DISCOVERING BUDDHISM: All About Karma (REVIEW)

(HYBRID) Discover how karmic cause and effect functions, and explore ways to become adept at dealing with life most effectively and thereby take control of your future. Put in place all the causes for happiness, and implement practices to purify negative karma. This module aims to introduce you to the Buddhist concept of Karma, or internal cause and effect, and what it means to take personal responsibility. Using examples from everyday life we will analyse how our actions determine their results and cause us to experience either happiness or suffering.

Karma is not just a belief system, but a natural law of existence that operates whether you believe in it or not. The teachings on karma are independent of belief. Just like gravity, karmic results happen naturally through the constant flow of your physical and mental energy—karma means cause and effect, representing the continuous energy of your body, speech, and mind.

Everything comes from the mind: Your daily experiences of happiness or suffering are reflections of your past positive or negative thoughts and intentions. Even a tiny positive or negative action can grow into massive future results, much like a tiny seed growing into a huge tree.

Discover effective tools to accumulate merit – the cause of happiness and success – and purify mistaken actions done in the past with the Four Opponent Powers. Using practices like prostrations or Vajrasattva recitation we can clear past negative imprints before they mature into suffering, and view difficult life situations as opportunities to exhaust past negative karma rather than sources of despair.

Topics Include:

• Understanding Karma through the four principles of karma
• Ten non-virtuous actions and their results
• Four parts of a karmic deed that makes it complete or only partial
• How the practice of rejoicing doubles our merit and inspires our mind
• Importance of motivation and how to make every action meaningful
• Four opponent powers and their relation to the four karmic results
• The six methods of purification
• Merit as the source of all happiness, success and realisations
• The practice of patience, since anger destroys all merit

Discover effective tools to accumulate merit – the cause of happiness and success – and purify mistaken actions done in the past with the Four Opponent Powers. In addition, explore ways to become adept at dealing with life most effectively to thereby take control of your future.