Karma

I'm going to define karma, if only for myself: karma is the intrusion of the past (and future?) onto the present.

We continue to think about the past as a way of defining ourselves and thus making ourselves more "real". If I know that I went to the store yesterday, I can locate myself in the store, and in all the events that happened in that store and around that time. But really, that store is no longer there: there is (probably) still a store located in the same position at the present moment, but that has no relevance (even if it sure as hell seems relevant). I might have scars, or blood on a shirt, or an angry wife, but none of these give a solid reality to the past, because in fact the past does not even exist. That I have an angry wife in the present is the action of karma moving in the present, but the past that caused her anger, flirtation with a waitress or an unkind word, does not exist anymore, except as karma, the shared expression of the past intruding on the present. The consequences are there, but the event is not.

This might lead to the conception that by denying the past I can escape consequences for my actions. I guess karma enforces these consequences? I'm not sure.And I have to ask if karma keeps, say, the store in existence. The Buddha ended the acquisition of karma, but he did not disappear at that moment, so is karma only mental?