Can Buddhists make very eccentric vows?

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is there any form of vow, in any tradition, which can lead to suffering for you, but good karma for others?

Well I think that some people, perhaps wrongly, interpret the Bodhisattva vow as leading to suffering to you, because it's a vow to delay your own nibbana which would cause your own rebirth and continued suffering.

As a second possible example, santa100's answer mentioned 'vows making things happen magically' -- the one thing I remember that might be like that is Sacca-kiriyā -- there are several examples in the canon -- that might be like a vow, and like magic which benefits others ... but harmless, though?

The whole idea seems odd to me, as if there's a fixed amount of bad kamma floating around which somebody has to suffer for and it doesn't quite matter who -- like the converse would be killing people as a sacrifice to gain good fortune for yourself, as if kamma were a 'zero sum' situation -- instead I think that virtue and enlightenment are supposed to benefit everyone, not be harmful.

Then again people do make decisions which seem to be altruistic and self-sacrificing.

Anyway -- you might be interested in Sacca-kiriyā.

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Um, a Buddhist can make any vow they please. And eccentricity is only in the eyes of those who judge him/her. To the practitioner, it is simply a necessary step on the path to Satori. And again, the karma generated by one's vows is wholly dependent on that person's own observations about self and world. You are in no position to judge here, so the question is pretty moot with regards to others, and completely subjective in terms of yourself. Namaste.

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Not sure if vows alone are sufficient to auto-magically make things happens as one wishes. It's much more likely that intention coupled with concrete actions that will bring about the desired result. So in the case of person A, the event's more likely to happen due to s/he following up with actions that helps person B and maybe at the cost of some suffering to himself. About the concept of collective kamma, it probably is just individual kamma bundled together. An example is the atrocities committed by soldiers during a war campaign. Together they all took part in killing, raping, and plundering their enemies' city. So in some distant future, some catastrophic event happens to a group of people, which on the surface seems like "collective" kamma, but in fact the underlying driving force is still individual kamma manifesting itself.

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