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In every action, there will be an equal but opposite reaction"
-Newton
Karma, which means “action,” refers to an act we engage in as well as its repercussions.
- The Dalai Lama
Buddhists believe in the law of Karma, cause and effect. In our daily lives we interact with people, with nature and with living beings. Every action we commit or do, whether virtuous or not, is a seed planted by ourselves at the present moment.
This seed carries our action of the present moment and will one day ripen (may be in the present or future lives) to bear the fruit of our deed.
Good virtuous acts (Good Karma) will bear good in return where we will enjoy the fruits of good Karma done.
So is the same with bad acts as when one commit an offense, major or minor, will be repaid to them in the future.
As Buddhists believe in rebirth, which may not necessary be in the human realm, we carry our karma even after death. Someone carrying good karma which he planted during his lifetime will see a good rebirth.
To see your actions in your past life, look at what you are at the present moment. To know what you will become in your future lifes, look at yourself today - What am I doing / How are my acts now???
For a genuine Buddhist, then, one's everyday activities, by way of thought, word, and deed, are more important than anything else in life. A proper understanding of the Buddhist moral law of kamma and rebirth is essential for happy and sensible living and for the welfare of the world. In the Buddha's own words:
The slayer gets a slayer in his turn;
The conqueror gets one who conquers him;
The abuser wins abuse, the annoyer frets.
Thus by the evolution of the deed,
A man who spoils is spoiled in his turn."
(Samyutta Nikaya, Kosala Samyutta, trans. by Sir Robert Chalmers)
Extract from "A Simple Guide to Life", Robert Bogoda
Below is are excerpts from "An Open Heart", by the Dalai Lama, Chapter Five - Karma
Our ultimate aim as Buddhist practitioners is attaining the fully enlightened and omniscient (all knowing) state of the Buddha. The vehicle we require is a human body with a sane mind.
Most of us take being alive as relatively healthy human beings for granted. In fact, human life is often referred to in Buddhist test as extraordinary and precious. It is the result of an enormous accumulation of virtue, accrued by us over countless lives. Each human being has devoted a great amount of effort to attaining this physical state. Why is it of such value? Because it offers us the greatest opportunity for spiritual growth: the pursuit of our own happiness and that of others. Animals simply do not have the ability to willfully pursue virtue the way humans do. They are victims of their ignorance. We should therefore appreciate this valuable human vehicle and must also do all we can to ensure that we shall be reborn as human beings in our next life. Though we continue to aspire to attain full enlightenment, we should acknowledge that the path to Buddha hood is a long one for which we must also make short-term preparations.
As we have seen, to ensure rebirth as a human being with the full potential to pursue spiritual practice, one must first pursue an ethical path. This, according to Buddha’s doctrine, entails avoiding the ten nonvirtuous actions. The suffering caused by each of these actions has many levels. To give ourselves more reason to desist from them, we must understand the workings of the law of cause and effect, known as karma.
Karma, which means “action,” refers to an act we engage in as well as its repercussions. When we speak of karma of killing, the act itself would be taking the life of another being. The wider implications of this action, also part of the karma of killing, are the sufferings it causes the victims as well as the many who love and are dependent upon that being. The karma of this act also includes certain effects upon the actual killer. These are not limited to this life. Actually, the effect of an unvirtuous act grows with time, so that a ruthless murderer’s lack of remorse in taking human life began in a past life of simple disregard for lives of others as seemingly inconsequential as animals or insects.
It is unlikely that a murderer would be immediately reborn as a human being. The circumstance under which one human being kills another determines the severity of the consequences. A brutal murderer, committing the crime with delight, is likely to be born to great suffering in a realm of existence we call hell. A less severe case—say, a killing in self-defense—might mean rebirth in a hell of lighter suffering. Less consequential non-virtues might lead one to be born as an animal, lacking the ability to improve mentally or spiritually.
When one is eventually reborn as a human being, the consequences of various unvirtuous acts determine the circumstances of one’s life in different ways. Killing in a previous lifetime dictates a short life span and much illness. It also leads to the tendency to kill, ensuring more suffering in future lives. Similarly, stealing causes one to lack resources and be stolen from; it also establishes a tendency to steal in the future. Sexual misconduct, such as adultery, results in future lives in which the company you keep will be untrustworthy and in which you will suffer infidelity and betrayal. These are some of the effects of the three nonvirtuous acts we commit with our body.
