thedawaring's blog

The Burden Two monks were returning to the monastery in the evening. It had rained and there were puddles of water on the road sides. At one place a beautiful young woman was standing unable to walk across because of a puddle of water. The elder of the two monks went up to her lifted her and left her on the other side of the road, and continued his way to the monastery. In the evening the younger monk came to the elder monk and said, “Sir, as monks, we cannot touch a woman?” The elder monk answered “yes, brother”. Then the younger monk asked again, “But then sir, how is it that you lifted the woman on the roadside?” The elder monk smiled at him and told him,” I left her on the other side of the road but you are still carrying her in your mind”.  **** Kisa Gotami Kisa Gotami was the wife of a wealthy man of Savatthi in eastern India. She had only one child. When her son was old enough to start running about, he caught a disease and died. Kisa Gotami was deeply sa...

The concept of karma arises from the fact that everything in the universe is a product of interdependence. There is nothing that is not dependent on others for its existence. Interdependence is the nature of our existence. As I understand, karma literally means action in Sanskrit. Our own thoughts and actions translate into our being. If we perform good deed, then we get good results. If we do a bad action, then we have to bear the result for the bad action.  It is like if we sow rice seeds in the soil, we will be able to harvest rice only and we cannot expect maize sapling to germinate. As we commonly perceive , Karma is not something like a predetermined power that controls us. It is the consequences of our own thoughts and actions that we perform. In this way karma is in our own hand. In Buddhism , karma is classified into three different types. The first class of karma gives immediate results. For example, I said something bad to my friend in the morning. As a res...