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| I'm just actively fantasizing for hours... |
(FOX 2 Detroit) GTA 6 launch could drain $1 billion from US economy. Forget the midterm elections! We have to get home to game, game, game and play, play, play. It's the only time we get to experience lengthened attention span.
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| They hacked our minds? |
Vegging out like couch potatoes experiencing a personal brain drain down the acrylamide-laden chips and bits of other toxic fried foods, the yeast-infested alcoholic drinks, and the extended attention (dopamine overdose) when ADHD rules the rest of the time.
Is playing violent videogames like Grand Theft Auto VI bad karma?
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| GTA V graphics were a joke. GTA VI gets real. |
The fact is, KARMA in Buddhism is a massive topic. How big? It is so big that in the Buddha's day, he was not called a "Buddhist," but rather was called a karmavadin (a "teacher of karma," i.e., a "teacher of the efficacy of current actions to produce immediate and future results").
He was not the only one. Mahavira (the Nigantha Nattaputta), who was the founder of Jainism, also taught that present causes (karma) produce many future effects (vipaka).
- Defining karma as "cause and effect" is extremely misleading in a few ways. For one, what "result" (reaction) does a "cause" (action) have in the science of Newtonian physics? "An equal and opposite reaction," is the answer. That is not at all what seems to happen in the working out of karma. For ONE act will have MANY results. One might say 500, which would just be an idiomatic Buddhist way of saying many. Another better scientific theory might be better to think of than Newton's laws, and that is the Butterfly Effect. One tiny action, one minute deed can have tremendous cascading consequences. For example, say a poor woman comes to a well with only two coins in her pocket, sees someone more needy than she is, and decides to give her two coins to that person then actually does it. She wills it AND carries it out. Who cares? It's just two measly coins! Neither the Buddha nor Jesus, both of whom used this exact example (wonder where Jesus could have gotten the idea), used it because it was worthless. They used it exactly because it was counterintuitive. That tiny good-deed of sharing, giving, generosity, letting go, helping, unselfishness produced much good, so much good that one can't hardly imagine the value of giving (dana). But rishis can see. Those two coins (which amount to 100% of her wealth) might have saved the other person's life, kept that person from starving or losing hope, been used to rebuild a life, a business, a fortune... "Cause and effect" is also misleading because when does the effect come? It comes right after the cause, which makes it super easy to tie them together. If eating a wild poisonous mushroom causes a person to die, when does the death happen? It usually takes a few weeks. What about eating other things that shorten an individual's lifespan (like fried foods full of acrylamides)? That could take years to show up. "Cause and effect" also connotes, that is to say, suggests (and, grammatically-speaking, explicitly denotes) ONE cause and ONE effect, but it is never this way. One act (karma) has many causes. In fact, if analyzed at the nano level, there is never just one act but an uncountable number of "acts" or mind-moments in the carrying out of one deed. And this is one of the unknown things about karma, the result that comes about later is the playing out of this many moments, not the simple "deed" one observes being carried out. How long does it take to squeeze a trigger? If that squeeze were the whole "act" (karma), who in their right mind could think the catastrophic results were merited? But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
This question of whether playing a videogame like GTA VI is karma is easy to answer, right? Yes, of course it is. But the question here is, Is playing it BAD karma? While it may not be intuitive, the answer hinges on understanding two words. The first word is karma, the second mental.
The way we in the West misuse the ancient Buddhist Sanskrit term "karma" (Pali kamma), it's no anyone would be confused. Explaining this word will very quickly get us to the second word.
What is "karma"? Everyone knows it's, "What comes around goes around." But this is actually a better definition for karma-and-results. Whereas "karma" is the active (act, action, deed), the results are the passive vipaka (results) and fruit (phala) of that action. For example, "planting a seed" is a karma, an action, a deed.
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| Rehearsing and relishing violence in mind, good? |
- Dhr. Seven (text) edited by Amber Larson, Ashley Wells as taught to videogame aficionados Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly
