There is this beautiful inspirational saying in Christianity that goes, "Ever saint has a past, every sinner a future." 😇👹
Angulimala Discourse (MN 86)
Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Buddha was living in Sāvatthi at Jeta’s Grove in the millionaire’s park.
On that occasion there was a serial killer in the King Pasenadi's kingdom of Kosala by the name of Aṅgulimāla (“Finger-garland”). He was a murderer, bloodyhanded, given to beatings and violence, without mercy for living beings.
Villages, towns, and whole districts were being laid waste by him. He was constantly murdering people, and he wore their fingers (aṅguli) like a garland string (māla) [as a gruesome trophy].
Then, when it was morning, the Blessed One dressed and, taking his bowl and outer robe, went into Sāvatthi for alms. When he had wandered for alms and had returned after his meal, he set his resting place in order. Then taking his bowl and robe, he set out on foot to Aṅgulimāla's location.
Cowherds, shepherds, and ploughmen passing by saw the Buddha taking the road to Aṅgulimāla. Seeing him, they shouted, “Do not take that road, wandering ascetic!
"On that road is the serial killer Aṅgulimāla, who's a murderer, bloodyhanded, given to beatings and violence, without mercy for living beings.
"Villages and towns and districts are being laid waste by him. He is constantly murdering people, and he wears their fingers as a garland. Men have come along this road in groups of 10, 20, 30 and, even 40 from time to time, but they have all fallen into Aṅgulimāla’s bloody hands!”
When this was said, the Blessed One continued on in silence. More
The story of Aṅgulimāla is most well known in the Theravāda Buddhist tradition [5]. Two texts in the early sutras of the Pāli language canon are concerned with Aṅgulimāla's initial encounter with the Buddha and his conversion to nonviolence (ahimsa), which are believed to present the oldest version of the story [6, 7, Note 1].
The first is the Psalms of the Brethren (Theragāthā), probably the oldest of the two,[5] and the second is the Aṅgulimāla Sutta in the Middle Length Discourses (Majjhima Nikāya) [9]. Both offer a short description of Aṅgulimāla's encounter with the Buddha without mentioning much of the background information, which of course is the work of Indian commentaries to provide).
Returning to monastery bleeding from attack
Later details were incorporated into the story, such as Aṅgulimāla being placed under an oath by a jealous teacher [10, 5].
Apart from the Pāli texts, Tibetan and Chinese texts that originate in Sanskrit also describe the life of Aṅgulimāla [10, 7].
A text translated in Chinese from the Sanskrit Ekottara Agāma by the Mahā-Saṃghika school is also known. Furthermore, three other Chinese texts dealing with Aṅgulimāla have also been found, of unknown origin but different from the first three Chinese texts [13].
Apart from these early texts, there are also later renderings that appear in the commentary to the Middle Length Discourses attributed to Buddhaghosa (5th century CE) and the commentary to the Theragāthā attributed to Dhammapāla (6th century CE) [10].
The two commentaries do not appear to be independent of one another: It appears that Dhammapāla copied or closely paraphrased Buddhaghosa, adding explanation to some of the inconsistencies [6, 7], which is of course the job of the sub-commentaries.
The earliest accounts of Aṅgulimāla's life emphasize his fearless violence and, by contrast, the peacefulness of the Buddha. More
Karma is so complex a topic that trying to fathom the "working out of karma" is something on a scale so staggering that it is considered one of the Four Imponderables in Buddhism. Only a buddha can begin to navigate the intricacies, probabilities, and intrepidities of how any deed (action) will meet its many results.
Therefore, the comic above is very funny. Of course, we do not see things working out! We are, for one thing, looking on too infinitesimally small a timescale. For another, imagine just the balls on a billiard table. They are all more or less equal, except for positioning.
One ball bangs into them, and no one can predict where they will go -- not even the one with the stick banging one into the others in a very controlled setting. Now take the countless variables associated with any single deed -- the intention behind it, the thoughts after it, the unknowable impacts on others... It's just too much.
Even the Buddha, when he looked into the future, did not give an exact date when things would happen. But he did know that when this or that sign appear, the results are coming, and that was on a grand scale of collective karma.
More importantly he knew that it was not possible for bad karma (such as the breaking of the Five Precepts) to produce a welcome result. This seems like nonsense to us because we get pleasant results from breaking them all the time.
