Fixed and unfixed

We have gone through some basic theories of karma, from the classification of fields of space and the origin of the Essence to the mechanism of rebirth. Now we will discuss the nature of Karma and its results.

As we know, when a karma is formed, the karmic result is already present at that moment. So, on the relative level, karma seems indeterminate because it depends on the wish of people to carry it out, while the karmic result is fixed. Only if people create karma is there karma; karma does not exist ready-made. Only if we give to the poor do we have a wholesome karma; otherwise the karma has not yet appeared. So in our life, depending on our wishes, a certain amount of wholesome or unwholesome karma will be created. Creating wholesome karma or unwholesome karma is our right, and no one compels it.

Only once karma has been created must a karmic result necessarily follow. All those karmic results weave into a destiny that we must go through in the next life. The strokes of luck that come from nowhere, the unforeseen misfortunes that strike, are things that seem to lie outside human decision. Some people call it fortune and lament it.

"When the time comes, even a fisherman finds success easy;

When fortune departs, heroes swallow much bitterness."

(Đặng Dung)

Even the talented, if they have no good fortune, must accept failure. No one had a plan of action as thorough and careful as Zhuge Liang, yet in the end he could not establish the imperial enterprise of the Han and had to lament: "Man plans, Heaven accomplishes."

Life is full of people lacking talent, yet some meritorious karma has raised them to high and noble positions with many obeying them.

On the relative level, karma is indeterminate and the karmic result is fixed. Whether karma is created depends on people, but once karma has been created, the karmic result must certainly follow.

However, going deeper into the analysis, we see the matter is not simple. We will see that it seems karma too has already been determined. In the life to come, what we will do, when we will create good, when we will create evil, seems also to have been determined from the previous life.

Before he died, Zen Master Minh An predicted that ten years later the attendant Bình would dig up his grave. And it was exactly so. The attendant Bình dug up Minh An's grave and took a hammer to split his head open when, after 10 years, Minh An's body still had not decayed.

So clearly the attendant Bình's act of digging up the grave was not a spur-of-the-moment impulse, for Master Minh An had foreseen that act long before. Could conduct also be a fate?

Good and bad luck are said to be formed by past karma, so what forms karma, such that it too is almost predetermined? What karma will we create in five years; what karma will we create in ten years... it seems this process too has been laid out in advance!

Jesus knew long beforehand that Judas would betray him and would tell the soldiers to come and arrest him. So was Judas's act of betrayal already determined?

Four robbers burst in and killed the family of the owner of a nail salon. From the side of the salon owner's family, this is a karmic result they had to pay. But was the robbing and killing by the four robbers random, or was it determined? If it was a momentary impulse, how could it fit with the karmic result of the victims' family, when one side is fixed and the other is impulsive?

We already know that thoughts of the previous life form the character of this life. If a person nurtures vicious thoughts, he will surely perform many vicious acts in the next life. Action in this life is determined by thoughts of the previous life. Apart from the case of the official who built the bridge, whose thought was to please his superiors rather than to love the people, so that in the next life he was comfortable but still lacked morality, for the rest, most people do as they think.

A person steals because he has had thoughts of stealing. So the act of stealing in this life will form the karmic result of poverty and loss in the next life, and the thought of stealing in this life will repeat the act of stealing in the next life too. So, "Karma tends to repeat itself."

A person who does good will continue to do good; a person who does evil will continue to do evil.

A mother who had the habit of abusing her child, in the next life was abused by her father from childhood. Grown up, with a husband and children, she repeated the abuse of her children.

Without understanding the law of karmic consequences, looking only at one life, we would mistakenly think the karmic result came first (being abused by her father from childhood) and the karmic cause came after (abusing her own children). In truth she was only repeating the karma of abusing her children from her previous life.

It is precisely because of this tendency of karma to repeat that actions also seem to be already determined.

Because of the shifting of thoughts in the previous life, actions in the next life also change. There are stages when we study diligently. At other times we are lazy. At one time we like doing good deeds, at another we turn to studying art. In the next life, actions change accordingly: at times keen to study, at times discouraged, at times fond of social charity, at times turning to painting.

So it is not only the karmic results of suffering and joy that we cannot resist; even actions are hard to resist. We will treat this person well and that person badly, and that action arises naturally, without our being able to explain it, only because it was already laid out by thoughts of the previous life.

If we say that the karmic results of suffering and joy in circumstances are 100% predetermined, then actions are about 70% determined, leaving only 30% as the present right of mastery for the final choice.

We cannot choose good luck for ourselves, because that is due to meritorious karma of the previous life. We can choose to do good actions because we want the next life to be good, but the right of choice in the present is only 30%, since 70% already belongs to thoughts of the previous life.

In the present, the area where we have the most mastery is thought. 50% of thought is by our right of choice now; only 50% is the repeating force of the past. But most of us do not use this 50% right of mastery and merely go along with the 50% repeating from the previous life. Selfish, conceited, greedy thoughts will repeat. We give up and run after them and gradually slide into degradation and wrongdoing. We do not use the other 50% right of mastery to dissolve unwholesome thoughts and build wholesome thoughts; we waste our freedom, merely bowing our heads and following the tendency of the previous life, when that tendency is not the dominant one.

The value of a practitioner lies in knowing how to build for himself a clear mind, free of the base thoughts of the previous life. In the course of this reform of the mind, we have 50% freedom to oppose a force of repetition of thoughts of the previous life that is only 50%.

In short, regarding the degree of determination by the previous life, we have the following scale:

- Thought is 50% determined; the remaining 50% depends on thought in this life.

- Action is 70% determined; the remaining 30% depends on determination in this life.

- Circumstances are 100% determined.

With circumstances, which are almost a destiny, we can only accept them with forbearance and calm, and cannot add or subtract much.

With action, 70% is the urging from the previous life, leaving only 30% for us to choose.

With thought, 50% is repetition from the previous life, leaving as much as 50% for us to choose freely.

So why do we not choose strongly, sifting each thought to build our own mind and paint a noble character for the next life?