Among the four nonvirtuous acts of speech, lying leads to a life in which others will speak ill of you. Lying also establishes a tendency to lie in future lives, as well as the changes of being lied to and not being believed when you speak the truth. The future life-consequences of divisive speech include loneliness and a tendency to make mischief with other people’s lives. Harsh speech begets the abuse of others and leads to an angry attitude. Idle gossip causes others not to listen and leads one to speak incessantly.
Finally, what are the karmic consequences of the three nonvirtuous acts of the mind? These are the most familiar of our unvirtuous tendencies. Covetousness leaves us perpetually dissatisfied. Malice causes us fear and leads us to harm others. Wrong views hold beliefs that contradict the truth, which leads to difficulty understanding and accepting truths and to stubbornly clinging to wrong views.
These are but a few examples of the ramifications of non-virtue. Our present life results from our karma, our past actions. Our future situation, the conditions into which we shall be born, the opportunities we shall or shall not have to better our state in life, will depend on our karma in this life, our present acts. Though our current situation has been determined by past behavior, we do remain responsible for our present actions. We have the ability and the responsibility to choose to direct actions on a virtuous path.
When we weigh a particular act, to determine whether it is moral or spiritual, our criterion should be the quality of our motivation. When someone deliberately makes a resolution not to steal, if he or she is simply motivated by the fear of getting caught and being punished by the law, it is doubtful whether engaging in that resolution is a moral act, since moral considerations have not dictated his or her choice.
In another instance, the resolution not to steal may be motivated by fear of public opinion: “What would my friends and neighbors think? All would scorn me. I would become an outcast.” Though the act of making the resolution may be positive, whether it is a moral act is again doubtful.
Now, the same resolution may be taken with the thought “If I steal, I am acting against the divine law of God.” Someone else may think, “Stealing is nonvirtuous; it causes others to suffer.” When such considerations motivate one, the resolution is moral or ethical; it is also spiritual. In the practice of Buddha’s doctrine, if your underlying considerations in avoiding a nonvirtuous act is that it would thwart your attainment of a state transcending sorrow, such restraint is a moral act.
Knowing the detailed aspects of the working of karma is said to be limited to an omniscient mind. It is beyond our ordinary perception to fully grasp the subtle mechanics of karma. For us to live according to Shakyamuni Buddha’s pronouncements on karma requires a degree of faith in his teachings. When he says that killing leads to a short life, stealing to poverty, there is really no way to prove him correct. However, such matters should not be taken on blind faith. We must first establish the validity of our object of faith: the Buddha and his doctrine, the Dharma. We must subject his teaching to well-reasoned scrutiny. By investigating those topics of the Dharma that can be established by means of logical inference—such as the Buddhist’s teachings on impermanence and emptiness, which we shall explore in Chapter 13, “Wisdom”—and seeing them to be correct, our belief in those less evident teachings, like the workings of karma, naturally increases. When we seek advice, we go to someone we consider worthy of giving the sought guidance. The more evident our wise friend’s good judgment in to us, the more seriously we take the advice given. Our developing what I would call “wise faith” in the Buddha’s advice should be similar.
I believe that some experience, some taste of practice, is necessary for us to generate true, profound faith. I believe that some experience, some taste of practice, is necessary for us tp generate true, profound faith. There seem to be two different types of experience. There are those of highly realized holy beings who possess seemingly unattainable qualities. Then there are more mundane experiences that we can achieve through our daily practice. We can develop some recognition of impermanence, the transient nature of life. We can come to recognize the destructive nature of afflictive emotions, like anger and hate. We can have a greater feeling of compassion toward others or more patience when we have to wait in line.
Such tangible experiences bring us a sense of fulfillment and joy, and our faith in the process by which these experience came about grows. Our faith in our teacher, the person who leads us to these experiences, also intensifies, as does our conviction in the doctrine he or she follows. And from such tangible experiences, we might intuit that continued practice could lead to even more extraordinary attainments, such as those immortalized by saints of past.
Such reasoned faith, stemming from some taste of spiritual practice, also helps strengthen our confidence in the Buddha’s account of the workings of karma. And this, in turn, gives us the determination to desist from engaging in the unvirtuous actions that lead to our won ever increasing misery. It is therefore helpful in our meditation, after even the slightest insight into the subject we have studied, to spend some time recognizing that we have had this insight and acknowledging form whence it is derived. Such reflection should be thought of as part of our meditation. It helps strengthen the foundation of our faith in the Three Jewels of Refuge—the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha—and helps us progress in our practice. It gives us the heart to continue.
Here is an article on Karma by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Karma by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Karma is one of those words we don't translate. Its basic meaning is simple enough -- action -- but because of the weight the Buddha's teachings give to the role of action, the Sanskrit word karma packs in so many implications that the English word action can't carry all its luggage. This is why we've simply airlifted the original word into our vocabulary.
