Question:

Dear Shifu,

After hearing the talk this morning, a question was also forming in my mind regarding the concept of cause and effect. In the talk, you mentioned that one who does evil deeds might not receive the evil consequences until his actions bear fruits. However I was wondering:

When parents commit an evil doing, why does it affect the lifes of their children, as well as their grandchildren? Their children are innocent, and did not take part in the evil act, yet why are they also affected by it?

There is a story, where a mother, during the war, was unable to care for her baby girl, and gave her away. Unbeknownst to her, the baby died from illnesses. Her other daughters were known to live in suffering, and so the mother consulted a medium, who told her that the spirit of her baby was not satisfied with the lives of the other daughters. It was only through chanting and transference of merits can her spirit be appeased.

Why did the children suffer? Was it a result from their past karma, or a result from their mother's act?

I do hope Shifu can explain about it, for I am rather perplexed as to the idea that the result of one's act can be transferred to the one closest to him or her.

Venerable :

Thank you for raising a very good question.

Karma operates at two levels-individual karma and collective or group karma. What we talked about this morning focused on individual karma.

At collective or group level, we belong to different groups - family, organization, town, country, world. When another member of a family does something, other family members are affected in different degress. When people at one corner of the globe do something harmful to the environement, people at other parts of the globe are also affected in different degrees.

Sometimes both collective karma and individual karma affect different people on a common incidence. For example, people travelling in the same plane share collective karma. When there is a plane crash, all the people on the plane who suffer share collective karma and also individual karma. Some die and others survive because of the operation of individual karma.

For this reason, we are not completely controlled by the deeds of the family. What we do as an individual affect us even more than the family factor.

AMITUOFO,
SHIFU