“Karma” : Conceptual Metaphors that reflect a belief in Thai society

Abstract

This article aims to examine conceptual metaphors about “Karma” as reflected in metaphorical expressions used by Thai people on the basis of Cognitive Semantics. The data is collected from 2 sources, that are www.pantip.com and Thai National Corpus program of Department of Linguistic, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. It was found that the metaphorical expressions used by Thai people reflect 8 conceptual metaphors – [KARMA IS HUMAN], [KARMA IS DIRTINESS], [KARMA IS DEBT], [KARMA IS DISEASE], [KARMA IS ENEMY], [KARMA IS OBJECT], [KARMA IS PLANT] and [KARMA IS FORCE OF NATURE]        

These concepts are consistent with the Buddhism belief that KARMA is real. Human must receive retribution. But these concepts are different with beliefs of Buddhism that Thai people missunderstanding about meaning of KARMA and used on negative meaning. In addition, these conceptual metaphors reflect the views of Thai people in 4 aspects, which are KARMA is undesirable thing for all human beings, KARMA is a true thing which human being has to receive its result, KARMA is something that humans cannot resist it. The goal of human life is the wish to extricate from destiny (KARMA) and have a good life.