My thoughts on good, bad, punishment and reward

My thoughts on good, bad, punishment and reward.

Mahendra Gonsalkorale.

(14/08/2026, 17:41:38)

Today, on the 14th of August 2026, I'm going to talk about our concepts of reward, punishment, good and bad, causation, the desire to feel that what we do as good will bring us good rewards and what we regard as bad will bring bad consequences. Furthermore, what is good and bad? It's not absolute; it depends on one’s own moral concept and background; it depends on what religion you believe in. 

And it is not something that is laid down in law. We have different views depending on who we are, where we are, what epoch we live in, and our cultural background. But the expectation of something good (or at least not bad!) happening to anybody who lives a good life is quite natural. So, for example, a good person does not expect to lose a limb, to get cancer, lose their young spouse, etc. 

You feel that you have no reason at all to suffer those indignities because you have led a very good life from the time you were born up to now. So, what makes people have bad experiences? Why is it that sometimes people who live a very good life suffer some consequences which are “unfair”? This concept of fairness and unfairness is common, and I think it's driven by expectation, and the expectation is driven by either a moral system that you believe exists in the world; an absolute moral system which distinguishes good and bad, or a relative moral system which exists because of influences from religion. 

For example, in Christianity, the Ten Commandments are there, and if you break them, you're in trouble. And believers don't complain because that's the way it operates. Very clearly, those commandments state that if you do ‘that’, ‘this’ happens; cause and effect. 

On the other hand, if you don't believe in a theistic religion or philosophy, you can still believe that good and bad exist, and that good actions will have good consequences and bad actions will have bad consequences. This is partly through experience: you notice that, in life, for example, a person who takes care of his garden by weeding and watering has a nice, clean garden, whereas with a person who doesn't look after the garden and lets weeds grow and doesn't water it properly will have an ugly one.

That's the natural law, and you see that happening all the time, and you expect the same will apply to you. For example, a man who has been a lifelong non-smoker and understands the dangers of smoking doesn't touch a cigarette. He lives a good life. He may not be perfect. He doesn't smoke at all. But when he's 50 years old, he gets lung cancer. And he says, how ‘unfair’; this concept of ‘fairness’ comes in. You expect it is unfair for a good person to suffer bad life events. How unfair! I, who never smoked, I, who purposely avoided smoking because I knew it's bad, get lung cancer. What kind of unfair world are we living in? If there's a God, how could He, with all his powers, let this happen to me? If there's no God, what determines how I get this? How can a Buddhist say it's my karma? Because I know people who smoked more than me who didn't get lung cancer. 

So, why should I get lung cancer? What is the determining factor? And so, you begin to look for causes to answer the question why. And it's easy to pick something religious, such as, I got it because I deserve it, because I did something wrong. Or if you believe in karma (not in a mature Buddhist sense but in a superficial and inaccurate way in my view), you can say, well, my past actions in this or a past existence were wrong and I therefore reap the consequences, cause and effect. But it's not that simple. Because as I said, there are many people who smoke a hell of a lot who don't get lung cancer. Why me? 

There are people who smoke, and there are people who don't smoke at all, but still get lung cancer. So, not all the people who smoke get lung cancer; not all the people who refrain from smoking don't get lung cancer. In other words, there is conditionality; it is not just smoking that leads to cancer. 

If you smoke, you lay down conditions which favour the occurrence of lung cancer, but it doesn't determine that you get lung cancer. It only favours it by producing conditions where cancer can arise. So, if you're a person who has a long history of smoking, that's one condition. A strong family history of lung cancer could be another condition; a mental state where early signs are neglected could be another. Others, such as neglect of diet, failure to exercise, and not managing other factors, such as not looking after his heart disease or whatever other comorbid conditions, could increase the chances of getting lung cancer. You don't determine that you get lung cancer; you just increase the chances by providing suitable conditions. 

We cannot conclude that a person who doesn't smoke doesn't get cancer, or the person who smokes heavily gets cancer. Whether a person gets or does not get cancer is multifactorial. We're only talking about the conditions which favour cancer, not a destiny to get cancer. So, I hope I made that clear. 

The other thing I like to say is about the concept of right and wrong. To believe that there are absolute rights and wrongs, to me, is wrong. If you interpret the 10 commandments as absolute, then there are at least 10 things that you shouldn't do. And if you don't adhere to them, you incur the wrath of God and have to suffer the consequences. 

