By our thoughts, are we creating fresh karma?

So are our thoughts a part of our karma? Well, yes and no.
Broadly speaking if we see Okay, let me start with this. I was in Australia a couple of years ago and one young man came to me and he said, I have a serious philosophical question. Okay.
He says, if I insult someone and that person does not get the insult then do I get the karma? Laughter Laughter Laughter So my first thought was that if you are aware of the principle of karma why take the risk? But what the Mahabharata says is that when you talk about right or wrong action how is it decided? There are probably three things. There is the content of the action what we do there is the intent of the action why we did it and there is the effect of the action. So right or wrong action is to be determined by these three factors.
What did we do? Why did we do it? And what was the result? So consider a doctor gives some medicine and there is a side effect when the patient’s health becomes complicated. Maybe the patient dies. Now ok the medicine was wrong and the medicine was now if it was if the patient had some complication from the past and the doctor didn’t know about it the doctor didn’t bother to know about it then the doctor would be health responsible.
But that particular medicine was contraindicative with that particular condition that is not known in the research itself. Then although the effect was bad the doctor can’t be health responsible. Medical community will try to learn and integrate that into their future treatment.
The doctor can’t be health responsible. So when you say so the idea is that each of these three are important in their own way. So now when you say something is happening at the level of thoughts that is the level of intent.
So when we think of doing something so does the intent itself make us culpable? Not immediately. The intent to do a crime is not itself a crime. But then if we intend to do a crime we do a crime and we hurt someone then it becomes the intent leads to content leads to effect then it becomes much bigger.
So the idea is that we all have a certain level of leeway given to us that by nature that the thoughts and the emotions and the desire that pop up inside us we have the capacity to keep them inside us. That’s not hypocrisy. That could be just discipline.
That could be culture. If somebody is angry with someone culture would mean that we won’t yell at that person. So we have the capacity that what is inside it might pop up inside but we can keep it inside and if we do that then we are not health responsible.
I was doing one relationship seminar and one person told me that if only I could look into this person’s mind I would understand that person and I would be able to work so much better with that person. I told him that if we could start seeing each other’s thoughts not a single relationship would be maintained. He said no.
Because we all have thoughts and emotions and desire that we are not proud of. So the intent what happens inside us we are not held karmically responsible for that. At the same time we can’t be nonchalant because what is the intent? If we keep meditating on it, it will lead to action.
As they say thought is the ancestor to the deed. So because the thought itself is a deed. That’s true at one level but that is not a deed which is consequential in a significant way beyond just inside our head.