If you have been listening to my podcasts, you will have heard me talk about karma and that I plan to do a series of podcasts on the topic. Well, this is the beginning of that series. The topic of karma is a large one. Many people know of a simplified version of it, but it is much vaster and deeper than you may know.
In this podcast, we'll look at the basics. The definition of karma is action. Karma means action. Any action you perform is karma. Any and every action you perform is karma. When you perform a positive action that is positive karma and when doing negative things that is negative karma. We have all done both positive and negative actions. All of us.
In my last podcast, I talked about past lives which are vital to this topic of karma. We all have what I like to refer to as a storage locker of karma that we have always had. Every action you have ever performed in all the lifetimes you have ever lived has been put into that storage unit. Since most of us do not remember our past lives, we have no way of knowing exactly what is in our personal karma storage unit. You may believe you have not done many negative things in this life, so you may be under the delusion that you couldn't possibly have much negative karma stored in there. We all have a giant mountain of negative karma just sitting there waiting for the right circumstances to occur so that it can ripen on us.
How can you know this is true? Well, do you know someone that is basically a good person, that acts with kindness and rarely does anything negative? Do they still have bad things happen to them? Of course they do. Why? Bad things happen to nice people because it is the negative karma they have brought with them into this life from their past lives. We probably know someone that isn't such a nice person that seems to have all these good things happen to them. Why? Good things can happen to bad people because of the karma they have brought with them from their past lives. Just because someone is good in this life, does not mean only good things can happen to them. Just because someone is bad in this life, does not mean they are unable to have good things happen to them. We all have good and bad things happen to us during our lives.
Good people have not always been good in their past lives. Bad people have not always been bad in their past lives. We know this is true for the exact same reason, the good and bad things that happen to everyone no matter what their personality or behaviour is like in this current life. Most of us don't like to admit we have behaved differently in past lives, but we had completely different gross and subtle minds in those past lives. We were not the exact same person then as we are now. We have all been bad people in the past, and we have all been good people in the past depending on the karma that ripened when our gross and subtle minds developed at those conceptions and what karma ripened on us during those lifetimes. Most people will refuse to believe it, but we have all been like Hitler in a past life and we have all been like Mother Teresa in a past life. Until you can face that truth, you will struggle with the concept of karma.
So in one of your past lives, at the moment of your conception in that life, the parents you chose and the place you would be conceived played a part in what karma would be brought out of your storage unit and used to shape your gross and subtle minds. I am simplifying things here, just to help explain what occurs. In this particular past life, some of your negative karma ripened giving you a negative outlook on life, giving you cruel parents, giving you hardship and other things that caused you to hate others and want them to be destroyed. Your hate and anger grew throughout your life because of all the negative things that happened to you until you ended up just like Hitler. Your self-grasping, self cherishing and ego grew out of proportion and you became a dictator causing all kinds of destruction and death. You have been just like Hitler in a past life. We all have.
You can take the same idea and apply that to having a life like Mother Teresa. We have all done both positive and negative actions in all of our past lives. We all have a giant mountain of negative karma and we have some good karma, too, but not as much. It is more like a small hill of positive karma if we even have that much. Due to our karma storage locker being filled with all of the past karma we created for ourselves, we have no idea what karma will ripen on us when. We are at the mercy of our karma. Will positive things happen to us or negative things? Will we suddenly and unexpectedly have something tragic happen to us out of the blue? We have no idea.
Think back to all of the actions you have taken in this life. You can't even remember all of them. You cannot remember every single thing that has happened to you in this life, so you don't even know all of the karma you have put into your storage locker from only this one lifetime, never mind all the past lives you have lived. You have no way of knowing what is waiting for you. The thing I fear is not knowing what negative karma is waiting to ripen on me. I know it is completely possible that I have been just like Hitler in a past life or even worse. I am aware that I have lived countless lives and performed unknown amounts of negative actions. That negative karma is all just sitting in my storage unit waiting for all the pieces to come together to finally zap my butt and teach me a lesson. Will I finally learn from my mistakes and clear that negative karma up or will I make things worse and add even more bad actions to my storage?