What we don't know is that that result is not the karmic result, the vipaka. When that resultant ripens, woe. If we knew that, what we shrink back from the unskillful, the unwholesome, and the unwise courses of action, of which there are ten, the Ten Courses of Unwholesome Action.
The Four Imponderables
The acinteyya are identified in the Acintita Sutta (AN 4.77), as follows [8]. There is the:
buddha-range of buddhas [i.e., the range of powers a Buddha develops as a result of becoming a buddha];
jhana-range of one absorbed in jhanas (the meditation absorptions) [i.e., the range of powers that one may obtain while absorbed in the jhanas];
[precise working out of the] results of karma;
speculation about [the origin, etc., of] the cosmos.
These four are imponderables that ought not to be speculated about [as doing so may lead one to become unhinged and nevertheless not understand them, when the path-of-practice that is the purification of the mind/heart is here and yields insight into all these things and why they are imponderable in the first place].
NOTE: (SN 56.41 develops this speculation as the ten indeterminate).
Acinteyya literally means "that which cannot or should not be pondered or thought about, the unthinkable, the incomprehensible, the impenetrable, that which goes beyond the limits of thinking and over which therefore one should not ponder.
These Four Imponderables (unthinkables) are:
the sphere of a buddha (buddha-visaya),
the sphere of the meditative absorptions (jhāna-visaya),
the sphere of karmic-results (kamma-vipāka),
brooding over the world (loka-cintā), particularly over an absolute first beginning of it. (See A.IV.77).
SUTRA
"Therefore, O meditators, do not brood [fret, preoccupy, waste time, become distressed] over the world as to whether it is eternal or not eternal, finite or infinite (limited or endless)...
"Such brooding, O meditators, is senseless, has nothing to do with genuine good conduct (see ādibrahmacariyaka-sīla, "supreme or higher morality"), does not lead to turning away, letting go, extinction [of delusion and suffering], nor to peace, full comprehension, awakening (enlightenment), and nirvana, and so on" (S.56.41).
Buddha's Wisdom (video); Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary; commentary and editing by Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit
What deeds (karma in Buddhism) lead to rebirth in the animal womb (tiracchana yoni). The simple answer is breaking any of the Five Precepts. Upholding these moral precepts is the basic minimum to ever be reborn on the human plane.
Animals in the Buddhist worldview are believed to inhabit a distinct "world" (loka) that is separat from humans. But the dividing line is not in space. Rather, it is in terms of state of mind. This "Animal Womb" (Sanskrit Tiryag-yoni, Pāli Tiracchāna-yoni) World is part of the downfall (apaya).
Rebirth as an animal is considered very unfortunate -- even though some animals are very beautiful, long lived, and treated well due to previous karma. In general, rebirth as an animal involves much more suffering than is found in the human world (manusya-loka).
The real "human world" we don't see
Humans live long lives in peace and prosperity...not here, but in other human worlds.
We think we understand the "human plane" because we are living on it. We do not. We do not understand even a fraction of human life on this plane, which we are told is a "plane(t)" and no one is allowed to question that and be taken seriously.
There are countless "human" worlds existing in "world systems" in all directions in space. But just here, wherever "here" is, the Buddha spoke of four "lights" or "islands" (dipas, usually translated as "continents," but they are more likely other divisions, places, dimensions because the strange beings that inhabit them are very different from the ordinary "humans" we take for granted all around us). What is behind the Ice Wall, the next human subdivision or "continent"?
FOUR "HUMAN" WORLDS right here, main divisions: (1)Jambu-dīpa, located in the south (of the axis mundi Mt. Sumeru (a "mountain" too big to be an actual peak here like holy Mt. Kailash, K2, Everest, or the even taller Mauna Kea when measured from base to peak as one would normally measure anything), named after the Jambu tree, with human beings who are five to six feet tall and length of life currently at 120 years (though varying between 10 years at its lowest ebb and 80,000 at its height); (2) Pubbavideha located in the east, named after the acacia tree, similar to Yggdrasil the "world tree" in Norse mythology, with humanoid people about 12 feet (3.7 meters) in height, living for an average of 700 years; (3) Aparagoyāna located in the west, named after a giant Kadamba tree (Anthocephalus chinensis), with humanoid inhabitants living not in houses but sleeping on the ground, standing about 24 feet (7.3 m) tall and living for 500 years (though usually 500 just means "a long time"); (4)Uttarakuru, located in the north, with a giant tree called a Kapparukkha, an "aeon-tree," because it lasts for the entire kappa (Pali) or kalpa(Sanskrit) with humanoid inhabitants living in cities built in the air/sky/space (akasha), extraordinarily wealthy, not needing to work for a living – with food that grows by itself – having no private property, standing about 48 feet (15 m) tall and living for 1,000 years under the protection of Vaiśravaṇa.
