Q. There are a lot of people who are enjoying wealth and power without making any effort, and many vicious people who enjoy being well off. What is God’s lesson?

A. It is not God’s will but the results of their causations. There is nothing beyond effect without cause.

In a class, for example, students can be sorted into four groups; students who get high scores in an examination without working hard in the class, students who get good scores due to working hard in the class, students who fail to get a good grade despite working harder than the former, and students who don’t work hard and get poor scores.

We are talking about the first and the third groups. The reason why the first group of students can get handsome scores despite scant work in class is that they worked hard and learned in advance somewhere else before the class that which is supposed to be taught in class. The third group of students can’t understand what is taught in class since they lacked the basic knowledge for the class because they didn’t prepare anything beforehand.

What we are now is the effect of how we lived and how we accept what we are at this moment is the cause of what our lives will be like in the future. So, ancient masters would say, “I can know a person’s past and future by seeing how he lives now.”

The lives of the people you mentioned may seem to make no sense, but they are all the results of their causations that is referred to as karma in Buddhism. That’s why we say that every accident is inevitability disguised as an accident.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway