AMIDA DHARMA - Fascicle 1. Karma and Samsara

Click here to return to the Table of Contents

1.There is a natural law, a supreme law, uncreated and the same for all. It is called karma and it means that everything is cause and effect.

2.Thoughts and intentions represent the karma of mind, words are the karma of speech and the actions are the karma of body. These are the three types of karma. They define and create all beings and they also determine the environment in which we are born.

3. All that we think, speak or do will affect our personal history. What we are now is the result of what we thought, said or did in the past, in another lifetime or in the present life; and what we think, speak and do in the present will create us in the future. 

4.Birth, life and death must be understood through the law of cause and effect. All that exists has a cause and any cause will have an effect. In every second of our life we harvest the fruits of our thoughts, words and deeds and plant new seeds by what we think, say and do. This is the right way to understand the world arround us and what happens to us.

5.We are born and reborn from our karma, that is, from our own actions. Even the outside world is but the manifestation of collective karma. Our world, this plane of existence, as well as all other worlds have karma as their origin. Various universes and the beings that populate them do not appear by chance, nor are they created by a god, but are the effect of past causes.

6.Samsara, that is, the world of repeated births and deaths, is the collective dream of all beings drowned in delusion and ignorance. It appears from the collective karma of beings which inhabit it. Just like ordinary dreams are the manifestation of thoughts, deeds and words said during daytime, what we think, do and say gives rise to the collective dream in which we are born and die repeatedly.

7. Various universes and worlds appear, dissapear and reappear from the collective karma of beings. As long as beings are still asleep in delusion and blind passions, the samsaric dream will never end.

8. In the moment of death, personal karma determines the form, that is, the body our mind will have in the next birth.

9.As slaves to their own delusions, blind passions and karma, unenlightened beings are born again and again in various places. There are six realms of existence which appear due to individual and collective karma of beings who are born in them. These are: the hells, the realms of hungry ghosts, animals, humans, demigods (asuras) and gods (devas).

10.All beings are born, die and are reborn again in the six samsaric realms depending on their karma and their existence is accompanied with various kinds of suffering,  obstacles and delusions.

11.Birth in the hell realms is caused by actions, speech and thoughts motivated by hate and cruelty. In hells beings suffer from fire, cold and unimaginable tortures. All these punishments are not applied by living beings nor decided by some kind of supreme judge, but are the manifestations of individual and collective karma of the beings born there. The monsters who appear in the hell realms and torture beings are in fact, manifested by the sinners evil karma just as in nightmares we are tortured by beings who manifest from our own thoughts.

Although life in hells lasts very long, nobody stays there forever. Beings remain in the hell realms until the evil karma which brought them there is exhausted, then they die and are reborn in other states of existence depending on the various types of karma they accumulated in the past.

12.Birth in the realm of hungry spirits (pretas) is caused by actions, speech and thoughts motivated by greed and avarice.

Hungry spirits suffer from hunger and thirst. Because in their human life they were never satisfied no matter how many riches they gathered, after death they will desperately search for food and water, but they will never find it.

Although life as a hungry spirit lasts very long, nobody stayes like that forever. Beings remain in the realm of hungry spirits until the evil karma which brought them there is exhausted, then they die and are reborn in other states of existence depending on the various types of karma they accumulated in the past

13. Birth in animal form is caused by actions, speech and thoughts motivated by ignorance and instinct. Those who live only for eating, drinking and sex, are born as animals.

Animals suffer from eating one another, they are also exploited, hunted or raised for their meat and other products made from their bodies.

Beings stay in animal form until the evil karma which brought them there is exhausted, then they die and are reborn in other states of existence depending on the various types of karma they accumulated in the past.

14. Hells, the world of hungry spirits and animals are called the lower realms of existence because their suffering is much greater than in the worlds of humans, demigods and gods.

15.Birth in the human world is caused by virtuous actions, speech and thoughts stained by all the mind's poisons, with no particular poison predominating.

Humans are affected by eight types of suffering: birth, old age, disease, death, encountering what is unpleasant, separation from what is pleasant, not getting what one wants and the suffering associated with all mental and physical elements that define a human being (body, sensations, perceptions, thoughts and mental states).

Beings stay in human form until the karma which brought them there is exhausted, then they die and are reborn in other states of existence depending on various types of karma they accumulated.

