Karma, as the Buddha said, is intention. Where are you going to see it? You have to see it in the present moment. When you’re looking in the present moment, that’s the main thing you want to look for.

"All too often, the Buddha’s teachings on karma are viewed as a holdover from his culture — that without really thinking, he just picked up an assumption that everybody else shared and tacked it on to his teaching. The reason people say this is because they don’t want to have to take on the teaching in karma — which is a shame, because it’s central to the Buddha’s teaching. As he said, it’s the beginning of right view, and it’s totally in line with his teachings on the four noble truths.

If you check through the Canon, you find there are only two sets of teachings that he says are categorical, in other words, true across the board. One is the distinction between skillful and unskillful action — the word here is “karma” — and the fact that skillful actions should be developed, and unskillful ones abandoned. The other categorical teaching is the four noble truths. And the two teachings are connected.

Craving is an unskillful action because it leads to suffering; all the other factors that lead to craving are unskillful, too. As for the factors of the path, they’re skillful karma. And skillful karma exists on two levels: a skillful karma that keeps you going around in the cycle of rebirth, but in a pleasant way; and then the very skillful karma that takes you out of the cycle — the whole point being that the really important thing in your life is what you’re doing.

This is why we meditate. Karma, as the Buddha said, is intention. Where are you going to see it? You have to see it in the present moment. When you’re looking in the present moment, that’s the main thing you want to look for."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An Issue of Control"

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