I don't believe that. Jesus or others may have said it to promote a society ruled by justice, where people can live in harmony. Rather than give theories about when an action that appears bad isn't bad and create confusion, you create absolute meaning. Just like saying, if you go through a red traffic light, you're doing wrong. You can't say I went through a red traffic light, because my brakes failed or whatever, you know, going through a red traffic light is the wrong thing to do. I mean, there may be extenuating circumstances such as you may be rushing to the hospital because your wife is in the backseat in labour. But that's not the point. The point is that sometimes you need absolute laws for society to function. That doesn't mean human nature, human behaviour, or human existence work that way absolutely. 

I think these so-called absolute rules aren't absolute. They are relative, but it's cumbersome to try and put that in the context of how it could be different if the context is different. Just let me give you an example. 

A man draws a gun and kills a person who is approaching a mother with a gun, shouting at her, saying, I'm going to kill you. And this man is recognised as having killed people before; his picture was in the newspaper. So, I feel that if I don't take action, this man will kill my mother. I have a gun with me, and I point it and shoot the man and kill him. But in a way, my intent was not to kill him. My intent was to save my mother. 

The mode by which I saved my mother was to draw a gun and shoot the man who was approaching my mother, knowing well that I would either disable him or kill him. But the prime purpose really was to save my mother from death. That was my prime motive. 

You should also ask whether there were any other alternative actions available for him to achieve his motive of stopping his mother being murdered. In this particular context, there weren't because it happened so quickly. In other circumstances, he may have had other possible actions to take. 

Also, the consequences of not acting have to be taken into account. Thus, it's not only the actions available, but the consequences of not acting. This brings me to my perspective of how you make judgments on actions. 

Firstly, the motive or intent is of paramount importance. It should not be purely selfish. Saving a mother's life or your loved one's life from being shot by a person, to me, is a very good motive. 

Secondly, what actions are available for me to prevent this from happening? One is to use my gun and shoot the man. Second is to do nothing. But if I do nothing, I may feel good that I didn't kill somebody, but I'll have to deal with the fact that my mother is now dead, thanks to my inaction. If the time constraint wasn't there, if I knew beforehand that there was a plan to kill my mother in the next week, then that's different. I could go to the police; maybe I could get help from other people. And maybe I could pursue other avenues to save my mother without actually killing the potential assailant. 

Firstly, what other actions are available to me? Secondly, what are the consequences of not taking the action I took? Clearly, in this case, the consequence is a very high likelihood of my mother dying. 

I say high likelihood, because the person with a gun may have had a blank cartridge, which you're not aware of. He may shoot and miss the target, because my mother might move aside. So many things could happen, as nothing is destined; but you don't know that in the short time it happened.

Your best judgment is -here's a man at close distance, brandishing a gun, who is going to shoot my mother, and the action I took in shooting was not because I want to kill him, although that obviously was part of the result of my action. Your intent was not driven by anything against him but by your desire to save your mother. The indirect consequence was that you shot and killed the man because you had no other choice. 

If there was a choice of saving your mother without killing him, you could have taken it. That's why I say the motive, the result of inaction (i.e., what could happen if you don't act), and what other actions were possible at the time all have to be considered. 

The context includes not only the time in history, but also your own circumstances, etc. Take a ‘crime’ like homosexuality. There was a time when homosexuality was a crime. It was a punishable offence. Religions are strangely silent on this. It's no longer a crime in the UK, where homosexuality is accepted. It's no longer a crime. But if you lived 40 years ago, it was a crime. This is why I think these so-called moral rules are not absolute. They change with time for understandable and defensible reasons. 

Moral rules have to change. They have to adapt. They have to be contextualised. And they have to be interpreted according to all those factors which I spoke about. 

Finally, my perspective as a person who was born into Buddhism and who admires Buddhist psychology is that the all too frequently ‘Buddhists’ view that if you do something, you have to suffer the consequences purely as an “if A, then B has to follow”. If you kill somebody, you will suffer; “punishment” follows. I don’t think that is the true Buddhist teaching. 

With many actions considered bad, such as killing somebody or taking what doesn't belong to you, you create conditions which are unfavourable for your future welfare. For example, by taking somebody else's money, you create conditions for possibly being arrested by the police, put in jail, punished, or whatever it is. But it doesn't necessarily or absolutely follow because there are people who have taken money which doesn't belong to them and who got away scot-free and died a happy death without ever being caught. It is not determinism. It's not absolute. Karma is conditionality. Karma is what you do, your actions and perceptions and what is happening to you and constantly changing. 

