Question: I have a question about what you wrote April 23rd in The Ultimate Activist, "The children in the movie do not remember what they did in a past life that leads to such suffering in this one."
This is something I don't understand about karma. If we can't remember, then how are we supposed to learn from it? This is particularly pertinent to young children who have no concept of karma. I can see how adults can reason, if they can't remember, that suffering can be caused from karma accumulated in a past life, but not young children.
It seems something akin to a parent remembering something the child did when he/she was 3 or 4 and then punishing the child for that offense at age 20, by then the child/20 yr old has completely forgotten the incident and is wondering what the punishment is for. There is no learning, only suffering. I think this is particularly true of children who suffer horrors and do not survive, they do not have the opportunity to mature and learn of the law of karma. They simply suffer and die, no learning involved. No lesson learned in order to avoid the same mistakes that caused the suffering from a previous life.
I understand the impersonal aspect (as in no judge meating out punishment), but I don't understand the "value" of it when it comes to children suffering and dying. I could better get a grip on it perhaps if there were some learning involved, but in cases such as I've described, there is no learning, only suffering and death. It seems cruel, not impersonal in those cases.
Response: Animals are reborn as animals because of ignorance. As animals, they cannot understand karma or the reason they were born as animals. But they are repaying their karmic debts by their very existence. Beings in the hell realms likewise are repaying debts by their existence. And also those in the hungry ghost realm.
So these beings are not learning about karma, they are repaying their karmic debts for what they have done in the past. Just as we repay debts for what we have done in the past. Unlike with man-made laws, there is no statue of limitations with karma. If we do not repay what we have done at the time we do something, we will repay it later, even if it takes a million lifetimes.
In the human realm, to some degree each of us is also repaying our karmic debts. But at least as humans, we also have the opportunity to create good karmas, our good thoughts and actions. Also in the human realm, we have the opportunity to learn of rebirth and karma, and the teachings of the Buddha. But accomplishing this is not easy because we need all the right conditions.
First, we have to be reborn as a human, an occurrence that is incredibly rare. Next, we need to be reborn either during or after the time of a Buddha when his teachings still remain in the world. (Shakyamuni Buddha said his teachings would remain for ten thousand years. The next Buddha, Maitreya, will not appear for several billion years.) Next, we need to be born in a place where we can learn the teachings (How many countries say what the citizens can and cannot believe or learn about.) Next, we need to encounter the teachings. Next, we need to meet a teacher we have confidence in and wish to follow. Next, we need to have the time and personal situation that allows for learning and practice. From all this, we can begin to see that the opportunity to learn about rebirth and karma is amazingly rare.
We hear a lot about “learning lessons,” but learning is something we need the right conditions for, conditions we have to work very hard for and that are extremely difficult to achieve. And the reality is we don’t come back every lifetime as a human and we don’t move smoothly ever forward toward the goal. It’s not all “learning.” More often it’s suffering, repaying our past wrongs. And there is value in this. The less karmic debts I have, the more benefits I have.
The only way to understand all this is to get past viewing things in lifetimes—tiny segments of time—and expand our minds so we can begin to see that we’re dealing with lifetimes that extend throughout time, which has no beginning and no end. Our current lifetime is a continuation of our past lifetime and all the lifetimes before that. All we’ve done is change one form for another. So it is not that karma is unfair, for we do reap what we sow. But since we only glimpse the merest sliver of our past actions, we don't see the whole picture and can't connect the causes and the consequences. Only seeing the consequences, things can seem unfair.
Karma goes hand-in-hand with rebirth. Unless we appreciate the enormity of time and the fact that we have lived uncountable lifetimes, karma may well seem unfair. As unfair as a man being jailed today for a theft he committed yesterday would be to a person who only sees today.
And to forestall the comments I would get from those who say this is all terribly depressing, remember the flip side of this. Just as our bad karmas from the past will catch up with us so will all our good ones. And with good karmas come good conditions. So if we want good things to happen, we need to plant their seeds with our good karmas. Doing so, we will awaken and become Buddhas. And then we’ll finally be able to perfectly understand the intricate, now invisible web of karma.