Is this Karma?

Often when people experience good or bad things, the word Karma is thrown around.  Excluding other beliefs of a divine plan, or just plain luck, it must be their karma that is affecting their lives.  However, the reality of karma is more in your mind than supra natural events that happen to your person.

Deep in our mind, below our consciousness are seeds that we plant in us.  Every time we do something good, we plant a good seed.  Likewise, when we do something bad we plant a bad seed.  Now good and bad are merely terms to juxtapose each other.  There is no right or wrong karma's, merely opposing karma's.  The accumulation of karma's tend to determine your rebirth, be it good for a higher plane of existence with longer life and less troubles, or bad karma for a lower existence with more pain and anguish.  Karma doesn't merely effect the next life however, sometimes it can affect you immediately, or perhaps not for a thousand lifetimes.  However, karmic seeds never go away, and eventually they will grow and bear fruit.

Karma has grown to attach to itself some kind of super natural power to have bad things happen to you, like if you steal candy from a store, a meteor will hit you from space.  This isn't karma in the conventional sense, that's just part of the suffering of the world that you live in.  Karma thrives in the environment that you set your mind in.  If you live in an unwholesome, unproductive, negative environment, those bad seeds of that nature tend to rise more fluently than wholesome ones.  It's often why you think bad things always happen to you, and that's because they actually are.  The true test of character is to face a bad situation, and find the good in everything.  The illusion our minds create for ourselves when we're in a rut, is that it is too late to change things, to turn around and better ourselves.  This is a fallacy, because every moment is fleeting, and yet it holds      
the potential for incredible change in yourself and others around you.  ALL we have is this moment, nothing else.  The past doesn't exist, and the future hasn't happened.  Even in the most desperate and inconceivable moments of life, we ALWAYS have a choice, and that pivotal moment is what makes or breaks us.

As an example, I just finished working a show and made enough money for food for the week.  I get to the store, shop around to get as much food as I possibly can so we can eat for the week, and I get to the self check out and ring up all my items.  Exactly enough, woohoo!, so I go for my pocket to grab the money to pay....I find my keys, and my phone, but my cash is gone! I counted it as I came into the store, so I know its here, but it must of fell out of my pocket somehow.  The first thing I feel is panic.  If I can't find this money, it isn't likely I'm going to eat much of anything this week, as I only work 1 day a week atm while looking for more work.  My panic turns to anger, I bet someone just picked up my cash and walked away thinking it was their lucky day, not realizing that someones livelihood was in those few folded up bills.  Anger turns to depression as I think about how much work I did that night to get that money, and now it was all for nothing.  At this point, as I'm looking around the store, retracing my steps for my money, I begin to calm myself.  I realize at this point, that THIS is the exact kind of moment, an opportunity, to better myself and not suppress my emotions, but to accept them and note them in my mind, let them subside, and keep a positive outlook to this seemingly horrible moment.  It's not easy, I will admit, no one does this lightly but it is important to recognize these moments as gifts, not as misfortunes.  I couldn't make this up if I wanted to, but moments after I collected myself, started breathing calmly and began to walk out of the store, a cashier waved me down with money in her hand.  Another co worker had found the cash on the floor, and turned it into her just moments before, and I had a re-assuring moment that THIS was karma.  I cleared my mind, stayed positive and karma rewarded me with the honesty of another person in the store.

Now I'm not saying good things will always happen to you if you stay positive, but it certainly increases your odds if you stay positive.  Either way, staying positive and living a productive wholesome life where you try to put others before yourself, you win either way.  That is Karma.

Now before I end this post, I should mention that good karma is not the end of Buddhism.  In fact, the ultimate goal of a Buddhist is to rid yourself of Karma all together, as karma is what keeps you attached to what is called "Samsara", the cycle of death and rebirth.  Bad karma AND Good Karma alike, both keep you attached to this world like a chain.  Through the shattering of ignorance, you realize the world as it really is, cast your bonds of karma, and escape from Samsara for Nirvana.  This being said, it is easier to attain this if you have accumulated good karma over bad karma, so in the end, even one beyond the cravings of this world will often be of wholesome nature, as you gain an unconditional love of all beings, each one craving an end to suffering, as they themselves once did.