When the conditions come together, You must still undergo the retribution yourself

Fellow cultivators, all good and wise friends, Amitabha!

Last Saturday we held the ceremony of purifying the boundaries for Emperor Liang’s Jeweled Repentance.  Today is Saturday; it’s been one week and we have reached Roll Nine of the repentance text.  Have the afflictions in our mind become less, or more?  All of us have different karmic forces.  Some are able to come to the bodhimanda and partake in the ceremony every day; others are pulled by their karmic forces to go and take care of business and cannot come to the bodhimanda.  Every moment of the day, we are creating karma.  Every karma that we create carries a force.

Today we are bowing in repentance on behalf of the hell beings.  Just now Guo He Shi said that she felt heavily weighed down.  I think humans are interconnected with other beings by brain waves and electro waves.  Hell-beings are weighed down by their heavy karmic burden. While we read the repentance text, we can feel their suffering.  This illustrates the principle of cause and effect.  Whatever karmic debt we owe, we must pay in full.

I remember a story about Emperor Dongyue’s (also known as King Yama). He invited Zhang Taiyan, an accomplished sinologist during the early period when the Republic was established in China, to be a judge in the underworld.  During day time, Zhang Taiyan was in the world of humans; come night time, he worked as an official in the underworld. He felt that the punishments meted out in the hells were very cruel.  He saw hell beings grilled on searing iron beds or roasted with scorching copper posts. He heard their screams of unspeakable anguish and cries of agony. These sounds were extremely savage and brutal.  He said to King Yama, “Can you abolish these tormenting punishments?  They’re just too cruel!”  King Yama looked at him and smiled, then he had two ghost-messengers take Zhang Taiyan to the hells of the scorching copper posts and searing iron beds for a visit.  When they arrived at these hells, Zhang Taiyan saw nothing. It was very quiet and totally empty.  Immediately, Zhang Taiyan came to the realization that the tormenting punishments of the hells did not manifest before him because he did not have such karmic forces.

Therefore, it is said that the hells are not like the jails in the human world. In the human world, jails are pre-built and wait for offenders to get in. Conversely, the various forms of punishment in the hells manifest according to one’s karma. If we did not have such karma, then such hells and their corresponding punishments would not manifest. Therefore, the Yogacarabhumi Shastra states, “What has already been done is never lost; what has not yet been done will never materialize.” In other words, we will not incur karmic retributions for what we did not do.  But for karmic offenses that we created, the karmic retribution would not be forgotten.  The Avatamsaka Sutra states,

Even in a hundred thousand eons,

The karma you create does not perish.

When the conditions come together,

You must still undergo the retribution yourself.

All the things that we have done constitute the cause that we have planted. After a very lengthy span of time, tens of thousands of kalpas, we’ve forgotten what we’ve done, but karma does not forget. Once the conditions are ripe and everything is in place, one still must undergo the karmic retributions.

Therefore, we must truly be mindful of the three poisons inside us, as said by the Venerable Master, “Three from the mind and four from the mouth”. We should always pay careful attention to their doings and change for the better. Bowing in repentance is to remind us to completely and thoroughly reform ourselves. The most precious and most worthy to pursue in our life is to throw ourselves into rectifying our mind and body, enhancing our mind and body, and fostering healthy development in all aspects of our life.