Buddha was sitting with his disciples. One of them asked him "What is Karma?"
Buddha said, "Let me tell you a story..."
A king was touring his kingdom on his elephant. Suddenly he stopped in front of a shop in the market and said to his minister, "I don't know why, but I want to hang the owner of this shop." The minister was shocked. But before he could ask the king why, the king had moved on.
The next day, the minister went to that shop dressed as one of the locals to see the shopkeeper. He casually asked him how his business was faring. The shopkeeper, a sandalwood merchant, reported sadly that he had hardly any customer. People would come to his shop, smell the sandalwood, and then go away. They would even praise the quality of the sandalwood but rarely buy anything. His only hope was that the king would die soon. Then there would be a huge demand for sandalwood for performing his last rites. As he was the only sandalwood merchant around, he was sure the king's death would mean a windfall.
The minister now understood why the king had stopped in front of this shop and expressed a desire to kill the shopkeeper. Perhaps, the shopkeeper's negative thought vibration had subtly affected the king, who had, in turn, felt the same kind of negative thought arising within.
The minister; a nobleman, pondered over the matter for a while. Without revealing who he was or what had happened the day before, he expressed a desire to buy some sandalwood. The shopkeeper was pleased. He wrapped the sandalwood and handed it over to the minister.
When the minister returned to the palace, he went straight to the court where the king was seated and reported that the sandalwood merchant had a gift for him. The king was surprised. When he opened the package, he was pleasantly surprised by the fine golden color of the sandalwood and its agreeable fragrance. Pleased, he sent some gold coins to the sandalwood merchant. The king also felt sorry in his heart that he had harbored unbecoming thoughts of killing the shopkeeper.
If we have a good and kind thought for another person, that positive thought will come back to us in a favorable way. But if we harbor evil thoughts, those thoughts will come back to us as retribution.
"What is Karma?" asked Buddha
Many replied, "our words, our deeds, our feelings, our actions......"
We living in a time when I could say that karma accelerates in many ways. When we talk about karma we usually talking about gross karma meaning our action. But if we want to go deeper on what is and how it works karma according to buddha is our taught, feeling and words, actions.
When we do the practice of purifying karma till we totally changed we have big causes to redo the same kind of karma.
To be able to change we need to understand first how it works :
Example of negative karma :
We think for example there is a difference between us and someone else so we getting ready, then everything we got we don’t share then whatever we can get no matter what we will do to getting so stilling if that goes.
That small example of how our negative thinking becomes a klesha then actions.
Example of good karma :
When you work for a charity, for example, you help others they all taught is turn toward helping others, your emotion is loving toward others then all your actions are toward helping others.
Garchen Rinpoche explains that if we want to suppress negative karma we must suppress the cause of it.
How do we find the cause?
When we meditate we must develop an awareness of our tough be mindful of what makes then negative, attachments or ignorance, frustration list is long the buddha found 84000 cause of negative karma.
Knowing this if we develop the right attitude we will suppress those causes.
Happy Ending!