Karma is Currency

Hello fellow sentient being! I am going to refer to you as a sentient being and not a human because it is quite possible that a non-human sentient being will be reading this. The following is my autobiography of life as an iron ore. No, let me rephrase that, I meant to say that it is my autobiography which will be very useful to all of you. Yes, that sounds more pleasant.

So…

Chapter One…

I had something to say about it…

I think…

Oh well, whatever, lets start with the autobiography, the rest is not nearly as important.

So first! I was formerly a block of iron ore in a mine. You see, during my life as iron ore I performed the brilliant task of keeping the mountain together. I was part of its structural roots and upheld its dignity! From this I gained lots of good karma. Don't worry, I will get back to why karma is important later. Since the chapter is titled, Karma is Currency.

ANYWAYS, what is important is that all the good karma I had accumulated up till that point was ruined because of a certain someone, or something. You see, opposite me, a few meters away was another fellow. It was also Iron ore. I refer to it as an it and not as a he or she because I don't think we iron ores have gender.

Anyhow, that was another digression. So it ruined my good karma in the following manner.

A foolish human who was what you refer to as a blacksmith came walking by. That stupid little piece of Iron ore went all like, "Hey there human! I see you have been forging bronze for tools. I am a piece of iron and I am sturdier, more pliable and can help you forge longer lasting tools, come over here and dig me up and use me as your forging ingredient!"

Now you see, it would have been fine if that stupid little thing had just turned itself in because it had no karma to accumulate since it had reached the surface. However it ended up ruining my life along with its own, Damn it!

"Seeing what a brilliant hoe you have forged my body into, let me award you blacksmith," it said, "in the location you found me, there are many other pieces of iron ore which you could go and mine!"

When I found myself dug up due to this traitor I couldn't help but shout in the iron ore language, "You damn Hoe!" Yes, I shouted hoe, not whore. At that time the word hadn't been invented yet. Don't worry, in one of my later reincarnations, I invented it.

What? You think I'm spiteful? Psshhh...

Anyways, now you are probably wondering how I managed to lose all my good karma. I mean I had been performing the sacred duty of upholding the mountain for thousands of year, so how could I lose all of my good karma so easily? Well it was because a certain hoe was advertising the usage of my fellow ores and I as good spear heads! It was like that hoe was trying to ruin our good karma!

Thus we were turned into killing weapons and used for the slaughter of human lives. That is how we lost all of our good karma from thousands of years in mere centuries, meanwhile that stupid hoe was accumulating massive amounts of it. It helped farmers farm and provided food for you humans to expand all the way till the day that stupid hoe died!

That's right, the farmer who was using it accidentally broke it apart and was too lazy to go fix it, so he just buried it in the ground and that stupid hoe rusted away! However because I had accumulated way too much bad karma, I also broke and was left to rust away. Hence we both died.

Now this is where the karma comes in.

When we arrived in the netherworld we were introduced to the Netherworld king. He has the sole job of ushering those who haven't achieved nirvana back into the Samsara cycle.

What's the Samsara cycle you ask? Simply put it is the cycle of death and rebirth and then death again. To get yourself a good future life, one must accumulate good karma in their current life. You see, in order to be born as a rich man's son, you need to have enough good karma and pay the price. If you have enough karma, you can request to be reborn as a Buddha, which will allow you to accumulate all the karma you just spent so you can repeat this cycle. Thus, the 666 great Buddhas today that are universe hopping. I'm sure you know of at least one of them.

Hey, I heard that. No, no, no and no! I did not go around saying that 6 was the number of the devil. Why would you even think that? Just because some of those Buddha's were being a******* to me? Nah, I don't have the free time to be so spiteful. Yes, being spiteful doesn't exactly hurt anyone so the loss in good karma is rather negligible unless you start a rumor that ruins the livlihood of other beings. i.e. saying eating turtles makes you immortal and hence the turtles get hunt down unnecessarily, or telling people that drinking mercury will make them immortal and the chief financial officer of the kingdom dies from methyl mercury consumption.

Back to the topic in discussion! Karma is measured in karma units, at my peak I had accumulated 5,000 karma units. However because I was killing humans as a spear head I was left at a measly 200 karma units, whilst that little hoe had over 7,000 karma units because of its great ability as a god damned Hoe!!!!!

It was then, that I swore my eternal vengeance upon that damned block of metal. Well, I am referring to it, and not me don't confuse us just because we were both blocks of metal.

However this damned bastard was not happy with his 7,000 karma units. Instead it chose to instigate me!

I paid 100 of my karma units to be reincarnated as grass. A harmless blade of grass which provides oxygen for you humans.

But it… Oh that damned hoe decided to save 6,800 karma units and by paying 200 it reincarnated itself as a dandelion! A weed!

When we were reincarnated, it ended up growing right next to me! I worked so hard to photosynthesize and release as much oxygen as I could, but it wouldn't let me. It quickly outgrew me and flowered!!! Damn it, it flowered. Not only did it use its massive leaves to put shade over me so I couldn't photosynthesize, it even let itself be plucked by a little girl and got karma units for providing happiness!

I knew then, that our enmity was going to be irreconcilable…