Every action has effects, and it's not one effect but several. And every time, every second you live, you create effects, you create conditions, and these conditions can accumulate and result in a certain outcome, or it may not. That's chance. It's not determined by God or karma or by moral law. If, when I walk on the road, some stray car loses control, hits me and kills me, I cannot say it was something I deserved because of my past karma. It's just a random occurrence because a chap was driving a car recklessly where I happened to be at the same time, and he was drunk, the light was very poor and if it wasn't me, and somebody else was there, he could have been killed. So, it's not that I deserved it or was destined to have this happen. Too many unpredictable factors came together to produce it. He died because... he happened to be there at the wrong place at the wrong time. Just imagine the task of making sure it happens if some external force planned it!  Okay, you say you deserve it due to karma. What are the things required? I have to be walking at that time on that road at a certain time. A man has to be in a car, drunk or whatever it is, at the same time. A man has to be in a car which he has no control over. The man has to hit me in such a way that rather than injure me, I die. Isn't it impossible to bring all these together at a certain point in time?

That has to be just random. 

But to smoke heavily, not to look after your body by not performing enough exercise, not looking after your diet, those are conditions that you cause yourself. And consequences will follow naturally. You will, or you are likely to suffer effects which arise as a result of all those conditions coming together. You provide conditions which make it more likely at best, but not absolutely, that you will get cancer. It's not determined; there's nothing laid down that if you smoke for 40 years you get lung cancer, and you will die. That is determinism, which I completely disagree with. 

There's only causality in terms of events leading to conditionality. You build conditions that promote a certain outcome; that's how I look at it. 

Okay, let me deal with another aspect. I think that the concept of right and wrong, good and evil also arose from the need for society to function and be disciplined. Rules and laws are necessary for society to function. Like it or not, we are part of a living community with deep interactions and common needs. 

For example, if there were no rules about driving on the right side of the road, traffic lights, speeding, etc., it would be a chaotic world. If there were no rules about theft, about murder, and so many other offences, the world would be a place where it would be impossible to live harmoniously. So, you need discipline in this world for the community as a whole and for human life to exist and be propagated. 

What better discipline than a hidden force which watches you all the time, which punishes you, rewards you, and you can't even see it because, well, you are not ‘meant’ to see it! I'm referring to God. If you have fear of God, you don't have to worry about policemen or laws; it could be a clever solution!

If you really believe in that, then you will believe in doing what is regarded as the norm and accepted as good in society. Furthermore, not every aspect of life happens because of fear, but many do. Fear is an important part of what drives civilisation harmoniously. 

You need to have fear as well as love. Love promotes societies working together and supporting each other harmoniously. If you're well off, you should support other people who are not as well off, and have charity towards human beings and animals. 

The higher ideals of human life also promote the very existence of humans and our planetary system. If we don't care for our planetary system, natural objects such as trees will disappear, there'll be prolonged drought, there'll be floods, and human existence will cease. So it's natural for there to be order, and I think that is inherent. 

I don't think you need to bring God into this because the moment you bring God, you have to ask: why is God there? Did he come from nowhere, and why did he appear? If so, where did he appear from? Why does he create our universe? Is he just having fun, playing a game where he's watching people do what he wants them to do or not want them to do, punishing them, rewarding them? What's the whole purpose of it? And to me the answer is very simple. There's no such force, there's no such God. It's a man-made invention without any proof at all. 

So, I think, coming back to my earlier theme, the concept of good and bad, right and wrong, are there for civil obedience, for a harmonious society. Now, putting on my evolutionary hat, because I believe Darwinian evolution is one of the best theories that mankind ever came up with, for human survival, cooperation promotes survival. If you don't have cooperation, if you don't care for your fellow human beings, our days will be numbered. So, purely from a survival standpoint, it is natural that society should function harmoniously. 

It is natural that members of society should have love for each other. Members of society should want to help each other. To me, that is enough to explain why we have a concept of good and bad. 

But underlying all this, I maintain that there is a randomness in what happens. It's not ordained, preordained or predetermined. It's random. 

But that randomness is affected by conditions caused by our actions. Just like I said about the smoker, he made conditions favourable for him to get lung cancer, but smoking didn't cause him to have lung cancer. That's the difference. 

So causation is a big topic in philosophy, but my idea of the Buddhist concept of causation isn't absolute cause-effect. It is more like a chain. It mostly causes conditions for effects to happen. Depending on how many other conditions are prevailing at the time, an action will follow. 

