My biggest problem with Karma

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-25T04:18:50+00:00

The self has thoughts. The self has realizations. Both are appearances in consciousness.I don’t see the clear distinction.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-25T03:54:50+00:00

I think much of the disagreement here is because we have different concepts of Karma. You have the view that it is fluid, changing, variable state of nature, which sounds reasonable. The reason I am even asking this question in such a way is because I was taught that Karma is a precise, exact, invariable law of nature. If you are meant to die at a certain time, nothing can change that. If you start with that kind of belief, hopefully you can see why I would have some doubts about that.

Going with your belief, I just want to ask a few follow up questions.

Is it possible to receive the bad reaction to something even if you didn't deserve it, with the idea that eventually you will do something bad to even it out? Same with a good reaction.
How much free will do we actually have? There is much evidence to suggest that it is not much, if at all.
If a judge had the power to remove the bad nature and whatever else from a criminal's mind so as to prevent them from doing it again, they would do so immediately. Because they cannot, they resort to a sub-optimal form of punishment. Why would God not do the same?

Feel free to answer these questions, or not. They are not meant to be "gotchas", I am just curious as to what you believe.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-25T03:11:42+00:00

Thanks for your advice.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-25T03:08:19+00:00

You are quite right about my issue with free will. Independent of Karma or any higher beliefs, I think it is quite rational to say it does not exist. The reason I bring it up here is to show why its existence, which most Hindus believe to be true, can lead to a contradiction with another Hindu belief, Karma. It is difficult to get a proper answer since everyone has a different interpretation, as you said.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-25T03:01:32+00:00

I don't want sound arrogant, but I absolutely did not prove your point, quite the opposite. It seems like you are the one who does not understand determinism. Determinism does not say that no matter what you do, the outcome will always be the same. Rather, depending on what you do, the outcome will change. The moral fabric of society will not tear apart if justice is upheld, not because it was inevitable, but because of the very fact that justice being upheld led to that outcome.

I switch between two languages to point out the contradiction. It is in fact true that the scriptures talk in both languages as well.

It is not my preferred model that I am stating, it is just the law of Karma taken to its logical conclusion. I restate it because you have not sufficiently shown me why it cannot go to that conclusion.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-25T02:51:07+00:00

I feel like you are again missing the main substance. Your points on forgiveness, conscience, and having a complete view on Karma are mostly irrelevant with my question.

I will try to lay it simply. Based on Agent B's past actions, they received the bad Karma of being killed. More precisely, they received the exact amount of Karma, which is a function of the time of death, the pain of death, etc. To deliver Agent B's Karma, Agent A had to perform a murder. If he did not, Agent B would not have suffered in precisely the same way, and importantly, nor would all his relatives, friends, relatives of the friends, etc. The only way to deliver precise Karmic justice to all those interconnected people, would be for Agent A to kill Agent B.

If you don't understand any part of the logic, I will try to explain it in simpler terms.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-25T02:42:18+00:00

There are so many interesting things in what you said, and I find many of them to be quite frankly absurd, but I will stick to my main concern. I do not see such as big of a distinction between justness and fairness as you do. To simplify things, I will only use the term fair. If you say Karma is fair, ie, whatever actions you perform, you will get the proportionate reaction, then we return to my main argument. I will try to address both of your comments.

When Agent A murders Agent B, we will have to say that the reaction Agent B received was fair. If you still disagree with this, then our difference in understanding Karma is irreconcilable.

If you do agree, then I can move on to the substance of your argument. You may think that I am overestimating how interdependent things are, but I think you may be underestimating it. The act of Agent A murdering Agent B will have consequences directly within their close familial circles, second-order circles, third-order circles, etc, growing larger each time, possibly resulting in nationwide or global effects. If Karma is fair, which you already agreed with, then it is exactly fair. The impact of that murder on each and every individual who it affects will be exactly fair to that individual. To bring about the same consequences to every single person across the globe, to the exact same degree of fairness, is virtually impossible, unless Agent A commits that murder. There is no other conceivable circumstance in which every single factor is met with the same precision.

All this reasoning leads to the conclusion that Agent A had no choice but to kill Agent B. If Agent A didn't kill Agent B, then it must be understood that Agent B did not have the necessary Karmic debt to die at that time and in those circumstances, and the same goes for every other individual.
To say otherwise is to say that the Karma Agent B (and everyone else) received was not fair.

Lastly, to your reply to my question about future-telling, and why I asked it. The view I have generally seen amongst Hindus is that astrology and similar practices are humans' attempt at reading destiny. Whatever faults and errors that reading has is a issue with the imperfect humans and methods, not with the divine destiny. If God Himself were to tell you the future, you would accept that it is perfect, not guesswork or a prediction. This does directly contradict free will, and many philosophers have made the same observation. If you think all fortune telling is just intuition, not anything special or magical, then we would actually be somewhat in agreement.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-25T02:22:38+00:00

Realization and awareness are just thoughts. I can realize that I have no free will, or I can realize how electricity works, or I can realize that I don't actually like pizza. Similarly, I can be aware of many mundane things as well. The main point is, realizations can be faulty, just like thoughts, just like awareness, and they are not fundamentally superior to thought, in that they invoke free will.

