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May your goodness karma for all beings bless you be very well soon. With great respect ..from Chiangmai Thailand 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Sending you metta and thank you 🙏🏻

Doug is a tough fella. Ain't no karma keeping him down!! Get well, dude :)

Cancer doesn't come from nothing and the sun only brings to the surface what is already there. It is our unhealthy lifestyle that causes it and with that I don't mean "being in the sun" but eating meat, dairy and other things our body isn't meant to eat. I wish you all the best, thank you for your great content and I hope you will get better.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery! I hope it is the last one you have to deal with. You have really excelled with this video at interlacing your own experiences with the dharma. One of my favorites of your many helpful talks!

Thanks Doug! Get well soon! May you be happy, peaceful and liberated. Greetings from Portugal

You will definitely get a good rebirth with your contribution with this channel. Get well soon 😄🙏🏻.

I pray for your speedy recovery!

Thank you! May you be well.

Best wishes Doug! Hope you recover quickly. Thank you for these videos!!

Wishing you good health and a speedy recovery!

I love your content. You’ve really helped me realise what’s Important in life, and you talk about these topics incredibly well. I hope you’re doing well, and I’m glad to see you’re staying strong.

3.5 years since then, but best wishes are always appropriate! 😅 Best wishes, Doug! ❤🙏

I wish you a speedy recovery, and may this be your last such surgery Doug.

I guess only a Buddha can explain very well about our past Karmas (actions). Karma is not the only thing which cause problems to us. But also heredity, environment, nature and nurture. According to Buddhism, there are five orders or processes (niyama) which operate in the physical and mental realms. They are: Utu Niyama - physical inorganic order, e.g. seasonal phenomena of winds and rains. The unerring order of seasons, characteristic seasonal changes and events, causes of winds and rains, nature of heat, etc., all belong to this group. Bija Niyama - order of germs and seeds (physical organic order), e.g. rice produced from rice-seed, sugary taste from sugar-cane or honey, peculiar characteristics of certain fruits, etc. The scientific theory of cells and genes and the physical similarity of twins may be ascribed to this order. Karma Niyama - order of act and result, e.g., desirable and undesirable acts produce corresponding good and bad results. As surely as water seeks its own level so does Karma, given opportunity, produce its inevitable result, not in the form of a reward or punishment but as an innate sequence. This sequence of deed and effect is as natural and necessary as the way of the sun and the moon. Dhamma Niyama - order of the norm, e.g., the natural phenomena occurring at the advent of a Bodhisattva in his last birth. Gravitation and other similar laws of nature. The natural reason for being good and so forth, may be included in this group. Citta Niyama - order or mind or psychic law, e.g., processes of consciousness, arising and perishing of consciousness, constituents of consciousness, power of mind, etc., including telepathy, telaesthesia, retro-cognition, premonition, clairvoyance, clairaudience, thought-reading and such other psychic phenomena which are inexplicable to modern science. Source: www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/karma.htm It’s nature, nurture, genes & karma that shape our future.

Thank you for a wonderful explanation. WIshing you a swift recovery!

Excellent video! I almost think it should be called, "Is this how dependent origination works?"

despite that, thanks for the great content on this channel, and may you be well soon !

I am wish you have a good health

Hello doug, in this case, buddha has sayed there are five destinies under which everything are happening. One of these is karma. But telling that somthing happens under that particular destiny is realy a subject of wisdom. That means we should understand why somthing happens correctly according to five destinies. The karma is a real good topic. But when you suggests this disease happens according to karma, dont forget to consider other four destinies. But here we need to consider about karma deeply. It is not easy as it seems. That will surly help you to find the best answer. Because if somone can see karma and its correct result, then he is in right path that is right viwe. I would like to recommend 'chulla karma vibanga sutra' to know more informatios on karma including definition of karma. It is a deep understanding. The definition of karma is our thoughts (sankara, sankaras in fourth aggregate). That mean any work we have done using our thoughts. Work that we have done without knowing it is not regarded as karma. For ex:- if you did somthing without knowing what really you are doing is not a karma. It is just a somthing you did without knowing. I hope if you find sutras on explaining the karma, it will be surely useful to you.

Get Well soon! Greetings from BRASIL!

Get well soon!!🙂

Karma is highly non linear. All that can be said is that skillful actions will have beneficial results and unskillful actions will have detrimental ones. When, how much, where etc can not be said. In the Udanas(?) the Buddha forbids analyzing of karma as one of the great unknowables. Doing so shall result is "great suffering and madness".

