{"id":811,"date":"2009-09-17T08:43:24","date_gmt":"2009-09-17T08:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/09\/buddhist-quote-of-the-day-what-kind-of-karma-do-you-drive.html"},"modified":"2009-09-17T08:43:24","modified_gmt":"2009-09-17T08:43:24","slug":"buddhist-quote-of-the-day-what-kind-of-karma-do-you-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/buddhist-quote-of-the-day-what-kind-of-karma-do-you-drive.html","title":{"rendered":"Buddhist Quote of the Day: What Kind of Karma Do You Drive?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"karma_buddhism_meditation.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/124\/import\/karma_buddhism_meditation.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 20px 20px;float: right\" height=\"383\" width=\"255\" \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<div>&#8220;There is another issue that has important implications for how <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theidproject.org\/\">Buddhism<\/a> will adapt to a more global role in the future. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shambhala.org\/\">Karma<\/a> has been used to <a href=\"http:\/\/thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/09\/16\/carters-racism-charge-sparks-war-of-words\/?hp\">rationalize racism<\/a>, caste, economic oppression, birth handicaps and everything else. Taken literally, karma justifies the authority of political elites, who therefore must deserve their wealth and power, and the subordination of those who have neither. It provides the perfect theodicy: if there is an infallible cause-and-effect relationship between one&#8217;s actions and one&#8217;s fate, there is no need to work toward social justice, because it&#8217;s already built into the moral fabric of the universe. In fact, if there is no undeserved suffering, there is really no evil that we need to struggle against. It will all balance out in the end.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I remember a Buddhist teacher&#8217;s reflections on the Holocaust&#8230;&#8217;What terrible karma those Jews must&#8217;ve had&#8230;&#8217; This kind of fundamentalism, which blames the victims and rationalizes their horrific fate, is something no longer to be tolerated quietly. It is time for&#8230; modern Buddhism to outgrow it by accepting social responsibility and finding ways to address such injustices.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;David Loy<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Money-Sex-War-Karma-Revolution\/dp\/0861715586\">Money Sex War Karma<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;There is another issue that has important implications for how Buddhism will adapt to a more global role in the future. Karma has been used to rationalize racism, caste, economic oppression, birth handicaps and everything else. Taken literally, karma justifies the authority of political elites, who therefore must deserve their wealth and power, and the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism","category-interdependent-activism-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Buddhist Quote of the Day: What Kind of Karma Do You Drive? - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/buddhist-quote-of-the-day-what-kind-of-karma-do-you-drive.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Buddhist Quote of the Day: What Kind of Karma Do You Drive? - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;There is another issue that has important implications for how Buddhism will adapt to a more global role in the future. Karma has been used to rationalize racism, caste, economic oppression, birth handicaps and everything else. Taken literally, karma justifies the authority of political elites, who therefore must deserve their wealth and power, and the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/buddhist-quote-of-the-day-what-kind-of-karma-do-you-drive.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-09-17T08:43:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/files\/import\/karma_buddhism_meditation.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ethan Nichtern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Buddhist Quote of the Day: What Kind of Karma Do You Drive? - One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/buddhist-quote-of-the-day-what-kind-of-karma-do-you-drive.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Buddhist Quote of the Day: What Kind of Karma Do You Drive? - One City","og_description":"&#8220;There is another issue that has important implications for how Buddhism will adapt to a more global role in the future. 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His writing has been featured in numerous print and online publications. He is the founding director of the Interdependence Project and the host of the I.D. Project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s popular weekly podcast (available on iTunes). He is currently on the part-time faculty of Eugene Lang College at New School University in NYC, where he teaches Buddhism. Ethan lectures regularly at universities and venues around the country on Buddhism, meditation, contemporary culture, and activism.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/enichtern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}