I'm starting this thread because a poster indicated that she was interested in discussing the meaning of karma.
To a Buddhist. karma means, "cause and effect". It has nothing to do with pre-determination, destiny, or punishment and reward.
That is a very limited view of Buddhism. Buddhism does deal with destiny, pre determination, punishment & reward. Cause & effect is all about punishment and reward. As for predetermination I would predict you are in danger of coming back as a mole.
I disagree based on the teachings I've recieived about karma from various lamas in the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.
Karma is not about judgement, sin or punishment and reward. It's simply cause and effect. I have the karma to have been born a human with an interest in spiritual development. That karma allows me to take whatever happens to me in my life and put it in some perspective that allows spiritual growth.
Since I have the karma to have a human body, I am born with a consciousness capable of reflecting on my own impending death. I have the karma to age, to get sick, and to eventually die.
There is no judgment in there about any of that. It is what it is. I've had the karma to have endured certain hardships in life and the karma to have been able to use them to open my heart and grow.
Pre-determination is the idea that everything that happens to you in life is pre-ordained. Karma isn't destiny or pre-determination. Karma is much more chaotic in how it is expressed.
I may have the karma to get in a car accident, but I may also have the karma to survive that accident and to use the trauma to grow. I kniow a man who was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident. He has completely used that experience to change his life for the better. To hear him talk, his words, his accident was a great blessing. He developed other skills and interests other than athletics that have made his life more meaningful. He says he is happier now than he was before the accident. That is an example of karm. He had the karma to be in a bad car accident with life changing injuries and he had the karma to use that experience to benefit himself and others.
Karma is always mixed because human beings have mixed motivation. Karma is not an excuse. I had the karma to be born to my parents. My parents both had mental illness, that fact led to my lifelong interest in working on my own inner life and the inner life of others.
It is not a punishment that my parents were mentally ill. It is how my life expressed itself with what I came in with. I had a tendency to be introspective from the time I was a tiny child. I had the karma to think I should care for my parents, not that they should care for me.
Jarvis Masters had the karma to be born to a crack addict and to a violent father. He had the karma as a very young child to sleep on urine and feces stained mattresses with no parent home for days and to find food in garbage bins. He was severely abused. He had the karma to spend his growing up years in a series of foster homes and to become an angry and mean young man who joined a gang. He had the karma to take up a life of crime and to be imprisoned for it. He had the karma to be accused, tried and convicted of a murder he did not commit, and he had the karma to be given the death penalty.
Jarvis had the karma to take up Buddhist meditation, which he admits, he never would have done without the death penalty sentence. He's had the karma to open his mind and heart and the karma to learn to write stories that inspire young people to drop out of gangs and leave crime behind. He still may be executed, but even so, he will die a free man in his heart. He had the karma to help a woman I knew well who was dying of MS. She was able to complete a children's book for her family before she died. This wonderful woman, had the karma to have MS, but also to have a loving husband and family, to have great medical care, to have a sunny disposition inspite of her extreme disabilities and the karma to make friends with all her caretakers, doctors and social workers. I had the karma to be the one to write the letters for her to Jarvis and to be the one who read Jarvis's letters to her and to read Jarvis' book to her. I had that kind of good karma, to know them both, to see one living with bars on her bed unable to move and one living with bars on his windows and to see them both transcend their circumstances.
These are just examples.
Everyone sees karma differently depending on your life experience. Some people may see karma in Judeo-Christian terms as crime or sin, and punishment or retribution.
Buddhists who have recieved teachings on emptiness and karma see the topic of karma differently from Buddhists who haven't recieived those teachings.