16. Birth as a demigod (asura) is caused by virtuous actions, speech and thoughts stained by jealousy and rivalry, by doing something good only to prove one's superior qualities.

Although demigods experience various pleasures and abundance which are far superior to those of humans, they are constantly tormented by anger, jealousy, quarreling and fighting. Life as an Asura is a pitiful one – filled as it is with joys and pleasures more than a human can imagine, but they are not able to enjoy it due to envy and conflicts.

Although life as a demigod lasts very long, nobody stays like that forever. Beings remain in the world of demigods until the karma which brought them there is exhausted, then they die and are reborn in other states of existence depending on various types of karma they accumulated.

17. Birth as a god (deva) is caused by virtuous actions, speech and thoughts stained by pride. The pleasures and hapiness of gods are far superior to other samsaric beings, but even these are not the true happiness which only comes through freedom from repeated births and deaths.

Although life as a god lasts very long, nobody stays like that forever. Beings remain in the world of gods until the karma which brought them there is exhausted, then they die and are reborn in other states of existence depending on various types of karma they accumulated.

The passing of a god is very painful as it is preceded by traumatic physical changes and the awareness that pleasures enjoyed until then came to an end. You can compare their situation with a rich person who has lived in luxury since birth and is suddenly thrown into the street and forced to eat garbage.

There are other types of gods which are superior to those mentioned here; some of them are very spiritually advanced, nevertheless they are not free from samsara as they are also subject to repeated births and deaths and various types of sufferings within samsara.

18.Among the samsaric places of existence, birth in human form is the most appropiate because it represents a favorable balance between pain and pleasure – not too much pleasure as in the realms of the gods and demigods, and not too much pain as in the animal world, hungry spirits (pretas) and hells. This makes listening to and following the Buddhist teaching easier. Who can really focus on Dharma when he is burned in the fires of hell, tormented by hunger and thirst like the pretas or hunted for meat and with a mind that is limited by ignorance like in the case of animals? Also, who can focus on the Dharma when he enjoys the intoxicating pleasures of gods and demigods, and is always attracted by new desires and distractions?

19.Very few beings are reborn again in human form after they die, and non-human beings are far more numerous than humans. We can easily realize this by comparing the insects on this planet with the humans. Even if we are now more than seven bilion people, insects will always be more numerous than us. Also, the lower states of existence (hells, the realm of hungry spirits and animals) receive more beings than our human plane. When people focus on hate motivated activities they easily plant a karmic connection with the hell realm, thus being born after death in one of the hells. In the same way, its easier to let onself be dominated by greed or avarice and open the gate to the hungry spirits or to become dominated by instincts and be reborn in animal form, than to plant the good karmic seeds of human rebirth.

20. Samsara is like an immense wheel which turns endlessly. Now we have a good karma and we are born in a superior state of existence, as a human, demigod or god, but in a next life we do evil deeds again and we are reborn in the lower realms of existence (in the hell realms, the realm of hungry spirits and the animal realm) There is not a single place in samsara where we haven’t been born at least once, since we have been transmigrating in samsara since the beginingless past, and we shall remain trapped in this wheel of birth and death if we continue to be slaves of delusions, blind passions and karma. Also, there is no being in samsara who hasn’t been our father, mother, brother, sister or friend at a certain point in a previous existence through our long wandering in samsara.

Until we escape this endless cycle of repeated births and deaths there is no true and everlasting happiness.

21. Nothing which exists in samsara lasts forever: the outside universe, the bodies of beings in various states of existence, social status, riches, or our so-called “spiritual realizations.”

22. The great world systems with their various realms and planets which appear due to the collective karma of beings living in them will disintegrate one day. Then, other worlds will appear and will disappear, too. Even the gods with immense life spans will die like any other samsaric being. Rulers of vast celestial realms or leaders of men are equally subject to death and their kingdoms will disappear sooner or later. Rich and poor, successful people and loosers, will all leave their present bodies and will not take anything with them from their success or failure.

Death is indeed, the great equalizer.

23. If we really understand death and we become aware that it is always near, ready to strike at any moment, then we will stop wasting our time in mundane matters and we will make the liberation from samsaric existence and the study of Amida-Dharma which leads us outside the cycle of death and suffering in samsara our top priority.