a buddhist perspective

 

For something to happen, we need the right conditions. What do I mean by conditions?

To attend college, I need the right conditions: study, good grades, and money to pay the tuition. To advance in my career, I need the right conditions: hard work that places me above the average, a supervisor who values my efforts, and an ability to get along well with my fellow employees. To be reborn in the Pure Land, I need the right conditions: faith, vows, and practice.

How do we create the right conditions?

We work hard planting the right seeds.

We figure out what is the cause that will bring about the wished for condition. And then we do the hard work of planting those causes, just like we work hard at planting and then nurturing seeds if we wish to have a garden. Sure we can watch the birds dropping seeds and see seeds being blown onto our barren plot of ground, but just watching this happen won't make a garden.

We need to carefully choose and then attentively and diligently tend our seeds. We need to make sure they are safe from adverse conditions like not enough water or too much sunlight or the onslaught of hungry insects. We don't wait around for someone else to wander along and do all the planting, watering, and weeding for us because if someone else does all the work, it will become their garden. Wonderful for them, but it will leave us still without a garden.

The law of cause and effect assures us that if we plant the cause, we will have the result. There is no doubt about this. Be assured that it will happen. Exactly when, I do not know. But I do know that without planting the cause, we will not have the conditions we wish for. Also, the more causes we plant, the better our chances for quickly getting the wished-for conditions.

Question: I want to know why bad things happen to good people.  My mom is one of the most amazing and kind people that I have ever known.  She has been kind and compassionate to many people over the course of my lifetime that I have witnessed.  I want to know why she hasn't had a more pleasant life? 

Response: I am so sorry to hear about your mother's difficult life. Our current lives are the result of our past karmas. When good people suffer, they are undergoing the retribution for past misdeeds. By not complaining and trying to help others, your mother is repaying her past debts and planting the seeds for a better future lifetime. And it is possible that she has already begun to improve her life through her kindness to others. As difficult as her life has been, it might have "supposed" to have been even worse.  So her compassion to so many people may have already helped her. We just don't know.

I watched my mother suffer from loneliness in the last few years of her life and do understand your pain for your mother. One day, about a year after my mother had died, something shifted and the daughter in me realized what the nun in me had been saying for many years. All beings in samsara suffer, each in their own way. When there is life, there is suffering.

But the suffering can end. And through our devotion to our parents and our dedication to our practice, we can help ease that suffering. This is the very motivation that enables us to keep going when continuing becomes so difficult.

Before I left Indiana for this trip to Australia, I was asked about a phrase the person had read in Buddhist books, "Everything is perfect." Considering the state of the world, she was wondering how it could be possibly called "perfect."

The explanation was as she thought it might be.

Everything is perfect doesn't mean that everything is wonderful and could not be improved upon. It means that everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be. The rain is perfect because it is supposed to be raining. The sunshine is perfect because it is supposed to be cloudless day. So when it rains, I can relax and enjoy the rain; be it a soothing, gentle rain or a welcome downpour that will fill our water tanks. On sunny days, I can revel in the glorious, clear sunlight that almost glitters on the leaves of the tree outside my window.

Those two examples are fairly straightforward. But what about war? What about global warming? What about people who are starving? How can anyone possibly say these are "perfect"?

Again, perfect does not mean something is good, it means it was destined to be that way due to former thoughts, speech, and actions. As horrible as war, global warming, and starvation are, they are the appropriate consequence for the cause.

But saying the consequence fits the cause in no way means we can simply shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh well, it's their own fault." The first vow of bodhisattvas is to help all beings. Remember, the "perfect" consequence is not good, it is "appropriate." The phrase everything is perfect is said to help us understand why things have happened. As compassionate human beings, we need to try to help others. We need to find the way to end our anger, to help remove the cause of future wars. We need to live as modestly as possible to have a minimum impact on our environment. We who have more than enough need to share what we have with those who have little to help alleviate their hunger.

"Everything is perfect" can also serve to remind us that our consequences will likewise be "perfect." So if we want these consequences to be good, we need to choose our thoughts, speech, and actions wisely.  

Question: In adverse circumstances, I contrarily find it difficult to believe that I had “owed” these nasty people debts and that now all that had happened was simply a repayment.

I find it hard to believe that it was a past that is back to haunt me; a past that I can't see.

How can I see more clearly that the law of cause and effect really exists from life to life? I know that we can see the law of cause and effect in many aspects of life but surely we cannot extrapolate a universal principle thus, because of this? Could you advise?

Response: During the night of the Buddha’s enlightenment, he saw causality occurring. The boundaries of past, present, and future had dropped away and he saw the past and future as clearly as we see the present. He did not extrapolate the Dharma with it’s principles like cause and effect, he experienced them. He then encouraged us to experience them as a way to build our confidence.

As we begin to experience cause and effect in this lifetime (for example, when I am angry, I feel agitated and unsettled), we will begin to see that it also explains the consequences we are unable to link back to causes in previous lifetimes.

Initially, it is not necessary to believe in rebirth to benefit form the teaching. In fact, in the Kalama Sutra, we read how the Buddha postulated a scenario contrary to his experience—one where there is no rebirth and no karmic retribution. He did this so that those who were doubtful could still benefit from his teachings. He showed that even within such a scenario, one who remains free of greed, anger, and their resultant suffering will be truly happy!

As the Buddha showed, they do not have to accept rebirth in order to reap the benefits. Those who are free of greed, anger, and their ensuing suffering have a mind of loving-kindness, compassion, appreciation, and equanimity in this lifetime. They no longer experience greed, no longer crave the emotional high from acquiring that which is new—they simply appreciate what they already have. Craving and its shadow, disappointment, are eliminated as people become contented with their situation. 

A person who feels no anger will not feel angry or unsettled but will, instead, always feel calm and peaceful. Such a person will always be happy and at ease, and thus always be welcomed wherever he or she goes. Without craving and without anger there will be no suffering—just happiness, a lifetime of happiness. And all this can happen here and now, because even if one does not believe in rebirth, one will still benefit if one lives a life free of craving, animosity, and unhappiness.

And gradually, as one experiences the results of living in accordance with the Buddha’s teachings, one will have experienced enough to believe in what cannot yet be proven through direct experience.

In one of the Buddhist texts it is recorded that someone asked Buddha:

Why are some women ugly but rich?

Why are some women beautiful but poor?

Why are some people poor but with good health and a long life?

Why are some rich yet ill and short-lived?

The Buddha's answers were:

One who is ugly but rich was short-tempered in past lives, easily irritated and angered, but was also very generous and gave offerings to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha and made contributions to many sentient beings.

One who is beautiful but poor was, in past lives, very kind, always smiling and soft spoken, but was stingy and reluctant to make offerings or help other people.

The person who is poor but in good health and enjoying a long life was, in his or her past lives, very stingy or reluctant to make donations, but was kind to all sentient beings, did not harm or kill others, and also saved many sentient beings’ lives.

The person who is rich but often ill, or who is short-lived, was, in his or her past lives, very generous in helping others but loved hunting and killing and caused sentient beings to feel worried, insecure, and frightened.

The above examples give us some idea of why people on earth, although all human beings, vary so much in appearance, character, lifespan, health, mental ability and fate. It is even more interesting to note how much the circumstances in which a person is born can influence his or her destiny. Which race, which nation, which skin color, which era, all these factors make a great difference.

~ C.T. Shen