Question asked by Eli Levine
Good evening Pastors,
I was wondering how one could undo or repay their past negative karma, such that they can live in freedom and continue on the path to Enlightenment without any further hindrance or problems? I understand that these things may take time, especially as one "eats" their past negative karma with the good karma that they have done. I am just wondering how one could stop producing more karma and be relieved of their past negative karma.
Your last advice was helpful, although I became worried that I'll never reach Enlightenment after reading the first parts of "Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand". This relates back to my original question as to how to end the production of karma and to simply use the responses from karmic action to their best ends in the given lifetime. It seems to me that it is impossible to stop karma from happening while we are alive and in existence. How can I correct for this incorrect thought, if it is an incorrect thought?
Thank you for your time.
Dear Eli Levine,
You reached one of the cruxes of Buddhist practice. Since we are all still within Cyclic existence, no matter what we do we will always be accumulating karma in one form or another. That is one of the reasons we need to achieve full enlightenment…freedom from Karma.
There is no way we can escape Karma as long as within Samsara, we will always be under its influence. However this is the basis of the path, it’s one of the fundamentals and belongs to the “small scope” of the Lam Rim teachings. If we want to be have the karma to receive beneficial the results of good karma then we must engage in positive actions right now and engage in purification practices to reduce our negative karma.
One thing we need to remember is to be mindful of all our actions, and make sure we perform virtuous actions. And when we reach a certain mental state we actually perceive hindrances and problems differently…they actually become aids which we can use to achieve even higher states of mental transformation.