Death is the end of physical body only. The mind is still trapped in the cycle of birth and death. What kind of life? This will depend on the good and bad karma of the person. If we don’t go against the flow of the world by doing good things to build the good capital for our life, it will be us ourselves who suffer the consequence of our bad karma. When we’re in great distress, we lament why life is so cruel. This is because we didn’t create a good cause in the past. Even now, we haven’t tried to create a good cause that will yield a good outcome. Most of the time, we let our mind go along with our own weaknesses (or Kilesa in Buddhism). When it’s payback time for the bad karma, people keep lamenting though they didn’t strive to do good deeds when they were still alive as humans.

In the Buddha’s era, a man cried and asked Buddha to perform a ritual to send his father’s soul to heaven, to which Buddha replied, “Your father died. How can I help him?” The Buddha’s reply was very important. What he meant was that his father’s chance was there all the time when he was alive. Now that he was dead, how could even the Buddha help him?

How many Buddhist eras have people overlooked the value of their own lives, failing to see that this is a chance to live a virtuous life to be free from sins? When they think of doing something good, all they do is making merit occasionally and reading dhamma quotes. Then they go on swiping their finger on a smartphone and let their life slide down to other things in life. When it comes to restraining from committing a sin and mind training, they are unsure and reluctant to follow the Noble Paths although the Buddha had said clearly that this is the ultimate way out of sufferings and karma.

What are they waiting for? Although they know that Vipassana meditation is the highest merit in Buddhism, why do they fail to strive to take action when they still can?

Do not fall victim to the world where all the stories are made-up and meant to make us become a victim of our own emotions, further creating more karma. Making merits occasionally in accordance with the traditions does not help get out of karma but only create enough capital to survive to be reborn and paid back to the karma we’ve done. Do ask yourself, when you’re gone; are afraid of your accumulated karma? If you are, let’s start. Purify the mind. Training is self-restraining. That is being restrained from the kilesas to make merits to take ourselves away from karma, restrained from the feelings of the kilesas, which is overtaking the mind. Do start the journey to end the cycle of sufferings as we are an heir of karma not anyone else at all.

Learn to restrain yourself. Do not succumb to the Kilesa. Do not make an excuse that it’s not time yet. Indeed, this is the excuse for letting yourself be stuck in the cycle of karma. How many times have you postponed taking action? Do not let yourself repeat the same mistake. Be compassionate to your soul.

To get out of karma, you yourself must take action.

Master Acharavadee Wongsakon
Source: Selected Teaching from “The Way Out of Karma” October 25, 2018

Quote

What are they waiting for? Although they know that Vipassana meditation is the highest merit in Buddhism, why do they fail to strive to take action when they still can?

Do not succumb to the kilesa. Do not make an excuse that it’s not time yet. Indeed, this is the excuse for letting yourself be stuck in the cycle of karma.
How many times have you postponed taking action? Do not let yourself repeat the same mistake.
To get out of karma, you yourself must take action.

Translated by Pimchanok Thanitsond