The Karma of a Travelling Potter

While traveling to England, I am astonished at what I interpreted as a demonstration of Karma. 

To be clear, Karma itself is action of which a mental trace is left -- either virtuous, non-virtuous, or neutral. Karma can be likened to sowing seeds in a meadow which later germinate, ripen and bloom. The action creates the means by which a sentient being, because of natural proclivity, opportunity, ignorance, and cause, experiences events and feelings which they have previously initiated. It is a model which serves well in understanding addiction as well as everyday life, but still...the demonstration...

A young woman, while going through the airport security check, had noticed the grey bin ahead of hers on the roller system, contained some item left by the person ahead of her. She quickly grabbed it and ran forward, alerting the person of their temporary loss for which they were evidently pleased... A little later, I saw the young woman moving quickly on an automatic walkway and followed by an Asian woman who caught up with her, tapped her on the shoulder and gave her some item she herself had previously left.

Again, an expression of relief and thanks...

Now, maybe this was pure coincidence, but I choose to accept it as a demonstration of Karma. It increases my faith in the Buddhist model of the working of the world (samsara).

In the Tibetan Buddhist "Wheel of Life," the interrelationship of events is shown as a being progresses through the stages of existence constantly passing through the jaws of Yama, the Lord of Death. The objective of this picture analogy is to underline, not just the interrelationship of the events and states of existence, but also to underline how each one is transitory, causing the next state, and implying each as empty of inherent existence. 

One critical aspect particularly appeals to me -- just before the jaws of Yama and on the rim of the wheel, an old, blind woman is depicted walking with the aid of a stick towards death. She represents ignorance which in the Buddhist sense is ignorance of the true nature of the inherent emptiness of all things... The next picture on the rim is a potter throwing pots, some good, some bad, as this represents the throwing karma or the final action or realized feeling of a being's life which determines its future mode of existence.

One more story connecting pottery may suffice...it concerns the convention of formal letter writing, now in 2014, a lost art. The convention was to end the letter with the phrase "Your's sincerely," which I interpreted as being polite, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed, which it was, except...

Sincerely means, in the Latin, "without wax" and, although the more immediate allusion is not having wax to place ones seal on the letter, the original usage was in Roman times, to describe a good pot, good being those perfectly thrown as they could hold hot liquids, whereas imperfect pots were often plugged with wax, thus sine ceres or, without wax.