What Are Karmic Connections?

What are karmic conditions?

Karmic conditions, as the name implies, are conditions arising from actions of body, speech, and mind. They are also the conditions through which the five aggregates experience karmic retribution for good and evil deeds. With these karmic conditions, the five aggregates can live amid all phenomena, create karma, and undergo retribution. All phenomena encompass everything in one's surroundings—human affairs, objects, principles, other five aggregates, and the living environment, including all natural phenomena in the cosmic vessel of the universe. Sentient beings rely on these to create karma and undergo retribution. Ways of living, living conditions, and means of subsistence are karmic conditions. Family members, relatives, friends, and colleagues are karmic conditions. Only with these conditions can one experience the retribution of good and evil karmic fruits.

Among these, the physical body is the direct retributive effect of karma and can also serve as the karmic cause or condition for the physical body before death and in future lives. The environment is the circumstantial retributive effect of karma and can also be a karmic cause or condition. A phenomenon can be a cause, a condition, or an effect. Phenomena are indeterminate, and their fruits are likewise indeterminate.