Each of us is fortunate to have a healthy body, an intelligent mind, a nice family, good teachers, and to be able to learn and practice Dharma. Does everyone have such good fortune? No. Some people don’t have all of these things. Many people are suffering with illness, poverty, worry, unhappiness, bad environment, problems in the family, abuse, conflicts or even war. Also, there are many beings whom are suffering in hell-worlds. Why do we have such good fortune? We have done many good deeds in the past, and we had good virtues and lived with good morals in past lives. That is called “good karmas” or “punyakarma” which causes good results (vipaka) – health, wealth, success and happiness. Does that mean we will always have good fortune?
No. As the Buddha says, everything is impermanent, including good fortune. Everything changes, and nothing lasts forever. We don’t know what we have done in our many past lives, so we don’t know what will happen in this life. Most people do a lot of things to enjoy themselves, without thinking much about what they can do for others. They do some good deeds, many not-so-good deeds, and some bad deeds. We may have lived many lives like that in the past. Now we are getting the results of our good deeds. We don’t know when the results of those good deeds will run out, or when we will get the results of our not-so-good and bad deeds, our “bad karmas.”
What happens if we run out of results of our good deeds? Then we only have results of bad karmas to experience. Just like a car runs out of gas when we use up the gas in the tank and don’t refill it, we run out of good fortune when we use up our good karmas and don’t refill with more good karmas. And then when we run out, we experience suffering. When we are suffering, it may be difficult tostart doing good deeds. It is difficult to do them when we are sick, poor,depressed, injured, or having other big problems. Visakha pointed out that Migara was wealthy because of his merits, good karmas, the good deeds done inpast lives, so he was enjoying the results of those. But he does not know whenthose results will end or when the results of his past bad deeds will start taking effect. He was like a crab in a pot of water. He is happy and dancing around in the cool water in the pot, thinking that everything is great. But when the fire is turned on under the pot, the poor crab suffers and gets cooked.
We too may have done some foolish bad deeds in past lives and maybe in this life. What do we mean by “bad deeds” or “papakarma”? Being unkind and selfish,hurting others with our words or deeds, fighting, being greedy and not generous, taking things from others and not returning them, lying, and misbehaving inmany types of ways. We may not have been punished for our bad deeds and may not have experienced anything horrible afterward, so we may have thought we could do some more wrong doing and nothing bad would happen. Like the Buddha says, as long as an evil deed has not “ripened” (caused a bad result), we may think it is OK to do, and enjoy doing it again, thinking it is fun or daring,because nothing goes wrong for us. So we may have been dancing like a crab in a pot, too. But, like the Buddha says, when the evil deed ripens, maybe a long time or many lives later, we will experience the suffering (dukkha) from it.
What can we do about that? Do we have to live our lives afraid of bad things that might happen because of our past deeds? No! As we learned before, every one goes through difficulties and experiences dukkha (suffering). That is part of life. But we can also decrease the dukkha (suffering) that we must experience from our past deeds, and we can avoid having more bad events happen in our future. How do we avoid having more bad events happen in the future?
We stop doing wrong deeds (papakarmas) and do more good deeds (punyakarmas), by following dharma. We give what we can, and help others,which is punyakarma, good deeds. And, we follow Dharma by being honest, kind,compassionate, humble, tolerant, peaceful, self-controlled, and practicing theother morals we have learned about. That way, we have the results of the gooddeeds (vipaka) in our future, and, as the Buddha says, the good deeds lead to happiness. How can we decrease the dukkha we must experience from our past bad karmas? What if we must experience illness, injury, loss, problems, abuse, conflicts, and failures?
We can have confidence as we are now good people practicing Dharma. Some former teachers became a great monk and therefore avoided going to hell-worlds for their misbehavior, but they had to experience the abuse from people who still hated him. So, their suffering were greatly decreased. Like Ven.Sona Kolivisa, we can meditate, which itself will give us happiness, and which will enable us to calmly handle difficulties with wisdom.
(quoted from Pabuddhistvihara.net)
