Karma

Well, of course, in Asia in general, I mean, the idea is here we are in the status of life which we find ourselves and things happen and often not because we have manufactured their happening, they just happen. And so for some people things go very easily, some people things are very difficult and it isn't necessarily because of our particular contribution in this lifetime, things just happen. So therefore there are basically three reasons why we might think that is so. Why do things happen? Why do bad things happen to good people?

Why do good things happen to bad people? And why do things happen in general? So one idea is that things just happen, right? This is the materialistic stand, things happen so we should try to just deal with it the best we can and bad luck, some people have horrible times throughout their life, some people seem to be riding on the cloud, it's just the luck of the draw, how the coin flips. So that's one, that's a very widespread view nowadays.

I mean, the secular idea that there's no reason why things happen, they just happen. Then there is the theistic religious view that there is a creator outside of ourselves who has ordained what's going to happen to us, who is pulling all the strings. And how we respond to that, whatever he decides is going to happen to us at the end of the game, we're going to be judged by that. So only he in his omnipotent wisdom can work out who is going to go down and who is going to go up considering the varied experiences that all the beings on this earth experience. So that is the theistic view that it's all in the hands of God.

And then the Buddhist view, Buddhism being non-theistic, they believe that everything comes together because of our past actions, our intentional actions of body, speech and mind since beginningless time that we all are being recycled. It's very Ivan environmentally correct. We are all endlessly being recycled. Nothing is ever thrown away. And so therefore what happens to us is the result of causes and conditions which we ourselves have created in this lifetime or in past lifetimes.

So since we've had so many infinite lifetimes, we have done just about everything, good, bad and indifferent. And we can never tell when those those seeds will come sprouting up. When the causes and the conditions come together for those seeds to rise, they will rise. So therefore the whole question is not so much what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us, because how we respond will be creating future seeds. So we are moment to moment eating up our past and at the same time creating our future.

So this from a Buddhist perspective is why sometimes bad things happen to very good people and good things happen to bad people. It's not just this lifetime, but we have to see the whole picture. So this is the idea of karma. And it's not that we can choose. People also have the idea nowadays in the West that we choose our rebirth unless we die consciously and go into a state, as I say, of this tuk-dum of meditation at the time of death.

We have no choice over how we get reborn. It will be in accordance with our own past deeds, our karma. Otherwise why would so many people selflessly choose to be reborn in such helpless and hopeless conditions which encourages them to make further bad karma? It wouldn't make sense.