(Does any of this sound like "our 'planet' or 'human world,'" the one we know as we travel around? Or maybe The Jetsons were onto something.) More unbelievable details: The Earthly Realms in Buddhist cosmology
There are almost certainly more of these, as spoken of in Vedic, Hindu, and Jain texts, with a series of planes inside, below ground: Agartha (Hollow Earth).
The Animal World
Help, I'm drowning, I'm drowning in samsara!
The Buddhist commentaries (tika) depict the many types of suffering associated with the animal world. Even when human beings are not present to torture, imprison, slaughter, and devour them, they are attacked by other animals and ripped to shreds -- or live in fear of it. They endure extreme changes of environment throughout the year and have no secure habitation.
Animals that live among humans are often groomed, molested, experimented on, then slaughtered for their bodies, or captured and forced to work with beatings until they are slaughtered at the premature end of their miserable lives.
This is nice. Diane and I are rich and live well!
Moreover, animals as a rule suffer from ignorance even more than humans, not knowing or understanding with any clarity what is happening to them or why. And they are unable to do much about it, acting primarily on instinct, if they can manage to figure anything out. Some animals understand what is going on, remembering past lives and wondering why humans cannot hear them or respond to their feelings and cries and complaints. (See an animal communicator if this seems impossible to believe). More
Metal and men clash once more to the end/ Warriors above, with the power to kill, descend/ Militia of blood, troops of hate march to die/ Soldiers of Hell, veterans of death arise
[CHORUS:] Prepare for attack/ Your body will burn/ Endless war/ There's no return/ Prepare for attack/ Death will arrive/ Your orders are clear/ No way to hide/ Fight till death
Senseless death of all mankind overtakes/ Armored assassins destroy, at will, your escape/ Children of sorrow are trampled into the grave/ There is no future, no fucking world to be saved [CHORUS]
To reign in Hell [guitar solo: Jeff Hanneman]/ Gods of steel unleash their destruction on man/ Reign of death, what is the final command?/ Scepters of hate are dropped upon this Earth/ Clouds of terror destroy all hope of rebirth [CHORUS]
Prepare for attack/ Your body will burn/ Endless war/ There's no return/ Prepare for attack/ Death will arrive/ Your orders are clear/ No way to hide/ Fight till death/ Fight till death/ Fight till death/ Fight till death.
Not every bad thing that happens to a person right after doing a bad thing is the karmic-result of THAT bad thing. Things take time to incubate and produce their results (vipaka and phala). It would be very unusual for an act (deed) to be so weighty as to produce an immediate result such as the Beatles would have called "instant karma." In any case, the result of an action is not called "karma." Results are called vipaka (resultants) and phala (fruti). Doing something unpleasant to someone who did you first is called revenge, and it is your unskillful karma. Their karma has not yet ripened to produce its result. Therefore, there is no need to attack people. This will only be harmful to you. They'll get theirs. Trust the impersonal law of causes and effects, of deeds producing appropriate results. It's universal.
KARMA (Sanskrit, Pāli kamma) "intentional action," correctly speaking denotes the wholesome and unwholesome volitions (kusala- and akusala-cetanā) and their concomitant mental factors, causing rebirth and shaping the destiny of beings.
Cetanā is the intention, motivation, underly motive, the volition behind an action; this is what determines if it skillful, neutral, or unskillful more than the action itself seen objectively. It is the subjective input, which is visible to those who develop spiritual sight (dibba cakkhu).
These karmical volitions (kamma cetanā) become manifest as wholesome or unwholesome actions by body (kāya-kamma), speech (vacī-kamma), mind (mano-kamma).
Thus, the Buddhist term "karma" by no means signifies the RESULTS of actions and certainly not the FATE or DESTINY of beings or whole nations (so-called wholesale or mass-karma), misconceptions which, through the influence of Theosophy, have become widely spread in the West.
