Dear Piya,

op 15-09-2005 04:06 schreef Piya Tan op libris@...:

> From a close reading of the Siivaka Sutta, it says two important things:
> (1) Not everything is due to karma;
> (2) Buddhism rejects fatalism (that everything is due to karma).
>
> One could add a third corollary, that,
>
> (3) One faces one's own karma.
>
> However, there is no mention whatsoever about "group karma," implicitly or
> explicitly.

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N: Yes, you summarized very well.

You know, more than a year the question of collective kamma was discussed
with Yong Peng.
In dsg list we have a google to get back to a subject in old messages, an
idea for this list?
Actually, I understand that sometimes happenings look like collective kamma.
Genocide or massacres in some countries, hurricanes, tsunamis etc.
The matter of kamma is very complex. There have to be other conditions so
that it is the right time for kamma to produce result. I read in the
Commentaries about gati, place where one is born, the time, kaala, when one
lives, upadhi, one's bodily condition, and payoga, one's conduct. These can
be sampatti or vipatti. If one lives in a time of war, akusala kamma has
more opportunity to produce akusala vipaaka, for example. Some people are
always clumsy, say or do the wrong thing. Then it may be the right time for
akusala kamma to produce result.
I do not want to go into this complex matter too much. There are so many
conditioning factors operating.
I was impressed by what U Narada wrote in his guide to Conditional Relations
(p. 54):

<The Strange Results Produced by Asynchronous Kamma.
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There is no place where materiality and mentality are stored for their
continual arising and ceasing in succession. Just as when a match is struck
a flame appears from no where and then disappears, so also, when object and
base coincide consciousness and mental factors arise from nowhere, last for
a thought-moment and then cease and vanish altogether. In this condition,
volition, which is an ultimate reality, also arises and ceases in the same
fashion. However, the force, which is left behind after volition ceases, is
not destroyed and may be present for countless worlds in the successive
continuity of a being, bound by craving, conceit and wrong views, to produce
a result suddenly. The result cannot be foreseen and seems to be
spontaneous. >
****
Nina.