Levels of belief in and understanding of cause and effect

In this world, we can provisionally divide people into 4 kinds according to how far they believe in and understand cause and effect:

• The Buddha is the one who knows cause and effect best, knowing it completely, down to the smallest detail. The law of cause and effect is not at all easy to understand, not at all as simple as "do good and good comes to you", "plant melons and you get melons, plant beans and you get beans". In truth, the law of cause and effect is extremely complex and no one fully understands it; only the Buddha understands all the paths along which cause and effect travels. So the first and most exalted person, the one who understands cause and effect best and seemingly the only one, is the Buddha.

• Second are the Saints. They are those who understand most of the law of cause and effect, though of course not all of it. To judge what makes someone a Saint in this world, we should see whether that person's wisdom knows much about the law of cause and effect. Someone with miraculous powers is not thereby a Saint, nor is someone who teaches the Dharma "like clouds and rain"; only a person who knows a great deal about cause and effect, clearly and deeply, is a Saint.

• The third kind is the good person who believes in cause and effect.

• The fourth kind is the bad person who does not believe in cause and effect.

We divide people into these four kinds for now, not by class, wealth, lineage, blood or race, but only by their level of understanding of cause and effect.

Here we will deal only with the last two kinds: those who believe in cause and effect and those who do not.

Take the kind of person who believes in cause and effect, whom we regard as good: why do they believe? Let us ask one such person: "Science has not proved cause and effect. Why do you believe in it?" - "I once gave money to a sick person who needed medicine and helped that person recover. The man I saved was the head of a family, so when he was well he was able to feed the whole household. Helping him recover was like saving the whole family, not just one person. Because of that cause, thirty years later the fruit of merit came back to me: my business succeeded and I became wealthy."

We continue to ask: "How can you believe that your wealth today is due to having helped that person recover from illness 30 years ago? Science has not proved it, and no eye can see it; only the Saints can see it. And even if the Saints tell us what they have seen, we can only trust them; we cannot prove it."

A good person who believes in cause and effect will answer:

"First, there are things we only hear from others and yet must believe. For example, many people have never travelled by aeroplane but still believe that aeroplanes can fly, believe that someone has built them and that people have flown in them. They have not experienced it themselves, but they must believe that someone has done it. Or no one has seen a spacecraft being launched into orbit or landing on the moon, yet we believe it, because the whole world knows of it and people have done it."

It is the same here. A Saint, using supernormal powers and exceptional spiritual vision, has seen that a person's wealth today comes from having rescued a family in distress 30 years earlier, and we believe it because it seems reasonable. It is like believing that aeroplanes fly because someone has explained the principle by which they fly, wings supported by the air and flight by the principle of thrust, which is reasonable. The theory is right, it has been put into practice, many people have seen it, and so we believe. So we can say it is reasonable that a Saint sees the karmic result thirty years later in a person's life, with the right cause matching the right effect. This is the first reason we believe: many people, many genuine people, have seen it this way.

The law of cause and effect is an axiom, accepted without needing proof. Science may gradually discover many things, but as for the law of cause, effect and karmic consequence, that is, that a person who does evil and causes sentient beings to suffer will later have to bear a corresponding result, science is still very far from reaching that law.

The law of cause and effect is an axiom that needs no proof. What does it mean that an axiom needs no proof? In mathematics there is a category called axioms, and an axiom is simply accepted without proof: we know it to be true but cannot prove it, and we accept it as something we trust. So it is with our coming to Buddhism: the day when the law of cause and effect can be proved is still very far off. Therefore, today, for us disciples of the Buddha, the law of cause and effect remains an axiom, a truth that cannot be proved and can only be accepted. Our good fortune is that we are able to accept this axiom, because it is a truth of the universe; just as it was the good fortune of scientists to accept Euclid's axiom (in mathematics) and from it build an entire vast system of science. If people had not accepted Euclid's axiom from the beginning, we would not have the system of science we have today; everything would be murky, but to be able to prove anything, they had to begin from an axiom that cannot be proved.

Science consists of things that are logical and reasonable and that can be proved in theory and in experience; that is, what the theory says must be demonstrated in practice. For example, the statement that when two straight lines intersect, the opposite angles must be equal (vertically opposite angles): the theory says so, but we must draw the lines and measure to find it true; that is, the theory is right and the experiment is right, because these are things that have been proved. But all of the proven things of science must begin from an axiom that cannot be proved, which is Euclid's axiom.

Buddhism is the same. Buddhism is entirely ethical, humane, reasonable and logical, all of it rigorous and provable, and all of it also begins from an axiom that cannot be proved, which is the law of cause and effect.

What is the law of cause and effect? It is that whatever cause you plant in good and evil, that is the result you reap; it is not ordinary cause and effect. In the universe, in this world, there are many kinds of cause and effect, and the easiest to see is agricultural cause and effect. For example, plant a mango seed and a mango tree grows and bears mangoes: that is agricultural cause and effect. Then there is physical cause and effect: when we heat water to 100°C it boils, and when we lower the temperature to 0°C it freezes; or when a virus enters our body we fall ill, and so on. Those are cause and effect in the physical world, in agriculture, in medicine, in law. But the cause and effect that Buddhism speaks of is the karmic recompense of good and evil. It concerns suffering and joy, happiness and bitterness in human lives. That is, all beings in this universe are governed by two feelings: suffering and joy. For example, when we are hungry we suffer and when we are full we are glad; with no money we suffer and with money we are glad. In this way, this feeling of suffering and joy governs an entire human life, a person's emotions and motives for living, and people are always avoiding suffering and seeking joy. If we cause beings to suffer, we bear karma; if we bring joy and happiness to beings, we receive blessings. That is the cause and effect of good and evil recompense that the Buddha spoke of, that Buddhism speaks of.