here the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism
and here the explanation :
I will actually post another thread for this, i find it to be interesting. Just now too lazy and going to bed.
(which is actually a lie - i am having another cybersex session...)
so here comes my argument on why i don`t let anyone that believes in Karma let accuse me of antisemitism. I play the ball right back. Ping Pong.....:-)
so here we go:
"Modern interpretations and controversies
[edit]Karma theory & social justice
Since the exposure of the West to Buddhism, some western commentators and Buddhists have taken exception to aspects of karma theory, and have proposed revisions of various kinds. These proposals fall under the rubric of Buddhist modernism.[90] As one scholar writes, "Some modern Buddhist thinkers appear largely to have abandoned traditional views of karma and rebirth in light of the contemporary transformation of the conception of interdependence," preferring instead to align karma purely with contemporary ideas of causality.[91] One scholar writes, "it is perhaps possible to say that both Buddhism and Buddhist ethics may be better off without the karmic-rebirth factor to deal with."[92] Often these critical writers have backgrounds in Zen and/or Engaged Buddhism.
The "primary critique" of the Buddhist doctrine of karma is that some feel "karma may be socially and politically disempowering in its cultural effect, that without intending to do this, karma may in fact support social passivity or acquiescence in the face of oppression of various kinds."[93] Dale S. Wright, a scholar specializing in Zen Buddhism, has proposed that the doctrine be reformulated for modern people, "separated from elements of supernatural thinking," so that karma is asserted to condition only personal qualities and dispositions rather than rebirth and external occurrences.[94]
One scholar and Zen practitioner, David Loy, echoes these remarks. He writes, "what are we going to do about karma? There's no point in pretending that karma hasn't become a problem for contemporary Buddhism . .Buddhism can fit quite nicely into modern ways of understanding. But not traditional views of karma."[95] Loy argues that the traditional view of karma is "fundamentalism" which Buddhism must "outgrow."[96]
Loy argues that the idea of accumulating merit too easily becomes "spirtitual materialism," a view echoed by other Buddhist modernists,[97] and further that
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 subordination of those who have neither. It provides the perfect theodicy: if there is an infallible cause-and-effect relationship between one's actions and one's fate, there is no need to work toward social justice, because it'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.[98]
While some strands of later Buddhist thought did attribute all experience to past karma, the early texts explicitly did not, and in particular state that caste is not determined by karma.[99]
Loy goes on to argue that the view that suffering such as that undergone by Holocaust victims could be attributed in part to the karmic ripenings of those victims is "fundamentalism, which blames the victims and rationalizes their horrific fate," and that this is "something no longer to be tolerated quietly. It is time for modern Buddhists and modern Buddhism to outgrow it" by revising or discarding the teachings on karma.[100] Other scholars have argued, however, that the teachings on karma do not encourage judgment and blame, given that the victims were not the same people who committed the acts, but rather were just part of the same mindstream-continuum with the past actors,[101] and that the teachings on karma instead provide "a thoroughly satisfying explanation for suffering and loss" in which believers take comfort.[102]
The question of the Holocaust also occurs in the Jew in the Lotus: A Poet's Re-Discovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India, which describes a group of Jewish religious leaders who meet with the Dalai Lama. They ask one of the Dalai Lama's party, a Buddhist scholar named Geshe Sonam Rinchen, if the Holocaust would be attributed to past karma in the traditional Buddhist view, and he affirms that it would. The author is "shocked and a little outraged," because, like Loy, he felt it "sounded like blaming the victim."[103]
Many modern Buddhists such as Thich Naht Hanh prefer to suggest the "dispersion of karmic responsibility into the social system," such that "moral responsibility is decentered from the solitary individual and spread throughout the entire social system," reflecting the left-wing politics of Engaged Buddhism.[104]"
