behind a rock or something and go "Surprise, Shamana! It's all lies! I feed on your torment and will torture you for eternity for my own benefit! Thanks for believing in me and giving me food!"

Still your objections for a moment. You are essentially being asked "could you be fooled by a being that could fool you?" Of course the answer is yes. Any being powerful enough to discern the inner workings of something you yourself say are imponderable to a human (or indeed samsaric) mind could be deceiving you, and every other being, and we would have no way to know, any more than an ant can comprehend the ways of a human.

If anything, it sounds like it would be very much an optimal strategy to a being that feeds on torment to keep people on the wheel of reincarnation, while at the same time offering them a false way off to strive for, deliberately making it difficult or nigh-on impossible, and playing any of a number of other such spiritual gaslighting tricks on us. And this being would be utterly indistinguishable from the Buddha as you believe him to be, right up to the critical moment, if indeed you are even able to be made aware that you've been tricked.

And, also again: who or what is maintaining karma's operation? This is not a question of its justice or fairness: karma is a law of some sort, that produces consistent effects, and therefore requires some substrate in which to operate. Who or what is it?

 

[Shamana]

@Shamana: so you don't see the problem here?

You have no way of verifying the above statements you made. Absolutely none. You have no way of knowing if, after your death, Buddha will pop out from behind a rock or something and go "Surprise, Shamana! It's all lies! I feed on your torment and will torture you for eternity for my own benefit! Thanks for believing in me and giving me food!"

Still your objections for a moment. You are essentially being asked "could you be fooled by a being that could fool you?" Of course the answer is yes. Any being powerful enough to discern the inner workings of something you yourself say are imponderable to a human (or indeed samsaric) mind could be deceiving you, and every other being, and we would have no way to know, any more than an ant can comprehend the ways of a human.

If anything, it sounds like it would be very much an optimal strategy to a being that feeds on torment to keep people on the wheel of reincarnation, while at the same time offering them a false way off to strive for, deliberately making it difficult or nigh-on impossible, and playing any of a number of other such spiritual gaslighting tricks on us. And this being would be utterly indistinguishable from the Buddha as you believe him to be, right up to the critical moment, if indeed you are even able to be made aware that you've been tricked.

And, also again: who or what is maintaining karma's operation? This is not a question of its justice or fairness: karma is a law of some sort, that produces consistent effects, and therefore requires some substrate in which to operate. Who or what is it?

I said the full workings of karma is an imponderable. I think we can all quite clearly see the workings of positive and negative thouhgts and actions on a day to day basis.

And who or what maintains it? I might have to check back on this one, but I would say that on an ultimate level it's actually your own mind. From the ultimate buddhist viewpoint every single on of us is experiencing our own karmically created reality. Everything is pretty much an illusion. Even karma doesn't exists on a ultimate level and karma is generated by the delusion of believing in an ego.

But it's an interesting question. I'm pretty sure that someone can come up with a much better answer on dharmawheel or western buddhism on facebook. My theoretical buddhist knowledge is very rusty these days as my mental and bodily health is declining as lack of buddhist study and practice.

 

[KnightOfEnceladus]

You seemed awfully certain about these things until just then...

At any rate, we're still left with the "imponderables" problem: if you don't have at least a good basic grounding in how a system works, do you truly trust it, especially one that determines your destiny? This isn't like not knowing how an FM radio transceiver or an elevator safety hoist works; it transcends lifetimes.

Again: you have no way of knowing whether this is all actually some hidden mastermind's eons-long scheme to prey on the suffering of sentient beings. You have no way of knowing whether you're actually just the equivalent of krill for some kind of evil torture-eating space whale or something. I know you were raised with this and grew up with it, but there's a lack of empirical observation here, which ironically Buddha himself would be annoyed with as one central part of his message was to test things for yourself and see the workings of reality...

At any rate, that is what I have done, and come to the conclusion that while the primitive pillars of Buddhism are by far the least-wrong of all religions ever to exist and contain much truth, certain things about them also do not comport with observable reality.

 

[Santiago]

I forgive you, yes

 

[Shamana]

You seemed awfully certain about these things until just then...

At any rate, we're still left with the "imponderables" problem: if you don't have at least a good basic grounding in how a system works, do you truly trust it, especially one that determines your destiny? This isn't like not knowing how an FM radio transceiver or an elevator safety hoist works; it transcends lifetimes.

Again: you have no way of knowing whether this is all actually some hidden mastermind's eons-long scheme to prey on the suffering of sentient beings. You have no way of knowing whether you're actually just the equivalent of krill for some kind of evil torture-eating space whale or something. I know you were raised with this and grew up with it, but there's a lack of empirical observation here, which ironically Buddha himself would be annoyed with as one central part of his message was to test things for yourself and see the workings of reality...

At any rate, that is what I have done, and come to the conclusion that while the primitive pillars of Buddhism are by far the least-wrong of all religions ever to exist and contain much truth, certain things about them also do not comport with observable reality.

I quite simply to do not at the current moment possess the capacity to attain the omniscience needed to clearly see the full workings of karma and don't expect to attain the superknowledges limited to boddhisattavas on the high bhumis or Buddha's since I do not possess the health, merit, wisdom and qualities to make that far in this life even if I choose to live and die a natural death. I have met very few people who have made it that far and they generally don't go around proclaiming that they have.

Whenever I practiced and studied I have found Buddha's and my teachers advice and teachings to be true which is why i have faith in them.

I've never born or raised a buddhist. I'm a dane who became interested in buddhism and "converted" at 19 when I was studying philosophy, religion and science looking for truth's about life and existence.

 

[Soul]

Have you ever even asked yourself who or what is enforcing this karma? I find almost no one even thinks about the foundational pillars of their religion in any depth.

Karma is a law of nature/existence/reality/what-have-you. That means it is dependent on something for its operation. What--or who--is that something? If it's a "who," then we have a serious problem: anything other than "an eye for an eye" is unjust, and what or who makes up for that injustice against the person/entity perpetrating it? If it's a "what," then Buddhist revelation is woefully, indeed spiritually dangerously incomplete, and is missing some extremely fundamental concepts about the nature of reality.

You're chilling me, KoE. Would you like to elaborate? I'd love it if you would.