Buddhism

Buddhism is a dharmic, non-theistic religion, a philosophy, and a life-enhancing system of psychology. In Sanskrit or Pali, the main ancient languages of Buddhists, as Buddha Dharma or Dhamma, which means the teachings of "the Awakened One."

Karma is one of the most important concepts in Buddhism. Karma is an imprint in one's Mind. When one performs a good deed out of good intentions, the good intentions come from the Mind. Having done that good deed, the residues of these intentions stay in one's Mind as "imprints", and that is "good karma". The opposite goes for evil deeds (or what the Buddha would call "unwholesome deeds") done out of greed, hatred etc.

A person's karma affects a person in two ways. The first is his/her disposition. If a person is angry performing many deeds with anger, his/her mind will be imprinted with experiences and intentions of anger. Because of this imprint, in a similar situation, he/she would be more likely to feel angry. In a sense, the imprint creates and reinforces a sort of mental habit that causes a person's mind to react in a certain pre-disposed way.

The second and more important way karma affects a person is by affecting his/her experience. Our experiences, our feelings of joy or sufferings, come mainly from our reaction to perceptual inputs. Using an angry person as an example, in many situations, he/she feels offended, angry and that seriously affects his/her state of mind. He/she often feels the pain of anger, very little peace. But if that person practices meditation, develops his/her mind, etc., such that he/she develops peace and love. He/she may live the same life anew and he/she may not experience the anger or the pain of anger etc. in those same situations. In a sense, his/her karma is one of the main determinants of his/her experiences. In this sense too, we may say that our sufferings comes from our karma and our states of mind.

The underlying factor in the formation of Karma is Intentions. What gets imprinted into one's mind is largely decided by one's intentions. If I accidentally stepped on a spider, for example, squashing it to death, and let's say I didn't even notice, there was no intention, how can there be an imprint into my mind? But if say I stepped on it out of "fun", the desire to cause harm now gets imprinted. In later life, I may become less sensitive to the value of life, I may be bothered by this experience, I may find myself more likely to be hateful, etc. etc. That, friend, would be my karma. In a similar way, let's say I lost $20 while touring the slums of India. The money is nothing to me, so I won't even notice. But somebody found the money and fed his family for a month, saving a dying child's life. If I wasn't even aware that I lost the money, how can there be good karma for me?

This concept of Karma was one of the main differences between the teachings of Buddhism and Jainism. Mahavira Jain taught that all actions, intentional or not, creates karma. The Buddha, speaking from his insights into the mind, taught that the Intention plays the deciding role. From my experience as a mediator, I verified Buddha's position for myself.