Unreasonable Contention in a Lawsuit Is Also Theft

If someone fights a lawsuit to unjustly seize farmland and wins the case, are the judge and the lawyer guilty and subject to karmic consequences? Of course they are guilty and must bear the karmic consequences. Seizing farmland that one is not entitled to from others constitutes robbery and theft, and the judge and the lawyer are tantamount to accomplices; this karmic consequence is quite substantial.

Even if a judge's ruling appears fair and reasonable in the eyes of the secular world, it is not necessarily fair and reasonable to both parties in the lawsuit. What is unreasonable in the secular world may have a reasonable side to it, and what is reasonable in the secular world may have an unreasonable side to it, because it involves disputes from past lives and the relationship of karmic retribution. For example, if we now see A slap B, but we did not see that B had previously slapped A, we would consider A's slapping of B unreasonable and go criticize A. Only by connecting the before and after and looking at the whole matter can we know whether it is reasonable; if we only see an incomplete side of the matter, our judgment will be mistaken.

The precepts, however, are judged according to the phenomena of the present life and the current moment, without taking into account the karmic cause-and-effect relationships left over from past lives, requiring Buddhist disciples to maintain a pure mind and keep the precepts no matter the circumstances. Tax evasion is originally a matter of secular law—tax law is secular law—yet the Buddhist precepts also touch upon it, requiring Buddhist practitioners and even monastics to abide by the laws and regulations of the secular world and not to violate the rules and regulations of the nation and of each region. Therefore, when a Buddhist practitioner violates certain laws, they also simultaneously violate the Buddhist precepts. As for coercive, unfair contracts, they constitute an act of theft; according to cause and effect, such contracts do not count, and violating them breaks neither the law nor the precepts. Nowadays, coercive and unfair contracts are everywhere in the world; in every era there has been the phenomenon of the strong preying on the weak.