Zen Blog Vimala Sangha

discussion of Karma on this interesting Zen blog:

The word karma literally means 'action' in Sanskrit, and what is important for Buddhist practice, and for liberation from our fixed patterns of behavior, is not what happened in the past, but what we are doing right now--the action or energy we are creating and moving forward into the next moment. Either we are consciously or unconsciously replicating the patterns we have learned, or we are acting in a way that is aware of and free from them--action that is responding to what is actually happening, rather than what our assumptions impel us to believe is happening. Meditation practice is the most direct way to become aware of these patterns