“Inspire us to eagerly endeavour to practise the means for abandoning negativities and accumulating virtues”. This is referring to karma. Actions, that is what karma means. Actions and their effects.

Karma and its effects refer to the ethical dimension of our actions and the results that we experience due to those ethical dimensions. The first attribute of karma is that positive results come from constructive actions and painful results come from destructive actions. The Buddha did not make up the system of causality, he only observed it. He started looking at the results and the happiness that sentient beings experienced, and then labelled the actions that brought about happiness “constructive actions”. When sentient beings experienced suffering, those causes were labelled “destructive actions”. This is important to understand, that things are labelled constructive or destructive in relation to the results that they bring. There is no reward or punishment. It is a system of dependent arising. These results come from the causes.

The second attribute of karma is that a small cause can grow into a big result. Sometimes we tend to think, “It is just a small negative action, does not matter if I do it.” Wrong. It is very important when there is the potential for a small negative karma, avoid creating it. Or if we have created it, purify it. Similarly, when there are opportunities to engage in small virtuous actions, sometimes we get lazy, “It is just a small one.” Wrong. You can create a small action and get a very plentiful result.

The third attribute of karma is that, if you do not create the cause, you do not get the result. We might think that all we need to do is offer prayers to the Buddha and then these realisations are going to grow in our minds. No. If we want a good future life, liberation, or awakening, a prayer may be a good cooperative condition to make a karmic seed ripen. But we have got to create the principal causes, those karmic seeds, by doing the practice.

The fourth attribute of karma is that it will definitely bring its result. It does not get lost. Rather, in the case of destructive karmic seeds, unless we do purification practice, those karmic seeds will eventually ripen. In the same way, our positive, constructive karmic seeds will definitely ripen into happiness unless we impede those by having wrong views or anger. This is why it is so important to know the antidotes to anger because anger interferes with the ripening of our virtuous karma and can shatter it.

This teaching is very practical. The more we understand it, the more it is going to change how we live in our daily life. But it is good to make examples of the four attributes of karma in your mind and see how they affect the way you live your life.

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