It is the same for all of us. Will we learn from the negative things that happen to us and rise above them to remove them from our storage units or will we fully engage in the negativity and cause an even greater impact on us in the future? By retaliating against someone that has harmed us, we keep the karma that ripened on us and we add our new negative actions to that storage, which is why we all have so much negative karma. If we can realize that it is our own negative karma that is ripening on us when bad things happen and learn to adjust our behaviour and do our best to work through it without engaging in further negativity, we can remove it from our storage unit. If you don't have any negative karma in your storage unit nothing negative can happen to you.
Now you may be wondering why the positive karma in your storage unit isn't the same amount as your negative karma. First of all, most of us rarely do positive actions. We are most likely to perform negative ones due to our self cherishing. So throughout all of your past lives, you behaved more on the side of a Hitler than a Mother Teresa. Don't believe me? Look around you. Do you know anyone that acts like Mother Teresa? But I bet you know people that commit crimes and are self indulgent and entitled in their behaviours. If you play multiplayer video games, you will know more than your fair share of people that would act like Hitler if given the chance. Look at your own life, have you always behaved for the benefit of others without giving your own welfare a thought? In this day and age it is almost impossible to act with pure, positive karma in everything we do. I certainly haven't.
So, added to the fact that we rarely engage in positive actions and mainly do negative things throughout all of our lives there is another factor at play. Here's the clincher: Ready? Every time you do a negative action you destroy your positive karma. A moment of anger can destroy it all. Ready for some more bad news? Doing positive things does not erase your negative karma. Isn't that fun? That is why our negative karma is giant mountain sized and our positive karma is a small hill if we are that lucky.
This is why I ask you to do no harm and try your best to only perform positive actions. I don't want you to make your mountain of negative karma any bigger. I want you to be able to put more positive karma in your storage unit and to remove the negative storage to benefit you the most. After all, I wish for you to be happy. We would all be much more happy if we could stop negative things from happening to us and only have positive things happen. We would all have more peaceful lives if we didn't have the fear of our negative karma hanging over our heads waiting to pounce on us.
Now there is some good news. There is a way to start to deplete the negative karma in your storage unit without having to experience it and a way to protect your positive karma. Removing your negative karma will take another podcast to explain it fully, as there are a few steps that need to be taken, so watch for that in the near future after the karma series. I can tell you how to protect your positive karma from being destroyed. Whenever you do a positive action, you need to dedicate it. If you have ever listened to one of my podcasts all the way through, you will have heard me make a dedication at the very end of it. I do this to protect the positive karma I am performing from being destroyed with a moment of anger I might have. I am human after all.
To dedicate, we need to come up with something positive that we want to dedicate that will benefit others, not just ourselves, although we can be included in that. For instance, when I say “I wish to dedicate all my virtuous actions to all sentient beings everywhere...” I am included, as I am one of those sentient beings. I mean, I need all the help I can get to make spiritual progress and to protect my positive actions. You can dedicate for any positive reason you wish. If you suffer from an illness, like cancer or anything, you may wish to dedicate your positive karma to help ease the suffering of everyone with cancer. You can dedicate for world peace. You can dedicate for something different at different times, depending on what is effecting you or those around you. You may wish to dedicate to benefit someone going through a difficult time, and when that comes to an end you can dedicate for something else. You can dedicate for more than one thing if you wish, but you don't want to make the list too long or it will take up too much time to do and you may get weary of dedicating.
I personally dedicate for what I deem to be the most important thing of all, for everyone to be free from suffering by becoming fully enlightened Buddhas. Just listen to this podcast to the very end to hear my example of a dedication to give you an idea of how to dedicate, so you can protect your positive karma from being destroyed.
Listen to the full podcast here: https://youtu.be/ERtcjxa1SuQ
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