So it's not one simple chain, one leading to the other. It's actually a chain of causations, a chain of conditionality, which ultimately determines which way it goes. And it is random. 

It is not preordained. It is not according to God's design, karma, or whatever it is. It is the way it is. 

You know, if you look after your plantation, water it, put fertilisers, you get the benefits of that. It's not ordained by God or whatever. It's not the farmer's karma. It is just the way nature operates. So many things in nature happen because that's the way nature is. And if you ask, why does it happen like this? I don't think we can answer that. 

My own answer to why it happens is, why not? If whatever is there, we will always question why, but we'll never know what could be there if nothing was there before what is there. So, if there is something, could there have been nothing before there was something? To have nothing, isn’t it acceptance of something? It's a big philosophical question. Thank you very much

Culture and Belief Systems

Culture and Belief Systems

All Societies are influenced by culture and belief systems, and symbols are key parts of culture. The best-known belief system is religion, and religion is also replete with symbols. These symbols are valuable as they bring people together and provide a sense of harmony. I think that the majority of people adhere to a religion because of cultural influences which make them feel that religion is important for mental and psychological well being. I doubt whether many choose a religion because they grappled with difficult questions such as how did life originate, what is the purpose of life, is there is a life after death etc. For most people, any religion would provide some stability and a sense of belonging as acceptance immediately provides a sense of security and belonging. 

I remember a true story I read about a devout Christian woman who studied science and philosophy and came to the conclusion that there is no God and she stopped being a Christian. What she found was that she became rudderless and isolated. She missed going to church on Sundays, missed all the Christian social groups she belonged to and the various charitable activities she indulged in. After 2- 3 months (can't remember exactly), she embraced Christianity again and rejoined her church and all her previous activities.... and happily lived thereafter (the last bit being mine! But she did become happy.

That is why I do not ridicule rituals, symbols and belief systems, although I don't need them. But the beauty of culture is that it is dynamic, and always changes. Extending it to a Buddhist society, if people who matter and are respected set patterns of behaviour, the flock will follow. If more and more eminent priests suggest that there is no need for more dagobas but a big need for homes of old people or for disabled people and that is the best way to help your way through samsara, then they will follow. 

However, a dynamic culture can go the other way too, as Politicians are only too aware. The culture now in Sri Lanka is for Politicians to bend over and worship the Mahanayakes and pamper them with titles, cars and comfy abodes. The citizens are influenced by this and a vicious circle forms. My contention is this. Yes, there is such a thing as cultural Buddhism but it is dynamic and could be influenced to change by wise people who are true adherents of Buddhism through realisation and not for use as a vehicle for personal gain. If there is multi-religious cooperation, especially led by religious leaders, to advance the belief that religions should respect each other and work for the common good, that belief will eventually become part of that Society's culture.  I have seen enough instances of this recently in Sri Lanka to make me optimistic. But the biggest danger is the Politician manoeuvred belief that Buddhism somehow deserves a place above all other religions and especially so in the chosen land of Sri Lanka.

My thoughts on Self and “Anatta”

My thoughts on Self and “Anatta”

Hello, this is Mahendra and I want to record my thoughts about the concept of self. It's often debated in philosophical and religious circles. There are people who believe that the self exists only as a concept and there's no real self as such. 

And some people even label the concept of self as a hallucination or a delusion, a virtual self. Buddhists refer to the concept of anicca, which means everything is impermanent. And on that basis, they say that a self cannot exist (anatta) as, if there is a self, it will obey the laws of anicca, which means the end result is no self (anatta). 

I take a slightly different view on the interpretation of the Buddhist concept. I think what the Lord Buddha said is that there is no unchanging or permanent self. The self or identity of self exists but  is subject to change just like everything else in the universe and therefore cannot be an unchanging entity as for example a soul. 

I am Mahendra Gonsalkorale as of now, this moment, but I'm not the same Mahendra Gonsalkorale who was born 80 odd years ago and I have probably nothing that I was born with which has persisted from my birth to my current state. I am a mixture of memories, ideas, likes, dislikes, concepts, beliefs, past memories, future projections, and even my physical being is changing all the time. In other words, there is a Mahendra Gonsalkorale but this entity is changing all the time and is evolving from a state or moment in time to another moment and as this process can move slowly or rapidly for the various constituents of Mahendra, I may appear as unchanged depending on the time scale applied. For example, if it was possible to construct a 5 year old Mahendra, there would be hardly any noticeable commonality even if it was possible to have a dialogue with him. But the Mahendra 1 week ago will still be immediately recognisable as Mahendra as he is now.  In this context, it is useful to go back to the well known “Ship of Theseus Paradox” on whether a ship which over time has changed all its components can be still called the original ship. 

