Parshat Vayikra, (Leviticus 4:1-4:26)-3/6/14

I'm a little perplexed by how one breaks a commandment unintentionally. In Buddhism we say that karma is intentional action. Unintentionally, no karma is produced.

If I drop an air conditioner out of a window while installing it and kill someone, is that a sin?
Or is it simply an unfortunate accident.

And how does an entire community sin unintentionally? Perhaps one could say that acting unintentionally is sinning. I do not know. Marrying your mother and killing your father is perhaps a sin, even if unintentionally done.

I think being unintentional is perhaps a sin when mindfulness would be more appropriate.

In any case, I'm stuck on the air conditioner image.

I found this good explanation about the various degrees of sin: http://www.jewishpress.com/judaism/parsha/making-sense-of-the-sin-offering/2012/03/22/ It suggests that we are always responsible for the results of our actions, as we are responsible for the actions of everyone in our community. We could have done more.

Freud said there are no accidents. Did he get this from his Jewish background, even though he wasn't directly instructed in the Torah? On the other side, the Talmud does refer to accidents, saying that it is not a sin if you (unintentionally) fall out of a tree into a woman. The moral of this is that I need to stay away from branches that are thin or rotten (or both).