"Volition (cetanā), O meditators, is what I call action (cetanāham bhikkhave kammam vadāmi), for through volition one performs the action by body, speech, or mind.
There is karma ("action"), O meditators, that ripens in hell.... Karma that ripens in the animal world.... Karma that ripens in the world of humans.... Karma that ripens in the heavenly worlds....
Threefold, however, is the fruit of karma:
ripening during the lifetime (dittha-dhamma-vedanīya-kamma),
ripening in the next birth (upapajja-vedanīya-kamma),
ripening in subsequent births (aparāpariya-vedanīya kamma)...." (A.VI.63).
The three conditions or roots (mūla) of unwholesome karma (actions) are greed, hatred, and delusion (lobha, dosa, moha).
Those of wholesome karma are:
unselfishness (alobha),
hatelessness (adosa = mettā, goodwill),
nondelusion (amoha = paññā, knowledge).
"Greed, O meditators, is a condition for the arising of [unskillful] karma; hatred is a condition for the arising of karma; delusion is a condition for the arising of karma...." (A.III.112, A.III.34, A.III.147).
"Unwholesome actions are of three kinds: conditioned by:
greed,
hate,
delusion.
"Killing... stealing... sexual misconduct... lying... slandering... rude speech... foolish babble, if practiced, carried on, and frequently cultivated, leads to rebirth in hells, or among animals, or among ghosts" (A.VIII.40). More
(NY Post) No amount of Instagram [AI] filters will fix this.
Influencers might seem glamorous on social media, but their smoldering good looks apparently won’t last.
Experts at the gambling site casino.org have devised a grotesque model of what these content creators will look like by the Year 2050, complete with
pale, patchy skin
a hunchback and
chronic neck pain.
AI kills for the first time
Future social media influencers
“While the career [of social media influencer] can be glamorous, it can also bring significant changes to our lifestyle,” the gambling experts wrote.
They reportedly wanted to see how the “trendy profession” — which boasts 30-50 million adherents worldwide and is growing by 10-20% each year — can impact appearances over time.”
They deduced that “algorithm-chasing, [unrealistic] beauty standard pressures, and non-stop content creation can take a visible toll on both body and mind.” More
I was traveling as a vegan through India which, while mostly Hindu, at that time had about 100 million Muslims. (It now has 200 million or more).
I came to a strangely barren outdoor marketplace made of stone and clay. I watched from a distance as a bad smell of BBQ wafted through the air like an accident. Imagine the smell of burning plastic, upholstery, oil, textiles, and diesel fumes.
Men began to congregate, each at their own stall with animals, mainly sheep, lambs, or goats in tow. I blended in, holding still, just observing. And I began to realize these were butchers, killing animals by slicing their throats, beheading them, draining their blood, separating their corpses into portions, and piling bloody flesh on the stall tops for sale.
Shoppers, Muslims following their religion to eat the dead and Hindus violating theirs by buying carcasses (and therefore paying butchers to kill) for consumption, which is at odds with ahimsa ("nonharming"), were gathering.
The Dharmic religions enjoin humans to abstain from killing and from encouraging anyone else to kill. Butchers are encouraged to slaughter when people pay them to do it. Am I blameless for eating meat? It would be as if the Mafia godfather were to say, "I've never killed anybody" when he has hired and directed men to kill by paying them to do so. Is he blameless or as blameworthy as those Mafia men for all those killings? Butchers, paid for yesterday's killing, kill for tomorrow in full expectation that there is money to be made by those not doing the dirty work.
The flies. The dirty hands. The dust and pollution of uncovered stalls. The floors of stalls were a sheen of blood. There was some baying of the young sheep.
The men all seemed very nice, not yelling or argumentative, all in their workaday mode, thinking nothing wrong with slaughtering and selling in unhygienic conditions.
A modern human family walking on all fours?
Then, thinking of karma, I saw it. No one seemed to pay any mind, but I could not wrap my head around what people must be thinking they were seeing and why it was so. People probably go along to get along by not thinking.
An Ulas family member or distant relative, walking on all fours through the blood slats, was going from stall-to-stall begging. He had a Muslim cap like the others and clogs (rope and wood sandals) on his feet, which gave the appearance and sound of cloven hooves, as he ambled from butcher to butcher, who pitied him (or wanted him to move on).