All my cells have turned over so that I would not possess a single cell I was born with in 1944. But to me, the question is whether there is “something” which I might call the “core self”, upon which other things are added like your memories, your beliefs, your explanations, your opinions, and all the memories that you gather of the physical world outside. As a Doctor, I think this “core-self framework” has genetic and possibly other currently unknown elements which contribute to the object referred to as Mahendra. This “something” is in fact a hard to define “core framework”, which is unique to me, which I call Mahendra. The core framework is not a physical entity but is something which makes me unique. In other words, all humans are a “mind-body” complex where the mind component is a subtle framework which gathers all the components attributes, both physical attributes (not physical in the sense of a material object) and non-physical attributes, that makes a person a person, or self or him or her.

And this framework, although it is changing all the time, is still uniquely mine. The Mahendra Gonsalkorale framework does not apply to, say, my brother Daya or Raj. We may have common memories and features but we are different ever changing entities but still entities. My constantly changing identity within this entity is uniquely mine. 

We may have different memories. But within that core or within that framework, that outline of what I call Mahendra, there are things which are constantly changing. 

So the question is whether my belief in a framework, which I call Mahendra or self, is also untrue. And this is may be so because even a framework has to change all the time. But does it necessarily have to change in the way physical objects change? So my question is- “ is the self or identity of self, something that is there, but impermanent (anicca)?” And therefore, when we say anatta, which means there is no permanent soul (as there is in Hinduism), it means that you as a person or identity is constantly changing. And therefore, there's nothing within you which is unchanging, but this changing dynamically unstable self is still unique to you and separable from others. This separation is obvious physically but may not apply to the physically state alone. 

I find it a bit difficult to accept that there is no “core Mahendra” or “framework of Mahendra”, because I still pack things into this changing framework as I change physically. And if you talk to me and you talk to another friend of mine, we come across as quite different people with different ideas, different memories and so on. So going back to the Buddhist concept of anatta, I think what Lord Buddha meant to say is that although we may have an underlying consciousness stream or whatever you want to call it, which I label in my case as “Mahendra’s core framework”, it is not something which is consistent or constant, although it is distinct from the framework of others. For the purpose of living within a community of beings, it is helpful to think that we are not unchanging permanent objects but are selves with“frameworks” interacting with each other. We are given names to make living easier but we have  a huge amount of shared and interactive components. 

It is changing all the time because every microsecond I exist, I gather data, memory, information, which changes me. But my question is whether there is something which I used the term “Framework” which is unique to each person at birth but is undergoing change all the time since then. My contention at first appears to go against the “anatta” concept in Buddhism but on closer examination, there is no contradiction, as the “Framework” is also changing all the time. Why postulate a Framework at all? To me it is a satisfactory way of understanding “self” and its impermanence while preserving the uniqueness of a person.

Added on 02-02-2026.

A word of explanation on why I tried to interpret "self" a bit differently. I am influenced by Buddhist philosophy, especially the concept of "anicca" or impermanence.

An area which Western Philosophers and Scientists dismiss too easily is rebirth (is it because to them the concept is so ridiculous that it does not warrant any examination of evidence provided?)- Rebirth seems very unlikely for those who don't accept the existence of a soul (anatta) or lack of unchanging entities (anicca)?

I have looked at the evidence provided with an open mind, and certainly with no intention of convincing myself or others that the concept of rebirth is true. So many people dismiss it because they don't accept that it is even remotely possible and just laugh at the evidence provided. I looked at the evidence with an open mind.

To me, it is a fact that there are many genuine examples of people recalling past births. I won't go into the evidence in this email. These have been thoroughly double-checked for fraud, recall errors, etc., and it appears to me that some people do recall past lives. The fact that so few do, and that many have been shown to be fabricated, does not invalidate it. Even a single verified occurrence demands an explanation, -One cure for a 100% mortality disease is a true cure!

The only way I can explain is to look at the cycle of birth-living-death slightly differently. I don't think a critical thinker should rule out the possibility of recall of past births or the persistence of a past birth memory in someone because they don't like the concept. Even if they don't believe in rebirth (one way of explaining recall), they have to acknowledge this memory persistence and try to explain it rather than take the easy way out and just dismiss it.

