The Karmic Retribution of Selling Pork

Question: I do marketing for a company that sells black pork. You say I have the karmic offense of polluting people's minds and the offense of inducement. Are these two kinds of karmic offenses heavy or light offenses? Will I fall into hell?

Answer: Selling pork is itself the karma of killing, and marketing constitutes assisting in killing, indirect killing, which carries the same offense as the company's boss. Moreover, selling black pork—passing it off as something it is not—belongs to deceiving customers, passing off inferior goods as superior, and slipping it through under false pretenses; this is false speech and assisting in false speech, again the same offense as the company's boss. However, if you were coerced or deceived and had no choice but to sell black pork, then there is no offense.

This kind of evil karma is not direct killing, nor is it killing a human being, so it will not send you to hell. But by assisting the company's boss in committing a great deal of killing karma, this evil karma is not light either; you have formed many evil karmic bonds, and the future retributive results will be quite bad. You will naturally go to the three evil destinies to receive retribution—especially the animal destiny, which you are certain to enter. Once born into the animal destiny, you will have to repay the life-debt owed to the pigs. The evil karma that sends one to hell is that which is committed with severe hatred and resentment, mainly karmic actions aimed at slaughter and revenge, with a mind of great or extreme anger; whereas marketing done merely for the purpose of making money is greed, without a mind of anger, so what you have committed is not hell-karma. The more pigs die, the heavier this person's killing karma becomes. The future retributive results are, first, frequent illness, and second, being killed by others; when the karmic conditions ripen in the future, you will also be killed by pigs.

In this world, quite a few marketing activities belong to defiling karma, which can defile both oneself and others with the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion, and increase sentient beings' craving. Using false and untruthful advertising to induce sentient beings into unreasonable and excessive consumption, profiting from it, and increasing sentient beings' greed—this karmic offense is not small. If as a result you and the company make more money, is this not meritorious karma but rather karma that consumes merit? If the marketing is done so well that pork sales are booming and more and more pigs die, what kind of karmic offense should this marketer bear? It is subsidiary evil karma—assisting others in doing evil brings evil retribution as well. Quite a few industries in this world belong to evil karma; for example, the usury industry is also evil karma: others suffer losses of money and interests, while you lose a corresponding amount of your own merit; when conditions ripen, you will naturally repay what you gained a thousandfold.