Kamma?

[richard_rca]

Can someone remind me what the definition of wholesome and unwholesome intentions are and how they are known and differentiated? Thanks!

[hermitwin]

since we have a past that we dont remember,
we cant know whether it is karma or not.
the important thing is to try our best not to create
more bad karma. and to create good karma.

[daverupa]

Can someone remind me what the definition of wholesome and unwholesome intentions are and how they are known and differentiated? Thanks!

I think that any action tied up with greed, hatred, and delusion is unwholesome, while non-greed, non-hate, non-delusion are wholesome. MN 73 talks about this.

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Let me just give you another example. Simple one a car accident. I'm not talking about the cessation to be free from accident.

I'm not sure how you see the analogy working, unfortunately.

[steve19800]

Generally, can we say that something unavoidable is our kamma. If you try your best to avoid thing but they still happen for you to suffer for example.
There are many causes and conditions which form a circumstance for a person to experience. Like you said even just as simple as crossing the road, it involves a lot of things for things to happen. Many causes and conditions form into one situation or one incident so to speak. Causes and conditions themselves are kamma.

I am not a Buddhist expert but I believe there are many levels of kamma. One action leads to a result and causes further results and actions. And they all are dependent to each other. Most of the time what people called kamma is what they believe as the final result or the climax of an incident. ...

That is not how kamma is defined, in buddhist context. The 'final result' is caused by (many independent) actions, most action had an intention (kamma).

(sidenote: something to ponder about, is there anything, that is really unavoidable ?)

Yes, definitely there is. But not everyone's unavoidability is different.

By being mindful I think we will be able to tell ourselves whether something happening is the result of our own action or just a mere carelessness.

Getting closer. By being mindful on our intention, we can be (more) aware on the consequences of our actions, before we initiate them.

We can not foresee all/every consequence of our actions, but we can begin to see that some intentions, most likely leads to (generally) more suffering, and some leads to less suffering. The more mindful we get, the better we get to "guess" the overall result of a given action.

In other words, our kamma (intention) is like planting seeds, that will grow into consequences (once/many) at some point(s) in the future. Mindfulness is a tool, that gives us a pointer, so that we can avoid planting "bad" seeds, before intention initiates action.

I would recommend a podcast, that once helped me a lot, with understanding (the buddhist way of seeing) kamma:
http://diamondpath.blogspot.dk/2006_08_01_archive.html
Episode 7. I do know that the "source" isn't Theravada, but it explains kamma in layman-terms, in a very easy language.

_/\_

Thanks for the link Doshin, will listen to that later.