Just suppose that memories, experiences, thoughts etc which get encoded in the brain during the life of a person. (I am, of course, regarding neural mechanisms as the method by which this happens and not some vague spiritual "essence"). Suppose we consider that some or all of these are stored in "core individual frameworks," as I call them, which are in the background and constantly exchange information among the various modules (sensory, motor, thoughts, memories), which together with the framework form the self? The module change is very rapid and extensive, whereas the encoding of information in the Framework is much slower. Slower changes, which are coded, become apparent only with the passage of time (hence the Mahendra now so different from the Mahendra the child). Rapidly changing information occurring all the time leads to a Mahendra, although similar, being different from Mahendra a few days ago. Here is where I go mad! Supposing the Framework data is changing but is in some form (energy) that can persist after death and is capable of finding a new abode in the form of a fertilised ovum? Sounds farfetched and you might rightly say no different from those who belive in a sould that migrates, Yes, but the difference is my idea of a farmework.  “Mahendra’s core framework” is not something which is consistent or constant, although it is distinct from the frameworks of others. If you say I am using the word "Core Framework" as an alternative to "soul", I can understand that, but the difference is that, unlike an unchanging soul, my Framework is also subject to change. Just like the DNA we inherit, it might eventually be shown that it does exist, changing all the time so that just as "self" evolves through a life time, so does the framework survive just passing on from one living human to another who is not the same person who died (soul theory)  but who carries "information" carried over from the information of the one who died.

I am not expecting anyone to agree with me (apart from perhaps a Philosopher, as philosophers thrive on ideas that come to their heads, unlike Scientists, who only accept after going through the data, explain the implications of the data with a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, and then accept or reject).

It is just an attempt to explain how a person (A) can die --> be born again as a new distinct person (B), conditioned by information passed to him with the death of A. Here, A and B are not the same but share some data from A's previous life. The change in the lifetime of A can be so much that without the evidence we have that Boy A grew up to be Man A, it would be like looking at two people. I postulate that this "Core framework has a biological basis quite similar to genes, but as yet undiscovered (just as the Higgs Boson at one time!).

The moral implications of rebirth in Buddhism is that your current life events are conditioned (but not determined) by the actions of your previous life.

Dhushy video - a test

Dhushy video

a test

Please click on the link to watch the Rose View Video. Ignore the first picture, which says "unknown error". The Video will appear.

Here is the link to click on.

dhushy gardener

MY PONDERINGS ON KARMA

MY PONDERINGS ON HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR “KARMA” TO AFFECT A LIFE TO BE BORN AND IF SO TO WHAT EXTENT.

Mahendra Gonsalkorale. 21.05.2025

 

Time	Heriditary	Environment	Culture	Life style	Diseases	Life Partnerships	Chance factors
Life Time	Genes Parental	Family born to	Customs	Diet	Hypertension	Married or single	natural disasters
	Genes Species	Period born in	Religious	Exercise	Diabetes	Friends asscociated	random occurences
		Country born in	Family
			Group
At Birth	Genes	yes	yes		congenital		yes

The above table is a very simplified (over-simplified) way of showing the main factors that influence a life over a lifetime and what factors affect a life that is just born.

To start with, we know that life starts when an ovum is fertilised by a sperm, resulting in a zygote which continues to multiply and grow in size and, quite miraculously, forms a foetus which matures and prepares to lead a separate life outside the mother’s womb. While it is in the mother’s womb, long before it can be held responsible for any “actions”, its future is greatly influenced by the genes it has inherited, and by the health of the mother (and these genes go back multiple generations). I cannot see a foetus having a “personality” and having the ability to make “decisions”. For example, it cannot decide to be aborted, or induced to be born earlier or to be born by caesarean section. If the delivered baby has after-effects because of the manner in which it was born, then the parents, healthcare workers, healthcare facilities, etc, will have to be held responsible; certainly not the foetus/baby!

If we entertain the concept that a past life (of this newborn) is in some way affecting its future by having an influence on all the factors given above, I cannot see any conceivable or even a highly speculative and imaginary way it could happen. You are talking about the karmic influences of the parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, family, medical personnel, health care facilities, all being intertwined in an unimaginable way to produce a scene where all these operate to produce the final effect. To me, this is impossible.

Let us now get to the genetic stage and a possible way of the foetus’s genes being affected by a past life (stream of consciousness). Firstly, it is then necessary for causes and results of actions in any birth to become encoded in the gene. To the scientific mind, it cannot be accepted that a “spirit” carrying vital information passes into the foetus. At a less detailed level, if some key features (to be defined) can pass through an identifiable energy form, yet to be discovered, then we have an answer. The fact that none has been discovered so far is not evidence against it.