I know it all to will had 3 and had breast cancer a bad one but I'm OK now I'm wishing all the best 😍

To make dependent origination quite literal, basal cells are the cells in your skin that split/clone themselves into new skin cells, which eventually shed. Your sunburn as a child mutated the DNA in your basal cells so that that cell and every cell in that line afterward contains the same damaged DNA, until that DNA damage aggregates into cancer. (I work with skin for a living, so I could not resist!) You quite literally do not have the same DNA as an adult that you had when you were born. It is constantly being mutated as your cells replicate in your lifetime, so anatta even applies to DNA!

Thank you so much for being a "Guinea Pig" so to speak, for the Dharma. Actually, now that I come to think of it this could also qualify you as a Bodhisattva. Using "one's own" dukkha to demonstrate a point of Dharma, is at the very least, a compassionate act.IMHO I hope you don't mind me postulating about this but what comes to mind re the Karmic consequences(Vipaka)or otherwise, of getting too much sun exposure, may not be a karmic result. At least rather more a general Vipaka, that is, the result of coming to birth. I am a rather poor Buddhist scholar, in that I have a recall of certain Suttas, but I can't accurately remember their source. I really only remember whether they are in accord with the so called taste of the Dharma, if you will. One of these I remember from the Udana, which I think I remember reading once about twenty years ago. The section I remember most is entitled Pernicious wrong view. The upshot of this was that if an unlearned person had the view that in this world, everything proceeded only through Karma(Intention/action) and it's result, then this would be considered not of the path. Rather than dwell on your example I will use my own experience of sun damaged skin and corrective surgery. Over exposure of skin to the sun, is something that is rather indeterminate, that is, that it's almost impossible to be able to calculate, just how much sun exposure will eventually result in skin damage, given yours or my skin type, where we are located on the planet etc. For instance, I live in Australia and we had pretty fierce summers when I was a kid, so I accrued a lot of skin damage. Peeling skin, once or twice every summer. I became a Marathon runner as an adult, but even with precautions I probably did even more skin damage. Over the last several years I have had a couple of operations to remove growths from my skin also. The thing is that I believe that the eventual outcome, in this case, skin damage and surgery, is more to do with coming to birth( the Karmic activities of the 5 aggregates and subsequent dukkha.) because as I mentioned before, I cannot delineate any moral component to sun exposure, certainly not as a child. Even as an adult, I was aware of possible consequences but I never intended to do myself damage, because that's an imponderable. IMHO. Please forgive me this long rant. Exploring the Dharma what's closest to my heart. Consequently, sometimes the curtain of ignorance tears asunder, but on most days it just frays around the edges and fades a bit more. I really have to keep a sense of humour about all this and once again thank you so much for your tireless efforts and generosity.

Best wishes. In a "secular dharma" sense - I would think the term Karma has a lot of baggage and is very entangled with notions of reincarnation and/or some sort of automatic cosmic judgement mechanism. Obviously one can try to separate karma from those notions and leave it as cause and effect - but to me, that doesn't seem fair to the very complicated encyclopedia entry for the term.

Hey Doug, do you have a video on rebirth ??? I want to learn a little about it...

Hi Doug! Really love all your videos. I have a question for you. Can one be on a dharma path and eat meat?

While actions *can* definitely have consequences, much of what happens to us is not about deserving. People don't die in plane crashes because they deserve it. Children don't die of cancer because of their actions.

Please studying with srilankan buddhism books.srilanka has a deep history about buddha and his darma.i like your best teaching

Is dependent origination the same thing as what Thich Nhat Hanh is calling interbeing?

In other words. "You reap what you sew" (get well soon :)

heir to my karma

recover quickly.

How does it work when an adult suffering with MPD and PTSD recalls that as a small child she was being repeatedly gang raped (by father and his friends). How does the small girl created this suffering and this karma?

There are many people who greedy get sun without any consequences for their health... So for me the question arises- where is their carma except for pleasure they get?

Going by colassal effect does that mean a person who hurts some one else does not bear any ill but the bearer has to , where is the justice in that ?

What about genes?

Hope you're better now. I think you have to do a lot of acrobacy to make Karma a good take on anything. Action-reaction is much more complex and interesting than Buddhist moralism. Plus, lots of stuff happen to "underserving" people and animals. This phrase sucks because the idea of merit sucks.

Stop beating yourself up. Sri Lankans spend a lot of time outdoors, with few consequences. BTW what exactly do you mean when you use the term secular?

Dear Doug, how can you justify selling courses about the Buddhas teaching, if these teachings were once given for free, out of kindness and are considered to be priceless? I see that you put work into wrapping things up and letting the teachings speak in todays language, but still, I personally would not accept anything else but donations.

Slainte