YOU ALL COMPORT YOURSELVES WITH real dedication to do benevolent deeds. Yet, there lives another group of people in society. They don’t make much effort to engage in benevolent, merit-producing activities. “We don’t do anyone any wrong,” these folks think, “nor do we commit any misdeeds. So, there’s no need for us to do merits.” Saying this, they maintain that it’s only those who commit misdeeds who ought to perform merits.

On the surface, these notions align well with each other. But the unseen enemy hidden in this sort of pernicious tenets is ‘fallacious view’ or Wrong View (micchā diṭṭhi). Turn around and take a good look at your own revered-life. Having been born to righteous parents in a Buddhist environment―which affords the rarest of opportunities to come into contact with the Dhamma―if you submitted to such baleful views, what a fell act of treachery you’d be committing against this precious human life.

Buddha proclaims that all karma-formations―saṅkhāras―are ‘impermanent.’ Karma-formations mean volitional activity of mind, word or deed, arising due to ignorance (avijjā). That is, wholesome and unwholesome bodily, verbal and mental actions. This means that all wholesome and unwholesome karma-formations (kusala and akusala saṅkhāras) you have committed, or are committing, will produce results and expire. In a world in which a preponderance of people are of Wrong View, it is owing to wholesome karma-formations that revered-you have received this meaningful life as one who has made the acquaintance of the Dhamma, a Buddhist practitioner. In a world teeming with untold numbers of humans that are blind, profoundly deaf, or crippled, you have received a perfectly formed human body owing to wholesome karma-formations. In a world where unsightly folks abound, you have received captivating looks; in a world awash with the severely ill, you have received a life blessed with good health―all on account of past wholesome karma-formations. Revered-you have received a good social standing, righteous parents, good relatives, wife, husband, child, due to wholesome karma-formations past. Everything you find pleasure in, claiming as ‘mine,’ is but the result of karma-formations you accumulated in days of yore.

This eye of yours, you received as a result of a wholesome karma-formation. Now this eye is gradually wearing away. As is the case with this entire body. You received this perfectly formed body of yours owing to a wholesome karma-formation. The nature of karma-formations is that they are evanescent; are impermanent. So, revered-laity, you must engender again and again.

Revered-you have met a dear and wonderful wife. She is ever so dutiful and loyal to you. Lives sharing joys and sorrows alike. It is owing to a wholesome karma-formation that you have received this wife. Well, had you received a nagging, henpecking wife who was forever tormenting you, would you have got the happiness that came from having a wife? Not quite. Had that been the case, you would have had to face many a nightmare: to quarrel, involve the police, get divorced. That would have been a thing that happened due to unwholesome karma-formations. The cause for this suffering and pleasure both, rather than any fault of the horoscope or the matchmaker, is past wholesome or unwholesome karma-formations. Nothing but results of wholesome and unwholesome deeds you yourself committed in the past.

Wholesome karma-formations, which give rise to pleasures, expire after producing results. As do unwholesome karma-formations, which bring about suffering. You having pleasures in this life means you’re expending what you yourself accumulated. The more you have pleasures, the more the wholesome karma-formations get depleted. What is being used up you must replenish again and again. Otherwise, your next rebirth will be one that is destitute and lowly. So, revered-you, beware of the fallacy, the Wrong View, that posits, “Since we don’t sin, we don’t have to do benevolent deeds.” Doing merits over and over again, top up the wholesome karma-formations expended. Rise above the karma-results of unwholesome karma-formations and the resultant suffering, impeding them with the strength of wholesome karma-formations you augment by repeatedly doing merits.

Buddha says if a tear were to fall from your eyes at this moment, it would be purely because you had occasioned another’s tears in the previous life; if you were laughing mirthfully at present, it’d be only because you had brought joy to others in the previous life. In that case, the result of your past karma-formations is the cause of your laughter as well as tears. Like this, leisurely, perceive life according to the phenomenon of cause and effect. It is essential that you be perceiving this way if you are to develop unwavering saddhā―faith and confidence―in the Dhamma. One who is unbelieving of these phenomena will, even if they happen to get a human life again, lapse into Wrong View. Plus they will also be born into straitened circumstances on account of their apathy towards generosity (dāna), which is caused in turn by the unbelief in karma and karma-results. The following account is of a person who got himself such a rebirth.

This gentleman led a middle-class life. Married, with children and grandchildren. He never observed moral precepts (sīla). Never tried to give alms. “I don’t commit any wrong, so there’s no need for me to perform merits,” was his philosophy. This person did help people. But not out of belief in karma and karma-results. So, the righteous things he did do became just things that brought a mere momentary joy. Having lived for about 65 years, this person died.

