karma in todays society
...impartial world was controlled at the level of the individual, with consequences being the result of actions of the individual. Because of this Indian idea of destiny, fate, which is the belief of a predestined path that is set for a person before he or she is born, was not considered in their culture. As a result, fate would be the antithesis of the popular belief that destiny is controlled by the individual. Even though the actions resulted in consequences, a person could escape from his or her transgressions through two ways. The first being asceticism and the other is meditation. Asceticism is withdrawing from society by avoiding any pleasures in life, while mediation allowed one to think intensely one a subject. The first tortured the body, and thus the mind, while the second would erase the desire of a bad action through deep concentration, and the absence of this desire thus illuminated the action altogether. Even though karma was prominent belief in historic India, the idea of karma offered the greatest benefit for the lowest caste of society for two major reasons. The first reason was that they had the longest path in achieving the premier ranking in the Indian caste system. When an individual is in the grudges of society doing the entire load of the filthy labor, it takes only little motivation to improve the caste in the future. Next, life would become progressively better in the higher castes. As one would move farther up in the caste system, life would get progressively easier and an individual would then be less motivated to follow ideas of karma because he or she was satisfied with the present class, even though an individual could back fall into a previous caste. Therefore, the extent of following karma would be less as one moved up, doing only what was required rather than overachieving good deeds to assure improvement of life. Although the improvement of the caste cannot be directly related to today‘s society, post-secondary education can be one example of a person‘s passion to become more marketable to the future employees, resulting in being more prosperous and this improving his or her future lifestyle. When first considering the idea of karma in conjunction of the today‘s society, the ambiguous belief of right and wrong must first be noted. The actions that are considered bad to some may appear acceptable to others, while the same is true for good deeds. For example, some view drinking alcohol as destruction to society and being tied to most crimes in some way. Alcohol is also often considered as a gateway drug, which will lead to the use of other illicit and addicting drugs, with many users resorting to crime for assurance of more drugs. On the other hand, many people see alcohol as being a way of life and a good resort for stress relief and social interaction. This ambiguous relationship can be applied most actions, thus resulting in no distinct line between right and wrong, except in the case of criminal offenses. In relating the idea of karma to our society, beliefs of the society should be first examined. American society has both commendable and vile beliefs, and, even though we exhibit some bad beliefs, America is one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations in the world. The virtuous beliefs coincide with the justice system, such as indicting criminals for actions such as robbery and murder, but inauspicious moral actions are also present and tolerated by the government. For example, abortion is easily seen by some as killing, just at a time before the fetus is considered alive. In addition to abortion, the killing of animals for research is seen to many as harming another form of life, but is upheld by the government because it seems to benefit humans by increasing knowledge of physiologic processes. Believers in karma, which would say that America should not be wealthy due to the toleration of bad deeds, is in conflict with the truth that America is indeed very prosperous. Another flaw with the belief of karma in our society can be seen through no reasoning for bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people. For example, a good friend plays baseball at the collegiate level in North Dakota. He also seems to exhi...