The basic principle of cause and effect: whatever we do that affects others will come back to us

We discuss the subject of cause and effect together in order to know which causes to plant to obtain which results. We avoid planting evil causes so as not to suffer painful results, and we strive to plant good causes so as to receive peaceful and happy karmic results.

The law of cause and effect is perfectly fair; no one can slip past it, hide from it or cover up in order to evade it. We often hear, "Be kind and meet with good; do evil and meet with evil", meaning that those who live well will be happy and those who do not live well will suffer. The basic principle of the law of cause and effect is that if we make others happy we will later meet with happiness, and if we make others suffer we will later bear the result of suffering. However, this basic principle is not yet the most accurate statement. Why is that? Because the law of cause and effect is extremely complex. Sometimes we want to make someone happy but they are displeased, and when we think that what we do will make someone suffer, we are surprised to find that the person likes it. So often the effect of what we do is the opposite of what we intend. And this is exactly where cause and effect is very tricky, not easy.

For example, we hit someone in the face because at that moment our mind wanted them to suffer. The karmic result of making someone suffer is very easy to reason out. If we strike a person, and strike them in front of many people, the karmic result will come. So there are two causes at once: first, causing the person physical pain; second, striking at their honour. That is, we have planted the cause of humiliating and hurting someone, and later the karmic result we receive will be the same.

Later, when we repay the result, the longer it takes, the greater it grows. That is, it is not that when we meet that person again they will hit us once in front of a crowd as we did to them. Rather, the karmic result that returns may be that we are strung up in a courtyard and beaten with rods so that everyone passing by humiliates and shames us. The cause is sown once but its result must be reaped a hundred, a thousand times, not once. It is not as simple as wanting someone to suffer and they suffer, wanting someone to be happy and they are happy; cause and effect is not so simple.

Suppose in our neighbourhood there is a child who is both bright and well behaved. At school the child always achieves excellent results, is polite and respectful to adults, and helps the elderly and frail. At a parents' meeting or a neighbourhood meeting, we give the child a bicycle as a gift. We invite everyone and the child's family and say, "I see that your child, though still young, has a very good sense of ethics. The child studies well and behaves very politely towards both elders and juniors. So I want to commend the child, and on behalf of everyone here I would like to give a bicycle to ride to school." Doing this creates two causes: first, giving material goods; second, giving the child honour before the neighbourhood. Because there are two causes, later we too will receive two kinds of karmic results together. What are they? It may be in a later life, not necessarily this one, that we become a scientist or a renowned and gifted professor who receives a world prize, not merely one within our own country. For the cause we plant blooms into thousands upon thousands of results; it is not that planting one gives one. We praised one child before the neighbours and gave the child a bicycle, but in a later life we receive an international prize, and perhaps even a large sum of prize money. When we plant one cause, like planting a grain of rice or a lychee seed, we get a whole panicle of rice or a whole lychee tree laden with fruit for so many seasons, so many years.

In the same way, if we plant one evil, the suffering returns to us over many years without being fully repaid. If we plant one good, then often, when the good result comes, we enjoy glory beyond imagination throughout our lives. Such is the force of the karmic results of cause and effect. That is why those who understand cause and effect are usually very careful. There are things we think will be good but that leave others unhappy. For example, on a teacher's birthday we think of her kindness and affection in teaching us and bring her a very large cream cake. The cake is made of wheat flour, eggs, sugar, milk, rich cream... and we assume she will be happy with the gift. Yet it is not so, because she is on a diet to lower the fat and sugar in her blood. We wanted to make the teacher happy and the result was the opposite. Cause and effect of this kind is very hard to reason out.

Or another story: a thug on the street picks a quarrel with a man and accidentally beats him to death. Normally, a killing like this would bring suffering to the victim's family, but unexpectedly it frees his wife from a terrible fate. Why? Because this man had made his family suffer, tormenting his wife and children for many years. He also drank heavily and chased women, so that everyone in the family was terribly afraid of him, but they still had to live with him in misery as if in hell. No one dared do anything because he was so fierce. Unexpectedly, today he went out and was beaten to death by a thug. After killing him, thinking he had caused a disaster, the thug fled in a hurry. He never imagined that the victim's family would be delighted: the wife was glad and so were the children. With him dead, the mother and children looked after one another and found more peace than when he lived in the house. Life is strange indeed! There are things we think will bring suffering to others, yet on the contrary the others are glad. This is how tricky cause and effect is.

The basic principle here is that what we do that affects others will come back to us, either in this life or in another. If we give our teacher a cream cake thinking she will be happy, but she is not, then our karmic result may be, for example, that later others give us gifts that we do not much like or that do not quite suit us, and we then have to pass them on to someone else, and so on.

In the case of the thug who beat the man to death, it may be that later, in this life or in other lives, his life will bring situations in which good luck is mixed with bad and bad luck with good. For he did a harmful deed but unwittingly freed the mother and children from their misery. In his later life, perhaps, he might win the lottery and then someone would come and beat him up to rob him of the money. Or, for example, he might fall into a river and think he is drowning, only to find a bag of money in the water... That is, there is always bad in the good and good in the bad, because in a previous life he planted such a cause.

In the world there are some extremist religious organisations that encourage their followers to commit terror, plant bombs and shoot people indiscriminately in order to glorify their religion, promising that when they die they will go to heaven. Following that strange belief, they plant bombs in crowded places and kill people in great numbers to create a stir and cause disorder and insecurity in society, believing that they will go to heaven. That is, these religious organisations do not speak of the law of cause and effect but lay all the weight on belief, a mistaken, fanatical belief.

