Cause and Effect and Wholesome and Unwholesome Karma

Question: All things have causes, conditions, and karmic retribution. So what retribution do the ghost wardens who carry out punishments in hell every day receive? And what retribution does King Yama, who judges and administers punishment in the Hall of the King of Darkness, receive?

Answer: The hell wardens, King Yama, and so forth in hell are all summoned forth by the evil karma of sentient beings; they are all illusory images manifested by one's own evil mind. A person who has no karma of hell will not see the wardens when arriving in hell and will not be punished by them; a person without evil karma will also not encounter King Yama's judgment of oneself. That some sentient beings become hell wardens, King Yama, and the like is also due to their own karmic power. This is not a proper occupation. Although it upholds cause and effect and justice and has a certain meaning, evil-doing sentient beings do not welcome it, so the karmic connections are not wholesome. Only when sentient beings can be made to repent of their sinful karma and vow to reform themselves does it establish some wholesome karmic connections with them. Therefore, much of what appears on the surface to be good or evil is, in essence, not necessarily so.

Take another example: do prison guards in human-world prisons who manage inmates commit an offense? The Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra says that being a prison guard is not a proper occupation. Such questions cannot be explained clearly in a few words; questions of cause and effect are very complicated. What kind of work a person does is also determined by karmic power. In any work that involves dealing with sentient beings, there exists both wholesome and unwholesome karma; it depends entirely on how the person involved handles it correctly. The teaching profession is very good and also delivers sentient beings, yet many people in it have created evil karma. Expounding the sūtras and speaking the Dharma is the work of delivering sentient beings, yet many Dharma speakers have created karma leading to hell. Being a doctor who treats illness and saves people—is this profession good or not? It is not necessarily so. Why do patients have illnesses? The vast majority are the repayment of karmic results—merely retribution. This retribution should be undergone, and indeed there are also some sentient beings who were previously harmed coming to pursue and collect their debts, but the doctor cuts off the repayment of cause and effect, so that the creditors cannot obtain what they were due; the doctor will then bear a certain amount of karmic consequence.

It is the same with monastics performing deliverance and transference rituals for laypeople—whether it is wholesome or unwholesome is not certain. For example, in a previous life, A beat B to death; in this life, B comes to collect the debt and wants to beat A to death. Then you rescue and deliver A, and B fails to collect the debt and fails to take revenge. This is unfair to B, and B may in turn retaliate against you. If, during the transference ritual, you could also deliver B along the way—but B does not want to be delivered and hopes that A suffers evil retribution—then the deliverance ritual has interfered with cause and effect. For example, A owes B ten million yuan, and B demands repayment from A, but you intervene and prevent B from collecting the debt. What should be done about B's ten million yuan plus interest? Will B come to demand it from you? If you perform deliverance and transference for your own parents and relatives, this is your own duty, an act of repaying kindness; bearing karmic obstructions for your own parents and relatives is what is proper and deserved, and bearing karmic obstructions for those who have shown you kindness is also what is proper and deserved.

As for goodness on the surface—whether it is actually good and whether it yields wholesome results—ordinary people generally cannot open their eyes and witness it. In the Buddhist sūtras, there is only one recorded instance of deliverance and transference, namely when the Buddha combined the power of all the monastics to deliver his own birth mother, Mahāmāyā, in hell; there is no second case. The Buddhist sūtras have never recorded anything about all the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Arhats, or Pratyekabuddhas performing deliverance and transference for sentient beings, nor anything about monastics performing deliverance and transference for sentient beings; in the past Saṅgha there was never such a thing. In the monasteries of the past, there were very many monastics, yet they never gathered together, striking instruments and chanting, to perform deliverance and transference rituals for laypeople, and the Buddha's precepts did not permit it either. In those days, the monastics focused primarily on individual cultivation; those with the ability to propagate the Dharma could expound the Dharma, but nothing else was to be done, especially matters involving money and other worldly benefits, which were even more strictly forbidden.