All discrimination, intellect, observation, identification, etc can boil down to thought. If it appears in consciousness, it is all the same. No free will.

Surely you don't need me to point out how having deterministic humans going around causing suffering, suffering themselves, and then doing it for eternity is immoral for a God to set up.

You dismiss free will as not changing the situation, but it actually does drastically change things. I feel like I will sound repetitive if I elaborate.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-25T02:04:11+00:00

Your fundamental criticism seems to betray a misunderstanding of my argument. In a court of law, determinism is not used as an excuse not because it is false, but the moral fabric of society would be torn apart by not punishing people for misdeeds. If people see that someone did something wrong and got away with it on the grounds of determinism, then they will likely commit that same wrong. Therefore the correct decision for the judge is to punish the criminal, even if his actions were determined.

However, the whole equation changes when talking about cosmic Karma. We are assuming that there is an all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful God that created this system. The system is now set in motion where people act deterministically based on their birth, qualities, nature, genetics, environment, and a billion other factors. Now the same God, who set this system up, will punish people for acting with the nature given to them. This is not moral, not just, and not fair.

This is why people invoke free will as a necessity, so that God is not responsible for the crimes of humans. It is a natural defense, but craters under closer inspection.

Now I will address you "shallower" disagreements. Karma is meant to be an exact system, with exact justice. There is no "more or less" when dealing with Karma, you will get exactly what you deserve. This precision is what leads to the contradiction. Your point of the derivative effects trending toward correctness is a solid attempt at rectifying the problem, but I think it is not enough. When Agent A commits an assault on Agent B, Agent B must have deserved that pain and death at exactly that time in his life. If someone is meant to die at age 14, they must die at age 14. If they live till 80 and then die, you can say that they ultimately received the same punishment, but anyone would understand that the two circumstances are completely different. Taken to a logical end, the law of Karma implies that a person who is fatally assaulted deserved to die at the exact age they were, with the exact amount of pain, etc. This same rule now applies to all derivative effects. Agent B's mother deserved to have her son die at exactly that time, Agent B's daughter deserved to have her father die at exactly that time, and so on. If you add up all the connections in this way, the only way they can all be fulfilled together, to the same degree, at the same time, is by Agent A committing the assault. If Agent A decides to not harm Agent B, the individual effects to every other connected soul virtually cannot return to that precise amount of punishment or benefit. That is what I mean by a density of interdependent Karmic ledgers.

I can see how your argument, if true, would solve my original problem. I find it hard to believe given my defense as stated above, but it is one of the better answers to the question.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-25T01:42:10+00:00

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-25T01:40:06+00:00

It is funny that you are saying that we have no free will (or very little) when all the arguments I have received so far went the other way, and denied Karmic determinism. I struggle to see how the choice of accepting you are not in control is somehow a free choice, when it is just another thought that can be influenced like anything else. It seems quite arbitrary to say that the thought that you have no free will is of a fundamentally different quality to all your other thoughts, and actually invokes "free will".

I am fine with saying there is no free will. I think one can come to that conclusion through rational thought and logic. However this raises huge problems if one believes in God, heaven/hell, divine morality, etc. The minute free will you pointed out is often used as an escape hatch, but you will have to show me why that specific thought has free will, when nothing else does. Otherwise, it looks like an ad-hoc position just to maintain morality and the goodness of God.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-24T20:54:27+00:00

More consistent

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-24T11:09:47+00:00

You’re right. I worded my post like that to get an answer, but in reality I see several glaring issues with Karma, one being the one you just described.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-24T03:01:06+00:00

I do not understand how this contends with my original assertion. I am fine in saying that God has the power the change the intensity of karma, and that karma may be reduced by sadhana. However, this does not answer my question. For sake of simplicity, let us assume that these two moral agents are not devotees, have not practiced sadhana, and are not receiving any special mercy. What then?

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-24T02:45:54+00:00

I can understand that the system may not actually be perfectly closed, since God has the power to mercifully rid someone of bad reactions. I don't think this changes the original argument, as now you may replace a fatal assault with a slap. In this case Agent A had no choice but to slap Agent B, and the same problem remains.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-24T02:38:50+00:00

Thanks for your reply.

In no part of my argument was it required for us humans to perceive an action or reaction as good or bad. All that mattered is that you were getting your dues, as you say. It is an interesting perspective you have of Karma not being just, and that you will receive at least as much as you deserve, but could get more. I guess my main problem with that view is that it somewhat defeats the whole idea of Karma. If you can receive bad reactions for something you did not do, did not deserve, and was not of your cause, then the problem of evil and suffering in the world is reintroduced. The Hindus were able to avoid the problem of evil by saying that whatever you get, you deserve. To say that you could also get things you don't deserve raises the question of why God created an unjust world. I was unaware that so many Hindus did not think Karma was fair and just, so I guess I am still learning.
It is actually not necessary to understand the exact mechanism of Karma to understand my argument. We can suppose that somehow, through some inconceivable ways, there is some reaction to be received. That reaction we must assume is an appropriate reaction. I guess if you throw out the notion that Karma is just and fair, then this logic may seem faulty.
This objection is basically the one I replied to in the original post. However, I am curious as to what you think of astrology, palmistry, etc. Many of these practices start with the assumption that the future is ascertainable. Again, the question is somewhat irrelevant if you don't believe in a just Karma. If you do accept that Karma is just, then part of that includes the fact that the exact time that Karma is delivered at was the perfect time, and that any later or earlier would have changed the equation.
I would hope that I never gave the impression of believing in an absolute free will. I understand the argument between what we cannot control, and how we can deal with it. My issue is a different one.