What they believe is one matter; the karmic result that comes is another. The path of the karmic result will be like this: if in one attack they explode a bomb that kills twenty people and wounds thirty, then for twenty lives in a row, in every life those who planted the bomb will be killed by bombs and bullets. No sooner are they born and grown to fifteen or twenty years old than they die from bombs and bullets, through twenty lifetimes, to repay the full twenty lives. For wounding thirty people, in thirty consecutive lives after that they will be wounded, with broken arms and legs, split heads and broken foreheads... a truly wretched fate.

But there is still a residual karmic result: for every person who dies, there is a family, with the wife, husband and children of the victim in terrible grief. If they brought suffering to fifty families, with seven or eight people in each, including parents, spouses, children and relatives, then they brought suffering to far too many people. So the karmic result that such a terrorist must bear is extremely severe: for thousands of years afterwards they will never have joy and will never know what heaven is. If born as a human, they will be an orphan wandering from birth, growing up lonely and homeless on the streets and in the markets, chased away and cursed by people... If reborn as a dog, they will be a dog in a poor household, covered in mange, and sooner or later killed or run over by a vehicle... All of it is only suffering.

Cause and effect has its own way of operating, entirely objective and fair, and independent of religion. Even if someone claims that their religion is the highest, they still do not escape the governance of the law of cause and effect. Whoever brings suffering to others, cause and effect will bring suffering back to that person; one cannot say, "I did it for my religion, so I do not fear suffering."

Or take another case: a forest ranger who devoted their whole life to protecting the forest, so that illegal loggers found it hard to enter and cut timber. By protecting the forest, this person earned the hatred of the loggers and was sometimes even targeted for harm. The meritorious result of protecting forests is usually unseen and is praised less than work that brings immediate benefit. When a business makes a large profit it receives commendation from the State; a doctor who saves many patients is honoured by the State; a good teacher is awarded the title of Outstanding Teacher by the State... but a forest ranger who protects trees, which are insentient, receives no commendation, and no clear cause and effect is seen.

But the fair law of cause and effect misses not the least wrongdoing or merit. The forest is the environment that protects life. Without forests we would all die, this earth would lose its life, and where forests remain, life remains. So a ranger who protects the forest protects the life of humanity. This person keeps the seasons favourable and the winds gentle and maintains the water sources, and will gain very great merit. People do not see it and so do not reward it, because they see only the protection of insentient trees and no clear benefit. But in later lives those forest protectors, for many lives, will always live peaceful and happy lives, be happy wherever they are born, be cherished by everyone and succeed at whatever they wish. Wherever they are, the rain and wind are favourable and no natural disaster occurs. Such meritorious results last not for one life but for very many.

That is how fair cause and effect is. The fairness of cause and effect is higher than human wisdom, and we human beings, with our shallow minds, still do not see all the wrongdoing and merit in each deed and each action, do not see all the good of protecting the living environment, but the law of cause and effect misses not a single detail.

Or suppose we want to lay a water pipe from our house to the other side of the road. We ask permission to dig a trench, lay the pipe and fill it in again. But, unfortunately, when we finish we do not level the surface as flat as it was at the start. After laying the pipe we fill the trench but leave it slightly sunken and uneven. Whenever vehicles pass, they are jolted, and pedestrians trip and fall. Although no one notices, and we do not know the consequences ourselves, the karmic result is frightening.

Let us try to count: how many vehicles pass in a day? Each vehicle has two wheels: the front wheel is jolted once, the rear wheel is jolted once, so each vehicle passing is jolted twice. If about two hundred vehicles pass in a day, how many jolts is that? Four hundred. How many in a year? If we leave that bumpy road jolting for five years, and we have only counted the vehicles, not yet the people riding in them, how many times is that? What will be the karmic result of those tens of thousands of jolts? The result is that later our leg may be crippled. One leg short and one long after some accident. We will have to walk with a limp, bumping up and down just like being jolted in a vehicle, until tens of thousands of jolts have been completed, and only then will the leg heal. And by the time it heals we may already be dead. So, merely because of a moment's inattention, we endure walking with a limp until the road is filled level, and only then will we have finished repaying the karmic result.

Or suppose the stretch of road past our house is deserted and rather dark at night. We hang a neon or fluorescent tube on the fence wall so that it lights the yard and the road. At that time our family does not agree because they fear the cost of electricity, and we say, "Never mind, let us leave the light on so that those who walk by are less likely to stumble and be hurt." We light it like this every day for many years, until the State installs street lamps and only then do we stop switching on our own. For all those years we accepted the cost of electricity to give the road a little light. No one noticed; our family only complained about the cost, and neighbours who passed by and saw the light did not give it a thought. On any one such night, how many people passed through that light and were safe, felt at ease, not afraid of ghosts or robbers, and avoided obstacles on the road...

All of that creates an extremely great meritorious result. We light a lamp in the yard and bring light to the road. This act has three causes and three kinds of merit: first, it makes people safe; second, it puts them at ease; third, it lets them see clearly. These three become the meritorious result that in later lives, wherever we go, we are always safe and meet no danger. For example, on certain stretches of road robberies and muggings often occur and everyone passing meets with misfortune, but when we get there, the robbers happen not to be active that day and we come to no harm. Our life is safe as though someone were protecting it. In one place anyone who sleeps there sees ghosts, but when we sleep there we see nothing, because we always have the merit of safety; at fierce stretches of river, boats are often capsized, but when our boat passes there it meets no obstacle... That is the first merit. The second is the merit of being at ease. That is, we feel no fear even when living in war or in calamity, and our mind is always steady, peaceful and happy. And the third merit is exceptionally bright eyes. Because we lit a lamp so that others could see clearly, that meritorious result lasts not just one life but a very long time before it is exhausted. Thanks to our lighting the lamp and bearing the cost of electricity for a few years, in many later lives, in every life, we have bright eyes and can still see when walking in the dark.