(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be beneficial!)

It’s winter, 1984, Pennsylvannia. I’m waiting to enter the shrine room for another day of eight-hour practice.

I have some kind of flash about the nature of karma: my mind seems to click into a sequence of stages that I can only describe as “going back and back,” until I get to some kind of root, where I realize that karma is nothing but our own mind.

Person X commits an action.

Person Y has one interpretation.

Person Z has another interpretation.

Why? Because what we perceive is a function of our own personal karma.

So karmic consequences are in fact a product of our own mind. It’s not some
objective karmic swat team that delivers our karma to us! It’s us.

Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. ~ Buddha

That’s why it is said that if you change your mind, you’ll change your karma (karmic stream, or some variation on that message, to be more precise.

To change your life [karma, karmic stream], change your attitude [mind].
<source: Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Contemplation for September 03,
2008>

Update: If karma is nothing but our own mind, then what does that tell us about those tables of consequences for virtuous and non virtuous action

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