The time from karma to its result

The story of National Master Ngộ Đạt, who suffered terrible pain from a human-faced boil, has its cause about ten lives earlier, when he was Viên Án, who advised the emperor to have Triệu Thố beheaded unjustly.

Here is another story, a recent one. In a fit of extreme rage, Mr Tư summoned all his strength and launched a vicious kick at Mr Tuấn's chest. Mr Tuấn was sitting leaning against the wall. Catching sight of the kick, he dodged aside towards the door. Missing Mr Tuấn, the kick went straight into a wall with a thickness of 20, which shook and cracked, and the five toes of Mr Tư's foot were crushed, so that he had to be taken to hospital for emergency treatment.

In Ngộ Đạt's story, the time for the karmic result to appear was ten lives. In the latter story, the karmic result appeared alongside the karmic cause.

It cannot be said with certainty when a given karma will bear its result: in this life, in the next, or in many other lives. It depends on each person's karmic conditions. The moment we finish repairing a stretch of broken road, in the Fundamental Nature the law of karma has at once arranged the good karmic results for the future. But to determine the moment at which each result will appear, it has to be coordinated with all earlier karmic conditions. Here the law of karma is like an extremely sophisticated supercomputer which, in an instant, "calculates" the state of this result and its timing.

Some people have accumulated a great deal of merit; if they commit a wrong in this life, the karmic result seldom occurs soon, and may be postponed over many lives to come. Conversely, a person with little merit who cheats a friend this year may be cheated in return a few years later.

Or take someone with heavy wrongdoing: even if they strive now to practise and make merit, it is hard to see quick results. Sometimes they will only enjoy them in the next life. Conversely, a person with little wrongdoing who has just made merit, through giving or releasing animals, may see five or ten years later that life is full of good fortune and peace.

An old man guarding a sugarcane field, thinking a pig had come to damage it, hurled a spear that lodged in a child's belly. In terror he buried the child to hide the crime, although the child was not yet dead. More than ten years later, the child was reborn in a neighbouring family, and accidentally let a knife fall into the old man's belly while the old man was carrying the child on his back to pick papayas. He endured pain for several days; he called together the family of the child killed ten years earlier and all their relatives, told the story that he had long kept hidden, and acknowledged that this was the karmic result he had to pay. He accepted it willingly and urged everyone to do good. Then he died (from A Treatise on Cause and Effect by Chơn Quang).

In this story the time for the karmic result to appear was ten years, within the very life of the old man who guarded the cane field.

On the other hand, one main karmic cause often creates many secondary karmic causes. For example, a thief sneaks in and steals the householder's motorbike. The main karma is unlawfully taking another person's property. Besides that come some secondary effects: for lack of a bike to get to work, he has to change to a workplace nearer home and earns less, and the family's finances decline. The children have to give up some extra lessons. Sadness lingers on in the family. These main and secondary karmas form different kinds of karmic results, and the time for each kind to appear also differs. The thief pays the karmic result of loss in this life, the result of poor education in the next, and the result of depression in the one after that.

For example, a stepmother plotted to kill her husband's child by another marriage. Two karmic results arise from that one cause: first, she herself will be killed at a young age in a later life; and in this very life she has to witness the unjust death of her own child.

In another respect, take a person who practises, has compassion for animals and has vowed not to kill. He has little evil karma, only good karma and the merit of his present practice. His life is peaceful and calm. Once he accidentally burned rubbish and killed many termites hiding beneath it. A few days later he fell ill. His illness had two causes. One is that his mind was troubled on realising he had accidentally killed; the other is that the karmic result was paid early, without being left to drag on into another life.

An architect named Nhâm (the designer of the Imexco headquarters) followed no religion, living only by a way of life he had found for himself. He kept a few chickens and ducks at home. His view was that one should not eat the flesh of an animal that had earlier given one eggs, because it had done one a kindness. An animal that had never given eggs could be eaten. Once his wife slaughtered a duck for the family to eat. Only afterwards did the family discover that the duck had given eggs. That evening his mouth swelled up enormously, as a punishment for breaking his vow. This symptom too had two causes: one was his own remorse, the other was a karmic result arriving early.

Another characteristic worth mentioning is that the timing of a karmic result can change. For example: Mr Tám had carelessly created the karma of keeping animals in captivity. The law of karma had fixed, in the Fundamental Nature, that he would serve a short prison term ten years later. But as the fixed time drew near, he resolved to do meritorious deeds such as building roads, releasing animals and defending the wronged. This great merit pushed the karmic result of imprisonment back to a later life, so that his present life was not disrupted.

So new karma changes and alters the karmic result of old karma. Thanks to this characteristic, we can turn karma from bad to good, and from heavy to light.