Tend Your Garden Well

The concept of karma is easy to embrace when things go well. It's quite another thing to embrace the concept of karma when things go badly. It's much easier to believe that good things happen to us because we did good in the past. It is much harder to believe that something bad is happening because we failed to take care of others.

A recent conversation I had with someone with whom I work went from bad to worse quickly. Within moments, a small difference of opinion blew so out of proportion that it was as if the conversation got swept up into a whirling sandstorm. At first I was bewildered by this. How did the conversation go so wrong? How did a simple issue become so complicated? But then, I realized that this was karma playing out. I was experiencing someone not really listening to me, over-reacting, being defensive and misinterpreting what I was saying. The worst thing I could do was get annoyed and harden my position. Although this was my natural reaction, it would have created a mental imprint to have a similar conversation in the future. Instead, the best thing to do was to listen carefully, validate my colleague's feelings, and soften. By doing so, I hope I sowed different seeds for the future.

This is the best we can do. We can't change what is happening or how we feel in the present moment. But we can control how we react, and try to plant better seeds for a better future. In the same moment that a karmic seed ripens, we are planting a new seed in our minds for the future. Don't plant weeds.