(All living things, including humans, constantly emit a ghostly glow – and it appears to vanish almost as soon as we die. Monitoring this signal could one day help track forest health or even detect diseases in people.

The existence of this barely perceptible glow has been controversial, but it is thought to be the result of a process called ultraweak photon emission. Mitochondria and other energy-producing machinery in our cells involve molecules gaining and losing energy, in turn emitting the equivalent of a few photons a second per square centimetre of skin tissue. However, these “biophotons” are extremely difficult to detect and disentangle from other biological processes or light sources, such as the radiation produced by any warm object.-New Scientist May 5^th 2025)

I don’t know but if the “glow” at death could be harnessed and examined in detail, it may yield some answers.

Let us imagine that some form of energy escapes as death occurs. If we take Karma as operational in the next birth, there are huge problems with making it a viable hypothesis. Some questions are:- how far can this energy travel? Just within the immediate environment or across the seas, across the universe? How does the stream “know” when the ideal candidate foetus is found? Not only that, the ideal candidate for rebirth could be a non-human animal or even a deva in another realm!

Even if we, for the sake of argument, propose that this is possible, it is unimaginable to think that this extruded energy form is transmitting billions of encoded data through space and time, to an infinitesimally tiny target, potentially millions of miles away. It could be argued of course, that our concept of space and time is flawed, and there is a big rethink about space and time at the moment.

Even if that is a possibility for the sake of carrying on this thinking, look at all the factors that determine or affect the future life of a person as I have outlined in my table. If, for example, we say that the person who died in the plane crash did so because of Karma, then an interminable series of events must be brought in. He was in the plane because he was taking up a new job for which he owed much to many people (his karma determined his success), his plane was delayed because the plane was waiting for a delayed passenger who got delayed because the taxi he took met with an accident which happened because the taxi driver was tired because he hardly slept worrying about his new born unwell child (Karma of taxi driver, his wife, his child etc)… etc., you get the gist?

Random events do happen in Nature and people living at that particular time and area can be affected by it, sometimes to the extent that they lose their lives, as in a volcanic eruption. To postulate that you were born in an area when volcanoes can erupt unexpectedly and you happened to be there when the volcano erupted unexpectedly because of your karama, is the height of fanciful thinking.

I don’t know the answers but to postulate that your future life events are determined by data carried in your genes which came to you by some form of complex energy from the being that preceded you as it died and passed on to you, requires considerable faith.  That your life is affected by your genes is of course a fact, and you have no control at all on your genetic inheritance when you were born.

The question of why some people recall a past life remains to be explained. I don’t dismiss these stories as fantasy, as some scientists do. They need intense scrutiny to rule out fraud and explainable factors such as, a lot of stories being too general and easily applicable to many in a nonspecific manner. But there are some which have passed this test and remain a verified story awaiting a scientific explanation. It is a pity that a global scientific experiment has not been mounted with well defined protocols and methods which are acceptable to the most sceptic mind. If such an initiative is launched and incontestable evidence is found, then we have to find an explanation for it and one experiment I would love to see is a very intense and high powered one to find out whether some form of energy is emitted as we die. This would still not explain how intricate data is transmitted but that would be the next step.

To my mind, all these are interesting questions to an inquiring mind. To have too much faith in a past life and past karma is not a good thing. It can lead one to a deterministic and fatalistic way of thinking. On the other hand, if you believe that your actions do have repercussions and it is good to be mindful about what you do, just as you avoid the action of smoking cigarettes to avoid the risk of heart and lung disease (the result), it is a good thing.

I am a firm believer of the process of Evolution. It not only explains the diversity of life on our planet in a beautiful and methodical way, but also forms a good basis for morality. Successful species were successful because they collaborated and cooperated. They learnt that without love, empathy and kindness to other living beings, they would disappear. This love however is conditional in the sense that as animals need to survive, they had to kill some animals at times and also had to defend themselves by attacking  and killing marauders. The universal love which we value, evolved as a later development. The starting point was love for their offspring, mates, close associates and “herd”.

The Good Enough Life by Daniel Miller

The Good Enough Life byDaniel Miller.

I found this review quite challenging and interesting. I shall place an order for itsoon.

Mahendra

Daniel Miller’s book ‘The Good Enough Life’ is an original exploration of what life could and should be, based on his study of the residents of Skerries. We had the chance to ask him some questions ahead of his appearance at the We Invented the Weekend Festival on Sunday 16 June.

