Consciousness is the direct cause of all sufferings. Embedded in the Alaya consciousness are seeds of our residual habits.
These seeds are the direct causes of all suffering as well as all happiness. Conception and impulse are “object as condition” and immediate antecedent condition. Feeling is the karmic result. You feel pain or happiness. If you plant good causes, you will enjoy happiness. If you plant bad causes, you will undergo suffering. This law governs the Three Realms. Ordinary people do not know this principle, so the Buddha manifested in this world to tell us the truth of existence.
When we truly understand the truth, we will know what to do and will be able to help ourselves. There are causes and conditions for any being to be born in a certain path. These causes and conditions are called directive karma, or generic retribution. The karmic force controls us; we do not have the control. We are led by the karmic force. We must know this. No other beings have control over us. Karmic force does.
What karmic force brings one to the human path? The Buddha told us that the karmic force from one’s observing the Five Precepts and cultivating the Ten Virtuous Conducts in past lifetimes will lead one to the human path. The karmic force from achieving the Four Immeasurable Minds of loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity, and a higher level of the Ten Virtuous Conducts will lead one to the heavenly path. The karmic force from greed will lead one to the path of hungry ghosts. The karmic force from anger will lead one to the path of hells. The karmic force from ignorance will lead one to the path of animals. These are directive karma, which determine the path we are born in.
There are about seven billion people living on the earth. They were born as humans in this lifetime as a result of having observed the Five Precepts and cultivated the Ten Virtuous Conducts in their past lifetimes. But some of these people enjoy wealth and social status while others are poor and of lowly origins, and undergo much suffering. The Buddha said this is because of their particularizing karma, or the specific retribution.
So there are two kinds of karmic retributions: directive karma, which leads us to be born in a certain path, and particularizing karma, which determines what kind of material life and spiritual life we lead. All these depend on our having cultivated good fortune or committed bad deeds in our past lifetimes.
~ Based on Ven. Master Chin Kung's 2003 lecture series on the Amitabha Sutra