Following his death, a bhikkhu, with the noble samādhi―a state of deep concentration of the mind―aimed to discern the place whither he had taken rebirth. A child with a severely dark complexion, born in a poverty-stricken hut, was what the bhikkhu visioned. Judging by appearance, the bhikkhu surmised the child belonged to the Tamil ethnic group [―which eventuates in little chance of coming into contact with the Dhamma again]. It means that this individual, due to the pernicious view he obdurately took, forfeited the dispensation of a buddha. His falling into Wrong View is now a fait accompli. Alas, when would he ever be able to claw his way out of this catastrophe? It’s a mere pipe dream now. Despite having been born an heir to as meaningful and valuable a Dhamma as this, because of trying to adapt Dhamma to his liking, he forfeited the dispensation.

Revered-you, don’t ever go to interpret according to your own speculative views the Dhamma set forth by Lord Buddha with perfect omniscience. Were that to happen, the result would be: you losing the dispensation and falling into Wrong View. You can see how the essence of the dispensation is fast disappearing. Hardly ever does anyone now speak of the quality of Dhamma known as sandiṭṭhika―that Dhamma is directly visible by oneself. Than notice the suffering (dukkha), which is the first of the Four Noble Truths, which are the very essence of the Dhamma, there is a tendency in society that would rather see pleasure. With this tendency steadily on the increase, what is it that we find in the world? The increase in that Wrong View. The increase in Buddhist practitioners who, bereft of faith and confidence in the Triple Gem, bear pernicious views and opinions. These aren’t things to get perturbed about. Just causalities.

Be it clergy or laity, anyone defying the true essence of the Dhamma or misinterpreting Buddha’s teaching won’t, after this life, have a birthright to the protection of the dispensation. What they will inherit is the blaze of the ‘becoming’ (bhava), which is overcast with the gloom of Wrong View. The more you distance yourself from the essence of the Dhamma, the more Wrong View will rise in the world, and the less the number of Buddhists having faith and confidence in the Triple Gem will be. Some revered-folks ruefully remark that Sinhala-Buddhist mothers limit their progeny to just two, whereas Muslim and Tamil mothers would have a larger brood, and in consequence the Buddhist population is declining. Revered-you, do not fret, for these are just cause-and-effect phenomena. Each such offspring born to Tamil or Muslim mothers is none other than an erstwhile Buddhist whose birthright to the dispensation has been forfeited due to pernicious views and opinions that defied the essence of this exalted Dhamma. Rather than considering the above matters in keeping with the Dhamma, if you considered them according to speculative views and opinions and bred hatred as a result, then even your next inheritance could well be a womb of that ilk.

Let the world be as it is. You come hither to the way of the Dhamma. Be a male or female lay devotee who has sought refuge in the Triple Gem. Perceive life with belief in karma and karma-results. Then you can see that Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim, Buddhist and Christian wombs are all ‘suffering.’ So perilous a world it is. Take great caution when dealing with it. See that the world is nothing but the five clinging aggregates―form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness (the pañca-upādānakkhandha). If you whose birth certificate presently showed ‘Sinhala’ and ‘Buddhist’ as the race and religion were to adopt speculative views unbefitting to its meanings, nine months after your death, you could be the owner of a birth certificate with ‘Hindu’, ‘Muslim’ or ‘Christian’ as the race or religion. All this is cause-and-effect phenomena of karma-formations―saṅkhāras. No mistake anywhere in the process. Even if you err, the Dhamma will not. The Dhamma does not discriminate between Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim. The essence of the Dhamma is to give the verdict based on the nature of karma-formations. Yet, in this precious moment, you who are Buddhist practitioners, more than anyone else, enjoy a wonderful prerogative: To have inherited a noble Dhamma set forth by a master par excellence who had insightfully realized the entire trifold world with his buddha-omniscience.

Chucking the whole world into one pile, perceive the world by coming hither to Buddha’s lot!

The world, as seen by the world, is a most complicated affair. In that world Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, merits, sins, good, bad, war, peace, all this is present. The world set forth by the Buddha, though, is much more straightforward than this. Even if we take the Four Noble Truths (ariya sacca) or the Dependent-Origination (paṭicca samuppāda), they make the world, which ignorance has enormously complicated, refreshingly simple. How one clings to the world due to this one cause known as craving (tanhā) and how one escapes the world by overcoming that single cause―craving―has been set forth ever so eloquently. Despite you being tethered to the entire world by the thing called craving, Lord Buddha brings that complex phenomenon―the world―down to the five things known as form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness, which arise simply from within you; brings the entire workings of the whole world down to the five clinging aggregates.