The Claim That a Karmic Result Must Return to Me
People commonly say that the result of the karma I create must return to me. Today I want to say that this claim is a lie. Why is it a lie? Because it contradicts dependent origination.
Suppose we think Chun Doo-hwan committed tremendously evil acts, yet he appears to have lived happily and died without receiving any significant punishment. Many people then say that he could not simply have died and that he must pay the price in his next life. Such a thought may offer emotional comfort. We cannot, however, observe what result he receives in another life. It makes no sense to push the result into an unobservable afterlife and demand belief in it.
Blaming a Past Life Prevents Us from Seeing Present Suffering
The claim that someone lives in hardship now because of some wrongdoing in a past life also cannot be confirmed or observed. When we are bound by that thought, we stop helping people in the real world. If we believe that poor or suffering people are receiving the result of evil acts committed in a past or present life, we may conclude that there is no reason to feel compassion for them or help them.
The idea that the result of my wrongdoing comes only to me is extremely childish, non-Buddhist, and contrary to dependent origination. If I slap someone, the very slap I delivered does not return directly to my own cheek. The result of my action is affected by countless things, so I cannot know in what form it will return. Because the world is constituted through relationships, we cannot precisely predict the result of an action.
Results Change Within Countless Relationships
A small event on the other side of the earth may have no effect, or various coincidences and conditions may overlap until it grows like a typhoon. This is because everything operates within relationships. As the saying goes, a person may devise a plan, but cannot know whether it will be fulfilled. No matter what I plan or how hard I work, I cannot guarantee that it will unfold as intended.
It may comfort me to believe that because I did a good deed, something good must eventually return to me. When someone who did evil lives well and dies happily, it may also comfort me to imagine that the person will go to a bad place in the next life. But that is only imagination. There is no guarantee that a result will return in the form I expect.
Why We Must Help One Another
If descendants of independence activists are living in hardship today, we must help them. If we think their ancestors made great sacrifices and did good, so the descendants will automatically receive a good karmic result, we reach the conclusion that there is no need to care. If we believe that refugees or people struggling in our own society suffer because of past wrongdoing, we may likewise say there is no need to help them. But the world does not work that way.
We live within relationships. When social conditions go wrong, individual effort may not produce the intended result. Someone may borrow money to open a business and try to live diligently, only to have the coronavirus pandemic arrive; no matter how hard or virtuously the person lives, the business may fail. We cannot attribute that to karma from a past life. My action may affect a result, but not everything happens because of my karma alone, and a result does not return to me one hundred percent unchanged.
A Karmic Result Does Not Return Unchanged
A small good deed may return as enormous help, while a small bad deed may grow into something immense. Conversely, even when I have committed a grave wrong, the other person may embrace and soothe me with generosity and a spirit of sacrifice. If I stab someone, yet that person responds by embracing me with love, how can we say the result returned in exactly the same form as the act?
The claim that karmic results return unchanged assumes that every other influence is irrelevant, that if I do good something good must happen to me, and that if I do evil I must be punished. Yet the universe, moon, sun, air, water, wind, trees, microorganisms, people, society, and family all affect one another. How could a result return unchanged? Such a claim contradicts dependent origination.
An Idea That Also Contradicts Impermanence and Not-Self
There is no independent and unchanging ‘I’ that exists without any relation to anything else. This is not-self. Nothing unchanging exists; everything changes continually, and we do not know when or how it will change. This is impermanence. The thought that karma and its result must return to the agent in a fixed form is the opposite of impermanence and not-self.
In a dependently originated world, causes and results exist, but a result is not determined by a single cause. Even when a seed is planted, it may sprout or it may not. A cause exists, but other conditions affect one another. Karmic cause and effect therefore do not reach me one hundred percent exactly as people imagine. Moreover, bringing in an unobservable next life and rebirth and declaring that I will receive the result then is neither Buddhist, consistent with dependent origination, nor scientific; it is a childish and fragmentary way of thinking.
Do Not Believe It Just Because It Is Written in a Book
I want to tell those who teach Buddhism that if they are to serve as teachers, they must see the world as it is and judge it properly. We must not believe something simply because it is written in a book. Nor should we accept excuses added to preserve karma and rebirth, such as saying that the result does not always return immediately but returns much later.
A system of karma and rebirth requires someone to judge good and bad karma. Who decides whether catching a single mosquito is good or evil? Was Yi Sun-sin’s sinking of thousands of Japanese sailors a good act or a bad act? Who makes that judgment and assigns the karmic result? We must look at the world rationally. Buddhism is not something we can believe without thinking.
Distinguishing the Core of Buddhism from Stories Mixed into It
Only when we look at things as they are with a critical mind can we find the pearl-like core among the many novel-like stories. Stories that do not fit the core of Buddhism, lies and fictions that do not fit not-self, impermanence, and dependent origination, may have entered Buddhism for various reasons. Whether they entered for propagation or for the ordinary people of that time, those who learn Buddhism now must distinguish what is core from what is fiction.
Observable Facts as the Standard
To gain that discernment, we must take observable facts as our standard. Even teachings attributed to the Buddha must be examined to see whether they accord with facts that can be observed. We must ask whether we will believe a story insistently claiming that invisible clothes exist, or stories about the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, other heavens, Mara, Sakka, and asuras.
Using observable results and contents as our standard, we must examine the Buddha’s words, observe again for ourselves, and look back at ourselves. We must see what I cling to, what kind of existence I cling to, and whether I properly understand impermanence, not-self, and dependent origination. We must break free from superstition that believes in unobservable myths and fictions.
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