They have him a few coins (backsheesh) or slivers of red flesh. To explain it to myself, I imagined that this man -- in a past life or earlier in this one -- was a butcher like them but then went crazy and decided to go on all four like a dog-duty ascetic.
But he was no ascetic, not one to do penance or tapas (fiery austerities), not Hindu or a member of one of the Dharmic religions. Yet, by his concurrent good deeds, possibly giving to beggars, he managed to gain rebirth in this world (on the human plane) rather than The Downfall (niraya), the worlds of woe that result from killing living beings and other cruelties.
Karma is such that the way it works out is not only strange but incomprehensible, one of the Four Imponderables. It is possible, particularly in this world of mixed karma (skillful and unskillful deeds), that one form of karma interferes with the other. Killers are not always immediately reborn in perdition.
It is possible by good karma (keeping the Five or Eight Precepts) that merit is made that counters unskillful actions for a time. The result of killing animals is not that one will one time be killed or reborn in hell but that it will happen again and again and those mental impulsions (javanas) formed in the doing come to fruition by conditioning a rebirth. One act (good or bad) has exponential karmic-results (vipaka, phala), ripening like fruit.
The man walked like a tall, skinny cow from booth to booth. The butchers gave charity. And he moved on to work the whole marketplace. I turned in disbelief, gobsmacked, and saw a girl selling piles of colorful powder dyes. It is not clear in what, ubiquitous plastic bags or wrapped in yesterday's newspaper. The piles were perfect and very likely synthetic and she seemed miserable to be there.
Then the smell hit me again and I saw smoke. It was a kind of hibachi, and an old Muslim man was placing something on the sooty grill. The smoke did not seem to bother the miserable salesgirl, but from a farther distance, it sure bothered me.
The man smiled at me, seeing my camera. I approached slowly and got close enough to discern what was burning. It was a pile of small heads of recently living lambs. It is the strangest thing to see a beheaded face separated from its torso, disconnected from its neck. The eyes were gently closed and I felt sure they might open at any moment. Was he cooking their brains in the skulls?
Surely, this was butcher offal (trash). What was he doing? I came to understand that he was singing the hair off to sell the heads for buyers to eat the face. Like a dog gnawing on a bone for marrow and gristle, scraps of remaining tendon, the smear of blood or scent of flesh, someone would buy this.
Price? 5 cents (It's hard to do the arithmetic conversion with moving exchange rates, and this was a long time ago when the US greenback fetched about 40 rupees). The man kindly smiled at me. All the men were nice, seemed nice, seemed well adjusted to their task, with wives and families at home, well-fed with lots of dead meat. India is a kaleidoscope. I thought that man an anomaly. But here is a whole family:
Family that walks on all fours have 'undone the last three million years of evolution'
Story by Harriet Brewis, Indy 100, 8/27/24
The skin on the palms of their hands is as thick as it is on their feet (60 Minutes AUS/Indy 100).
.
All families have their own quirks and habits, but one group of relatives has such a distinct trait that scientists have branded them a total anomaly of the human species.
I told you, Darwin. - No, Wallace, I already knew.
The Ulas family has been the subject of evolutionary fascination for years after they were discovered in a remote village in Turkey walking on all fours. Back in the early 2000s, a scientific paper was published on five of the Ulas siblings and their strange bear crawl-style of movement, with experts divided over the cause of the anomaly.
In the years following the paper’s publication, evolutionary psychologist Prof. Nicholas Humphrey of the London School of Economics (LSE) travelled to Turkey to meet with the extraordinary family.
Alfred Wallace, the unfamous father of evolution
The Ulas mother and father had a staggering 18 children. However, of these, only six were born with quadrupedalism (walking on all fours), which has never been seen before in modern adult humans.
“I never expected that even under the most extraordinary scientific fantasy that modern human beings could return to an animal state,” Prof. Humphrey told 60 Minutes Australia, which made a documentary about the family back in 2018.
“The thing which marks us off from the rest of the animal world is the fact that we’re the species which walks on two legs and holds our heads high in the air,” he added. More
(Buddhist Audio books) Invisible Law Controls Our Life: Kamma (Karma) in Buddhist Abhidhamma
First of all, what is Abhidhamma? It is the systematic treatment of the Dharma, the Buddha's Teachings, in ultimate terms.
Second, what is karma in Buddhism? It is a deed, willed action, which the Buddha divided as either physical, verbal, or mental, singling out intention or motivation (cetana) as the key to determining what it is and what it will produce.