 

Q: Does the ‘good life’ as typified by the residents of Skerries represent a transplantable model or framework that might be applied elsewhere? Or must a truly happy community reach an equivalent equilibrium independent of outside influences?

A: In my book I detail the many factors that have come together to explain why people praise their town as the basis of a good life. For example, it is a town large enough that people feel some autonomy and small enough to expect to greet friends when they go out for a walk. I show why it was important that the community was largely created by migrants (blow-ins) rather than its historical population. I examine their deep commitment to family and the community. There is an egalitarian ethos and for the retirees I worked with, a freedom from obligations that may last now for decades. I assume that other places favoured by their residents share some of these traits and lack others. While entirely other factors may be relevant.

In considering outside factors, for Skerries, as an Irish town, this includes a relatively stable government, and a sense that they have benefited considerably from the EU. I also noted a marked desire to differentiate themselves from what they see as the divisive politics of Northern Ireland, as opposed to their highly consensual local politics. So yes, an equivalent place elsewhere is likely to require its own equilibrium of both inside and outside influences.

 

Q: How should we measure success and happiness in a society that often equates these concepts with wealth and consumption? What alternative metrics could be more meaningful?

A: The key point here is that we should not be imposing our criteria for what makes a good life onto another population. My book is not based on my judgment that this was a happy place. I wrote this book because the people of the town went on and on about how much they loved living there and saw it as the source of their happiness. My job was to find out why?

With regard to wealth and consumption, the standard of living in this average Irish town is now slightly higher than the UK and it may be significant that most of the people I worked with were born in poverty and appreciate the benefits of living what they would call a comfortable life. But status in the town today comes almost entirely from public commitments to environmental welfare and sustainability, while conspicuous consumption is scorned.

“For these reasons the key metric is whatever the people themselves use to measure their sense that they are living the good enough life, and then the task is to explain why they favour this measure.”

 

Q: How do different cultures define and pursue a ’good’ life? Are there universal principles, or is it highly context-dependent?

A: I have worked as an anthropologist in places ranging from India and London, to the Caribbean and Ireland. The universal that lies behind my book comes from the observation that many societies have a similar term to our word good. A word that links being a morally upright (good) person to the idea of having an enjoyable (good) time. Linking these two seems to be an ideal, irrespective of whether one does in fact depend on the other.

But both senses of this word, what makes a person moral and what makes life enjoyable, will be highly context dependent. The farmers I lived with in an Indian village would look aghast at the criteria that I found in secular Skerries.

“My discipline of anthropology is committed to reminding people of just how distinct each population remains with regard to such judgments. We need to respect the degree that things we assume are obvious and neutral are actually nothing of the kind.”

 

Q: How does our environment, both natural and built, shape our happiness and quality of life? Are there particular types of environments that are universally beneficial?

A: I have lived in several places where people depended mainly on what they grew as farmers or fished and had very few commodities. Some were mainly content and others mainly miserable. I don’t romanticise the condition of peoples who have limited access to medicine and education, whose economic security depends on the weather and whose lives are generally shorter than ours. In turn I suspect you have been to cities you really would rather not live in and some you find attractive propositions. Clearly living in a city is no guarantee of a good life either.

One thing about the environment is for sure –  if Skerries is a happy place, it’s certainly not because of the weather (!). There are elements of the environment most of us enjoy, such as beautiful landscapes while few find inspiration in an industrial wasteland. But more generally I think it is social and cultural values that have much more influence on happiness and the quality of our lives.

 

Q: How has technology changed the way we form and maintain communities? Can virtual communities offer the same depth of connection as physical ones?

As with many populations, people in Skerries tend to be very negative if you ask them about social media and smartphones in general. But the same people can be quite positive when I discuss particular apps, or how Facebook has become a community platform. Older people suffer greatly from a digital divide if they feel unable to use these technologies but may then enjoy a reconnection with their youth if they do subsequently master them.

What we need right now are not quick judgments suggesting these technologies are good or bad, but long-term scholarly observations of the hundreds of ways these technologies impact our lives.

That’s why I lived in Skerries for 16 months before thinking that I had any understanding of this question.  Dividing the world into the physical and the virtual doesn’t work either. Hardly anyone lives just online or without any online. It a constant blending of the two.

Our team has written thousands of pages based on our observations around the world. You can read about the results of this research through our free books, such as The Global Smartphone, or How The World Changed Social Media. The point is that discussion of this question needs to be evidence led