How Are Causes, Conditions, and Karmic Retribution Realized?

Everything that sentient beings do, life after life and world after world—whether great or small, wholesome, unwholesome, or neutral (avyākṛta)—is recorded by each individual's tathāgatagarbha and stored within it as seeds. When the causes and conditions ripen, the tathāgatagarbha will output the stored karmic seeds to carry out this law of cause and effect, and the sentient being will receive the corresponding retribution. Take the karma of killing, for example: when A kills B, the tathāgatagarbha of each of the two persons makes its own record of this process. When the karmic action ceases, the seeds are stored away without perishing. Then, in some later life, when the two meet again—whether they know each other or not—when the causes and conditions ripen, each one's tathāgatagarbha outputs the karmic seed respectively, and the one who was killed gives rise to the intention to kill A.

If in a previous life A killed B unintentionally and by mistake, then when they meet in this life, B will also unintentionally and by mistake kill A. In this way, cause, condition, and retribution are realized with perfect equality, yet B does not know why he killed A, and A does not know why he was killed. The karmic seeds of killing and being killed for both persons then vanish, and neither owes the other anything. If B, while collecting his debt, goes too far—for instance, at the same time robbing A of his property, or dismembering A's corpse, or committing other unwholesome or wholesome deeds—then each one's tathāgatagarbha makes a new record. When they meet again in a later life, A will again collect the debt from B; and if A again goes too far in collecting the debt, B will collect it back in return. Thus cause and effect cycle on endlessly, with no day of emergence. This is exactly how sentient beings are: their karmic results are interwoven together, entangled without cease, unbearably miserable, truly worthy of compassion—karmic actions never cease, and the cycle of saṃsāra never ends. Sentient beings should study Buddhism, clearly understand the Buddha's teachings, purify their karmic actions, and refrain from creating unwholesome karma. They should form many wholesome connections, help one another in cultivation, board the ship of Dharma together, and reach the other shore together.