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Five Basic Rules of Karma (Causality)
- Alex Chen
- 2 hours ago
- 9 min read
What goes around comes around…right?
But have you ever noticed that when we do good deeds, we don’t always get good rewards? For example, we treat someone nice, but they don’t treat us nice in return? Or people who are immoral have a lot of good fortune and lucky breaks? Does that mean karma is superstition?
I used to have these doubts, but after learning about karma, or more formally the law of causality, in more depth, my doubts have been answered. Once we truly understand and believe in causality, it is quite freeing and empowering. We know that by being a good and moral person and by accumulating good deeds, our life will definitely become better and better. When we actually do it, we will see results, which then fuels our faith and motivation even more.
A lecture that really helped me to understand the law of causality is "Causality Education Saves People's Hearts" by Venerable Master Jing Kong. The lecture is in Chinese, but I will summarize the key points in this article.
At the very beginning, Venerable Jing Kong emphasizes the importance of karma education by saying,
“How can we save people from creating negative karma? How can we save this turbulent society? There is nothing more effective than to promote the education of causality.”
He then says that to promote education on causality, we must understand these five basic rules of causality:
Cause and effect happen at different times
Cause and effect run through three time periods
Small causes lead to big results
Good and bad karma do not offset each other
Causality is eternal; karmic seeds never deteriorate
1: Cause and Effect Happen at Different Times
Karma or causality is analogous to planting a fruit tree. After we plant a seed (the cause), it takes time for the seed to reach fruit (the result); it’s not going to be immediate. Moreover, it takes proper conditions, such as sunlight and water, for the seed to grow and fruit. Furthermore, an apple seed will definitely reap apples, while a pear seed will definitely reap pears; there's no way an apple seed would reap pears or a pear seed would reap apples. All of this is the same for karmic seeds.
If we do a good deed now and immediately receive a good reward, the reward is not a result of the good deed we did recently, but rather the result of good karmic seeds from our past. Our current good deed was a “helping condition” to help that past seed fruit good results for us faster.
If we do good deeds now but receive bad retributions, it does not mean our good deeds will not produce good results. It means that our past bad karmic seed has now matured and appeared first. However, the good deeds we do now will act as a “barrier-condition” to lessen the bad retributions from that bad cause. If we weren’t doing good deeds now, the bad retribution would be even worse. This is the intricate relationship between cause, condition, and effect.
Many people do not believe in causality because they don’t understand this foundational principle. They see people committing sins and still enjoying good fortune, or they see good people who live in poverty and indignity. They then conclude that there is no punishment for immoral deeds and no rewards for good deeds.
In reality, the people who are committing sins right now yet still enjoying good fortune must have accumulated great goodness in their past lives, and their fortune has not been used up yet. After their fortune is depleted, the dreadful retributions will appear. The law of causality will never go wrong.
(For people who grew up in the western world, such as myself, we might think reincarnation is woo-woo, fake, non-scientific superstition. That was certainly the case with me. A book that changed my mind is “The Scientific Proof of Reincarnation” by Dr. Zhong Maosen. I won’t go into detail about it in this article, but you can read my book summary here. Another insightful story here.)
2: Cause and Effect Run Through Three Time Periods
The three time periods are past, present, and future. Buddhism teaches:
"If you want to know your past lives, look into your present conditions. If you want to know your future lives, look into your present actions."
Buddhism also explains that giving results in receiving:
Giving wealth results in gaining wealth in the future.
Giving knowledge and wisdom results in intelligence and wisdom in the future.
Giving fearlessness and peace-of-mind results in health and longevity in the future.
For example, if we suffer poverty and illness in this lifetime, we must have committed the karma of miserliness and killing in past lifetimes. If we are wealthy, we must have given a lot of wealth to help others in past lives.
There are four types of retributions based on when the retribution manifests:
Current life retribution*: The cause is planted in this life, and the result is received in this life.
Next Life Retribution: The karmic seeds planted in this lifetime will beget retribution in the next life. This is the most common phenomenon.
Later Lives Retribution: The karma seeds planted in this lifetime will beget retribution in the third, fourth, or even later lifetimes.
Uncertain Time Retribution: The karma seeds planted in this lifetime can receive retribution in any lifetime depending on what conditions you encounter.
*For current life retributions, this happens when we create tremendously large good or evil (immoral) karma, hence we receive the result in this life. The book Liao Fan’s Four Lessons talks about this kind of situation, proving that we can change our karma in our current lifetime. The result in this life is called the “flower-retribution.” It is like flowers blooming before a plant bears fruit. The real karmic effect is in future lives, and the magnitude of the “fruit-retribution” will be even greater.
3: Small Causes Lead to Big Results
A small watermelon seed buried in the dirt will grow into many big watermelons, each of which is full of many more watermelon seeds, which can then produce many more watermelons. The same is true for karmic seeds. There is a proverb that goes,
“Give one and beget ten thousand in return.”
