What is Karma?

Picture "Ordinary mindness is the way" by h.koppdelaney

Here is another sample (draft) of a short book I am doing, which is moving very slowly :)

Why is this happening to me? Why was I born this way? Why am I the way I am?  There is a lot of whys in life...too many that we can possibly comprehend.  Could it really be that life is just one big random event?

According to the law of Karma, there is no such thing as a random event, everything is interrelated working like perfect clockwork, there is a reason for everything to be as it is, there is a reason for everyone to be in everyone’s life, there is learning possible from every single situation.

I really like the definition of Karma by Sri Sri Ravi Sankar, he says:
“Karma is action that results from the impressions of the mind, the action it has produced, and the new impressions it is going to produce in the mind in the future which will cause further actions."

The impressions are called Samskaras in Sanskrit, these are scripts recorded in the inner depths of our mind which governs our automatic behaviors, they also shapes our personalities. This explains why everyone has different personalities, even animals show different personalities.   

Karmas are of 3 types, stored (Sinchit), in flight (Pralabdha), future (Kriyaman)...The stored karma is like seeds that have been sowed by passed actions, in flight is the plants that have sprouted from these seeds, and future karmas, are the fruit of these plants that give more seeds. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar goes to say that we don't actually know when these seeds are going to sprout.

Why is this so important to understand?  This is important because one can understand that one is simply a product of ones own creation, through the actions one has taken in the past. Now if we understand this, we can take steps in creating karma’s that are more beneficial to us, live with them with a certain level of acceptance, and rise above them.