If I do something, why I do it matters. A Manhattanite is walking down the boulevard on a dark and rainy night. She looks down an alley as see me over someone, lifting a blade that glints in the light of a dingy streetlamp about to bring down a blade on the body.
There's always a solution, a fix it.
What's happening? Can we judge? What's the karma (deed, action, doing)? She screams, "bloody murder!" and I look up and show her my scalpel. She looks down and sees a woman on the ground unable to breathe. And I explain that I was about to stab her in the throat, draw blood, and let air into her windpipe because she has something jammed into her mouth and is about to go unconscious and die if I do not intervene. "Oh, are you a doctor?" she asks me. "No, of course not, but I do watch lots of reruns of MacGyver," I answer.
Now that we know all this, what's the karma? The horrible act of attempted murder or the exact opposite, the precious act of preserving life?
It's hard to say, so we should reserve judgment at least a little, until we can discern my MOTIVE, my INTENTION, my VOLITION, my cetanāor underlying impulse to act.
That mental motive is the real "karma," the real determinant of the deed, and it doesn't matter what others think, approve of, or condemn. She may hate me, she may get a beat cop to shoot me to prevent what she thinks is going on, a judge may imprison me based on her testimony, but all of that is HER karma, not mine. I will be "judged" impersonally by myself or the universe for what I was actually doing when that ACT matures and comes to fruition.
There are other divisions, such as the Ten COURSES (kamma-patha) of Unwholesome Action and, of course, Ten Courses of Wholesome Action. There are probably millions of deeds, but getting to the root (radix, radical) of the matter, we have only six roots:
What is there to notice here? Most karma is produced by the mouth or other means of VERBAL expression. The body may do things, but when does it do them that it is not being motivated (directed, willed) by the mind? Not acting out, not speaking out, it is still possible to produce karma (deeds with the power of producing a subsequent result) JUST BY THINKING. There really is mental karma. The RESULTS of karma are not karma, even though we in an offhand, shorthand way often refer to results as karma when we say, "It is my karma," referring to something that happened to us. That is never our karma, technically, but we all understand that what we think we're saying is, "This is a result of my deeds," and that may well be. Not everything that happens is due to karma. There are other causes. But most of the important things that happen to us that we notice and think are unfair, that's likely due to our bright and dark karma. This is a world of mixed results. To live in a world of predominantly bright results, there are karmas (acts) for that. Similarly, to live in a world of darkness and even worse suffering than we have here on the human plane (which is regarded as the lowest of the worlds one can be reborn in that is still considered "good"), there are deeds for that. Unless we get real with ourselves, privately, and recognize our motives, our intentions, what is impelling us to act, we cannot be surprised what we get as a result.
Remember, what we experience is not what we are doing now. We have a massive cache of past karma (from this and countless past lives even if we disbelieve those former lives and rebirths ever happened) that is trying to mature and come to fruition, to ripen and produce results.
The two names for karmic results are vipaka (resultants) and phala (fruits). The distinction seems to be, although we cannot prove it but remember Ven. Nyanatiloka (the Western translator of the Buddhist Dictionary) always making the distinction being mental-resultants and outward-circumstances. If we act, we immediately feel some way about it -- regret, remorse, anxiety about being found out or caught or punished, and so on, or rejoicing, approving, carefree or proud to be found out or recognized or rewarded, and so on, depending on the kind of action.
There is a terrible kind of karma, one that is possibly the worst of all karmas, and what is strange about it is that most of us most of the time would not even think there's anything wrong with in our Western society. What is it?
What is the worst thing in the karmic world, the producer of the most amount of bad (unskillfulness, demerit, evil, misery)?
Wrong view (micchā ditthi), sometimes manifesting as the perversions or distortions (vipallassa). This is the one to be most wary of, for we will be held responsible for what we think, what views we cling to and act on. If we believe something is good because that's what people around us told us or it's the way we were raised, that DOES NOT make it good or okay. It is what it is, in accordance with the six roots mentioned above, and will produce corresponding results that are either welcomed and wished for or unwelcome and unwished for. Proceed cautiously before acting. A little or a lot of introspection helps.
If there were just ONE primer to understand the complexity of karma in Buddhism, Wisdom Quarterly would say it is American scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi's treatment of the subject here:
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