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Broken watches = karma?
Here is a strange tale of two sisters and two broken watches.
I am fairly new to Buddhist practice and wonder if this is a good example of karma.
I recently had a very odd experience which began at Christmas and ended yesterday with two broken watches and I thought I would share.
On Christmas day my in-laws gave my partner and myself matching watches and my sister in-law and her husband watches that did not match, but were very nice watches none the less. Strangely and without and coordination almost all of the gifts exchanged were either a watch or a clock.
My sister in-law, a woman in her 40's, made a bid deal out of the fact that her sister and I got matching watches that she thought were much nicer than hers and before my partner could try hers on my sister in-law grabbed it and tried it on and wore it for a while and basically made a fool of herself for the next two hours about how much she liked the watch and that it should have been given to her.
She even went so far as to hand the watch she received back to her step-mother and ask for it to be exchanged for one like that which was given to her sister and I.
Naturally my partner and I talked about this privately after the dinner and we talked at length about her sister's jealousy and the spectacle she made of herself and how rude and immature we felt she was.
We decided that next time we saw her we would make sure we were both wearing our matching watches.
This past Saturday we got together for an important family dinner and in the middle of the dinner we both held up our watches and asked, "what time is it", holding out our watches for all to see. My brother in-law says to my partner, "I don't know but you watch is broken". Sure enough a screw had come out and the watch band had come off from the watch housing.
Yesterday I was wearing my watch and I caught it on the side of a laundry hamper and it came apart and broke in the same spot.
A jeweler told us that to get the watches fixed would be next to impossible. They were purchased overseas and can't be returned.
I have been trying to live mindfully and practice living dharma but in this case it was easy to fall prey to my own ego and failings. Lesson learned.
Given our reaction to the sisters actions and a lack of compassion and equanimity towards her do you think the two broken watches is the result karma?
I am fairly new to Buddhist practice and wonder if this is a good example of karma.
I recently had a very odd experience which began at Christmas and ended yesterday with two broken watches and I thought I would share.
On Christmas day my in-laws gave my partner and myself matching watches and my sister in-law and her husband watches that did not match, but were very nice watches none the less. Strangely and without and coordination almost all of the gifts exchanged were either a watch or a clock.
My sister in-law, a woman in her 40's, made a bid deal out of the fact that her sister and I got matching watches that she thought were much nicer than hers and before my partner could try hers on my sister in-law grabbed it and tried it on and wore it for a while and basically made a fool of herself for the next two hours about how much she liked the watch and that it should have been given to her.
She even went so far as to hand the watch she received back to her step-mother and ask for it to be exchanged for one like that which was given to her sister and I.
Naturally my partner and I talked about this privately after the dinner and we talked at length about her sister's jealousy and the spectacle she made of herself and how rude and immature we felt she was.
We decided that next time we saw her we would make sure we were both wearing our matching watches.
This past Saturday we got together for an important family dinner and in the middle of the dinner we both held up our watches and asked, "what time is it", holding out our watches for all to see. My brother in-law says to my partner, "I don't know but you watch is broken". Sure enough a screw had come out and the watch band had come off from the watch housing.
Yesterday I was wearing my watch and I caught it on the side of a laundry hamper and it came apart and broke in the same spot.
A jeweler told us that to get the watches fixed would be next to impossible. They were purchased overseas and can't be returned.
I have been trying to live mindfully and practice living dharma but in this case it was easy to fall prey to my own ego and failings. Lesson learned.
Given our reaction to the sisters actions and a lack of compassion and equanimity towards her do you think the two broken watches is the result karma?
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Comments
Its just the rule of cause and effect.
Example,
Cause: You hit your watch against the laundry hamper.
Effect: Your watch broke
So, in that sense, karma did indeed break your watch.
But im sure someone else out there has a much better explanation/answer on the topic.
Remember Kamma is as a result of intentional or volitional action.
Whether this is as a direct result, I don't know, any more than you do.
but I guess it could be taken as a lesson learnt, huh......?
The conditions of your rebirth are determined by the imprints you have set and the conditions you encounter in your life are determined by those imprints. For instance, if you untruthful, the result of those imprints is that others do not believe what you say.
After the tsunami in Indonesia a few years back, someone asked the teacher about the karmas of those who were in the tsunami area. The teacher said that an individual's karma does not determine whether or not they are in a natural disaster, but, rather, their karma determines how they fare in the face of that disaster.
It would appear that outer events are not always a result of karma.