The teachings of Ajahn Suchart.
Question: Is it true that a situation or an event that happens in your life is due to your kamma?
Than Ajahn: It’s a combination of many other factors besides kamma; the economic situation is not caused by your kamma; the war or the physical situation is usually not caused by your kamma, but by the nature of the world that we live in. The world experiences changing conditions, changing natural forces, like the wind or the heat. So, there are different kinds of situations and those are not part of your kamma.
Kamma is something that directly deal with you, like how you react to the situation—this can be caused by your kamma. If you have good kamma, you will react to the situation in a good way. If you have bad kamma, you will react badly. For instance, when you are in a situation that you are starving and you need food, if you have good kamma, you won’t steal or do other kinds of bad kamma to solve the problems.
This is what kamma is. It’s how you react to the situation that you are in. In certain situation, different people will react differently: some people might react by doing bad kamma, some people might react by not doing bad kamma. Like if you have no job and no food to eat, you can either go steal or you can go become a monk. If you used to become a monk, you’d say, ‘It’s easy for me to become a monk, so I’d go and become a monk then I’d have plenty of food to eat.’ But if you used to steal in your past lives, you would react the same way with how you did it before, you’d steal to overcome starvation instead of becoming a monk. So, it depends on how you solve the problems in the situation you were in—this is your kamma. And this will follow you in this life and in the next life. But you can change your kamma. If you used to steal, but now you tell yourself, ‘This is not good. Maybe this time I should work for food instead of stealing, I should work for money,’ then you change your kamma. So, instead of stealing like you used to do, in your next life, you will not steal anymore, you will go to work. This is what kamma is that affects your mind.
- - -
Question: So, it doesn’t affect where you’re going to be born.
Than Ajahn: No, you cannot choose where you want to be born. You can generally choose it. The Buddha said that the effect of good kamma will give you a good rebirth; you might be born and live in a good and wealthy family. But if you did bad kamma, you might be born in a poor family. This good or bad kamma can have effect on your rebirth, but you cannot pinpoint exactly where you want to be born. You can’t pinpoint that you’d want to be the son of the founder of Microsoft. But generally, your good kamma will make you be reborn in a better situation than if you have bad kamma.
“Dhamma in English, Jan 12, 2019.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
Latest Dhamma talks on Youtube:
No comments:
Post a Comment