But when we try unpacking the connotations the word carries now that it has arrived in everyday usage, we find that most of its luggage has gotten mixed up in transit. In the eyes of most Americans, karma functions like fate -- bad fate, at that: an inexplicable, unchangeable force coming out of our past, for which we are somehow vaguely responsible and powerless to fight. "I guess it's just my karma," I've heard people sigh when bad fortune strikes with such force that they see no alternative to resigned acceptance. The fatalism implicit in this statement is one reason why so many of us are repelled by the concept of karma, for it sounds like the kind of callous myth-making that can justify almost any kind of suffering or injustice in the status quo: "If he's poor, it's because of his karma." "If she's been raped, it's because of her karma." From this it seems a short step to saying that he or she deserves to suffer, and so doesn't deserve our help.
This misperception comes from the fact that the Buddhist concept of karma came to the West at the same time as non-Buddhist concepts, and so ended up with some of their luggage. Although many Asian concepts of karma are fatalistic, the early Buddhist concept was not fatalistic at all. In fact, if we look closely at early Buddhist ideas of karma, we'll find that they give even less importance to myths about the past than most modern Americans do.
For the early Buddhists, karma was non-linear. Other Indian schools believed that karma operated in a straight line, with actions from the past influencing the present, and present actions influencing the future. As a result, they saw little room for free will. Buddhists, however, saw that karma acts in feedback loops, with the present moment being shaped both by past and by present actions; present actions shape not only the future but also the present. This constant opening for present input into the causal process makes free will possible. This freedom is symbolized in the imagery the Buddhists used to explain the process: flowing water. Sometimes the flow from the past is so strong that little can be done except to stand fast, but there are also times when the flow is gentle enough to be diverted in almost any direction.
So, instead of promoting resigned powerlessness, the early Buddhist notion of karma focused on the liberating potential of what the mind is doing with every moment. Who you are -- what you come from -- is not anywhere near as important as the mind's motives for what it is doing right now. Even though the past may account for many of the inequalities we see in life, our measure as human beings is not the hand we've been dealt, for that hand can change at any moment. We take our own measure by how well we play the hand we've got. If you're suffering, you try not to continue the unskillful mental habits that would keep that particular karmic feedback going. If you see that other people are suffering, and you're in a position to help, you focus not on their karmic past but your karmic opportunity in the present: Someday you may find yourself in the same predicament that they're in now, so here's your opportunity to act in the way you'd like them to act toward you when that day comes.
This belief that one's dignity is measured, not by one's past, but by one's present actions, flew right in the face of the Indian traditions of caste-based hierarchies, and explains why early Buddhists had such a field day poking fun at the pretensions and mythology of the brahmans. As the Buddha pointed out, a brahman could be a superior person not because he came out of a brahman womb, but only if he acted with truly skillful intentions.
We read the early Buddhist attacks on the caste system, and aside from their anti-racist implications, they often strike us as quaint. What we fail to realize is that they strike right at the heart of our myths about our own past: our obsession with defining who we are in terms of where we come from -- our race, ethnic heritage, gender, socio-economic background, sexual preference -- our modern tribes. We put inordinate amounts of energy into creating and maintaining the mythology of our tribe so that we can take vicarious pride in our tribe's good name. Even when we become Buddhists, the tribe comes first. We demand a Buddhism that honors our myths.
From the standpoint of karma, though, where we come from is old karma, over which we have no control. What we "are" is a nebulous concept at best -- and pernicious at worst, when we use it to find excuses for acting on unskillful motives. The worth of a tribe lies only in the skillful actions of its individual members. Even when those good people belong to our tribe, their good karma is theirs, not ours. And, of course, every tribe has its bad members, which means that the mythology of the tribe is a fragile thing. To hang onto anything fragile requires a large investment of passion, aversion, and delusion, leading inevitably to more unskillful actions on into the future.
So the Buddhist teachings on karma, far from being a quaint relic from the past, are a direct challenge to a basic thrust -- and basic flaw -- in our culture. Only when we abandon our obsession with finding vicarious pride in our tribal past, and can take actual pride in the motives that underlie our present actions, can we say that the word karma, in its Buddhist sense, has recovered its luggage. And when we open the luggage, we'll find that it's brought us a gift: the gift we give ourselves and one another when we drop our myths about who we are, and can instead be honest about what we're doing with each moment -- at the same time making the effort to do it right.
Revised: Sun 19-Oct-2003
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/modern/thanissaro/karma.html
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