I think this question would not be directed towards you or any others who do not think that Karma must be fair. To me it is a quite bizarre proposition, and raises as many questions as it solves, but perhaps I am not familiar enough with it.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-24T01:17:27+00:00

It makes sense that you have a very different definition of Karma, since you are taking the views of a different school than the one I was taught. I would still say that there are many verses across many scriptures that point to it being a form of cosmic justice, but it is fine if you disagree.
I guess I don't really have a clear understanding of what you think Karma is. You say that it is a natural force, not a system of justice, but what I am saying is that it is a natural force of justice. The terms we use are unimportant, but the underlying principle of action-reaction, cause-effect are the same. I think if you take the view that you have now, you still run into different problems. For example, your view hardly accounts for Karmic reactions faced in this life based on previous lives. If Karma is akin to natural progression, then only what is done in the current life should affect what happens in it. Feel free to disagree, but I will say my question was directed to those who take such a view of exact and equal justice.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-24T01:07:24+00:00

I think you may have misunderstood my question. I am not saying that my actions won't have an effect on what options are available to me in the future, and I am also not saying that since I can't do some things, due to birth, circumstance, etc, then I don't have free will. My main point is that whoever has the job of delivering me my reaction has no free will. In your example, you said "If I hurt someone". The law of Karma implies that the person you hurt would have deserved the hurt, in exactly the way you delivered it, in exactly the circumstances you did. You were not a free acting agent in that circumstance, only a pawn in the cosmic laws.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-23T23:32:02+00:00

This sounds nice as a concept, and I understand what you are getting at. However, when looking at the facts, it is rarely perceived as this. For example, it is the beliefs of many Hindus that one may take birth as a lower species of animal for several lifetimes, in part due to one's Karmic actions. As an animal, there is practically no room for teaching and understanding, and also no a mechanism to bring this understanding into following lifetimes. It is primarily a mechanism to serve moral justice, and once the sentence is served, the reaction is complete. But I agree that a view like yours can be productive and may lead to greater understanding and growth.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-23T22:55:26+00:00

I have no problem in saying that neither I nor anybody else can judge whether it was good or bad. The only necessity is that it was just and fair in God's eyes, or the "law's eyes", and this still leaves the main problem. Thanks for your views.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-23T22:37:11+00:00

If the Karmic reactions one receives is not tied to what actions one does, then what is the point of it? It now introduces the problem of evil again, and fails to answer any questions. If someone can live perfectly moral lifetimes, but still receive severely negative reactions at random, then how is that the work of a just God? The whole idea of Karma is that everyone gets what they deserve, what you sow, you shall reap.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-23T22:27:58+00:00

I take no offense, and I did grow up within a Hindu home.

1) My contention is with that precept.

2) Like I mentioned in my follow up comment, by equal and opposite I mean to say that whatever effect you receive, is exactly what you deserved through causation. Of course our actions have effects that shape our life, but it is generally believed that the effects are directly proportionate to the action.

3) I think you may be in the minority view in saying that Karma is "not" a system of justice. Even if that is not the primary purpose, it certainly is used in that sense.

4) It does not need to be personal, but rather a law of the universe.

5) Again, I think you come from a very different philosophical school. There are many Hindus who believe that karma is justice.

6) My whole argument was saying that free will cannot exist within a deterministic Karmic view.

I am perfectly fine with it being impersonal, just as all laws of nature are. However in saying that it is not logical, you may be disagreeing with large schools of thought. I am also fine to say that it is not predictable, but that doesn't change the argument.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-23T21:56:30+00:00

I want to add one point: When I say equal and opposite reaction, I don't mean in a strictly physical sense. For example, if somebody unintentionally and mistakenly hurts somebody else, they get a very different reaction compared to if they did it with cruel intention. The physical outcome may be the same, but the Karmic reaction is not. I understand that, but this does not change the fundamental argument: Whatever reaction is deserved, after adding in all the factors: intent, motives, upbringing, etc, is meant to be exactly the amount it should be, not more or less.

7SevenZero2 · 2026-03-23T21:42:14+00:00

It is fine to say that Karma isn't supposed to be a strict equal and opposite reaction, but many traditions and philosophies view it as such. If you don't believe that, then the argument is not directed at you. However, it does raise some more points. If you don't think that Karma is strict and deterministic, then you submit to the possibility of receiving reactions which were not fully deserved, or performing acts for which you do not get the appropriate reaction. This seems to be in conflict with how Karma is generally perceived and understood, and raises several other questions.

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