Example 1: One Sincere Act of Goodness Results in Huge Karmic Rewards
A servant was taking some spoiled food out of the house to dump. When she stepped outside, she saw the solemn and magnificent demeanor of the Buddha. Her heart gave rise to deep and profound respect. She wanted to make an offering to the Buddha, but all she had was the spoiled food in her hand. Just as she hesitated, the Buddha began to smile and emit light. He came over and happily used His bowl to scoop some of the spoiled food from the old woman’s hands.
The Buddha turned His head and told his attendant, Anada, “This woman is wholeheartedly devout. Because of the merit of her sincere offering to a Buddha, in the future, she will have fifteen kalpas*, such a long time, to enjoy happiness in heaven. And after the fifteenth kalpas, she would descend into the human realm where she would have the karmic condition of being a monk.”
(*A kalpha is an unimaginably long time. There isn’t one definition for kalpha, but at the low estimate, it would be 16 million years, while at the high estimate it would be 1.3 trillion years.)
Example 2: A Single Immoral Act Results in Tragic Retributions for Kalpas
One of the Buddha’s students was named Maudgalyāyana. In a past life, he tried to kill his blind parents. He pretended that some robbers came, and then he started to brutally beat his parents. Unexpectedly, his parents did not call on him to save them, but shouted for their son to run for his life. He was so moved by his parents’ unconditional love that his conscience returned. He then knelt down and repented for his wrongdoings.
Due to this negative karma of intending to kill his own parents, his life was shortened. That was the flower-retribution. The fruit-retribution came after. In the next life, he fell into the torturous hell realm for a very long time. After leaving hell, he still had to endure the misery of the hungry ghost realm and then the animal realm. When he finally reincarnated as a human, he was brutally beaten until his bones were pulverized into pieces for 500 lifetimes.
This story illustrates why awakened beings like Buddhas and Bodhisattvas fear the cause, while deluded mortals only fear the result. When awakened beings receive bad retribution, they know it is brought about by past negative karma. But when deluded mortals receive bad retributions, they commit more evil, such as becoming angry or cheating others in an attempt to benefit themselves. This then creates more negative karma, and each life gets worse and worse.
4: Good and Bad Karma Do Not Offset Each Other
Good and bad karmic seeds cannot offset each other. When the conditions are in place, each seed will have its own result.
However, good and bad seeds can affect each other. Planting good seeds now is an “assisting condition” to the previous good karma we have planted; it will increase the effect of good results. It also serves as a “buffering condition” to past bad karma and weaken the bad effect. Conversely, doing immoral deeds now will strengthen the influence of past bad karma and weaken the effect of past good karma.
5: Causality is eternal; karmic seeds never deteriorate
The karmic seeds of good and evil are stored in what’s called our Alaya consciousness (Alaya-vijnana). These seeds will never be lost nor deteriorate. When the conditions are in place, the seeds will fruit into karmic reward or retribution.
Therefore, as long as we are within the six realms of reincarnation, we can never escape karmic retributions. That is why only deluded mortals dare to create bad karma. Awakened beings dare not create bad karma because they understand that the retribution of causality is exceedingly exact.
Quantum Physics Also Supports Karma
Something else that helped me believe in karma is quantum physics. The essence of karma education is to teach us to be good people and accumulate good deeds in order to gain fortune. We can broadly categorize karma into three categories: action, speech, and thoughts.
For example, when we give someone a gift, they will want to give us a gift back in the future. That is the karma from our good action. When we praise others, others will want to praise us back in the future. That is the karma from our good speech. These two examples are fairly easy to accept.
But even our thoughts have karma. When we constantly hold kind thoughts to help others, we actually attract kind people to our lives. After all, our thoughts determine our actions and speech, so a person who has a kind heart will accumulate good actions and speech, thus creating good karma.
But quantum physics has proven that just thoughts alone can influence our reality. That’s because our physical world is actually made up of energy. If you take an atom and keep splitting it smaller and smaller, you get protons, electrons, quarks, neutrinos, until finally, just energy (electromagnetic waves). In other words, the basis for our physical world is non-physical energy.
Moreover, our thoughts and emotions are energy. Everyone has an electromagnetic energy field around their body, and it is determined by our thoughts and emotions. Our thoughts are electric and our emotions are magnetic.
From the picture, we can see that elevated emotions such as compassion, joy, and gratitude are high energy, while low emotions like greed, fear, and stress are low energy. Higher energy states attract a better reality, while lower energy states attract a worse reality. In other words, a kind heart actually attracts fortune, while an immoral heart attracts misfortune. When we understand this, we will be much more careful about our thoughts and intentions, and cultivate a kind and virtuous heart.
Conclusion
Broadly speaking, karma can be split into our actions, speech, and thoughts. Whatever we do or say to others, it will come back to us once the conditions are ripe. Even our thoughts have karma, as quantum physics has proven that elevated emotions attract fortune, while negative emotional states attract misfortune.
When we understand karma, we understand that all our current fortune and misfortune are created by our past karma, and all our future fortune and misfortune can be created starting today. If we want a better future, we have to understand that being a good person and accumulating good deeds will definitely lead to a better life sooner or later. Once we believe this, we will be willing to act. After doing it for a while, we will definitely see results, which then fuels our belief and action more.
Weekly Wisdom #384
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