On Karma

We inherit six bases. The five physical bases (senses) and the mind. The mind means the effect of a past cause.

What is outside us (what we are currently experiencing) is reaping what we have sown by deeds in the past – the effect of past causes.

There is nothing to be done about effects here and now. It is our responses are new causes which will have future results.

Thoughts and ideas are conditioned. Specific ideas and thoughts depend on conditions necessary for their emergence.

No motion is lost. All has an effect. No energy can be expended without an effect following. To deny this law is to deny cause and effect.

Things are always paid for: a karmic law.

(quoting Edgar Cayce) … It arises that our bodies are our own doing. I am responsible for the body I have now through my actions in a previous existence.

Because of this, that is; because this has ceased to be, that does.

If I am reconciled to the world, I am not making new, unwholesome causes.

We are involved and linked in karma with those around us.

Death: conclusion of a process. The last state of consciousness is very important as it is decisive in making the next effect. The last moment is conditioned by habit.

Buddha practiced recollection of past existences. What he looked back on was not the same creature but one which stands in a causal relationship [to him].

The one karma that produces immediate effect is Nibbana.

Law of Suffering: Contact > Feelings > Memory > Thirsting > Suffering; Law of the End to Suffering: No Contact > No Feelings > No Memory > No Thirsting > No Suffering. Note: for this reason we have rules of conduct.

Most suffering arises from anticipating the future and contemplating the past.

In the hells there is no satisfaction of desire and an extreme awareness of suffering.

The more you experience, the more you suffer. The more you suffer the more you seek solutions which may come through the grace of God.

All action is mental. There are verbal and physical manifestations of mental actions. Spontaneous gestures are not spontaneous. For example, the foot cannot move without a mental impulse. In this way every action could be seen as mental if slowed down (enough).

Mental acts are energy – seeds, causes — which must produce results.

One is not responsible for acts not volitionally intended.

We have free choice within a certain limit: freedom to move to the left or right, as does a dog on the leash.

It is from willing that one has words and deeds. All things are not strictly determined … if this were so what would be the point of meeting here? Some things, however, are determined.