Karma or the law of causation is not a universal principle in the west, but it is becoming more well known. I became a Buddhist because I could never understand how the Christian God would allow bad things to happen to good people and vice versa. When I first heard of reincarnation and know that what happens to you may be karmic retribution from what you did in a past life, things began to make sense. Jesus did teach that “as you sow, so shall you reap” but the Christian religion no longer includes the possibility of reaping from past lives as well as the present. One of the most important evil views that must not be held is any doubt in the fact of karma and karmic retribution. In the Buddhist understanding, you are responsible for everything that happens to you. However, you can cultivate doing good and stopping doing bad things and change your life. Our evil karma does not go away, but we can build a wall of good karma to have the effect of blocking us from our deserved karmic retribution until we are better able to deal with it.
It does not matter whether you believe in karma or not. It is a basic principle of the universe like gravity that cannot be denied. In general, karma has four characteristics: It is fixed; karmic results are greater than the cause; it is infallible–it never errs; and once created, karma will not disappear of its own accord.
Evil View No. 26: Acknowledging that the law of cause and effect is illusory and unreal. Some people think that the law of cause and effect does not exist. They think that there is no need to be afraid since there is no karmic retribution. They think it is all right to do bad things as long as nobody finds out. In short, to them there is no such thing as karmic retribution. Remember, regarding the law of cause and effect as imaginary and not real is an evil view.
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