TEN RIGHT VIEWS: A Path to Generosity and Understanding Kamma : หน้า 36/47

TEN RIGHT VIEWS 1) Generosity Bears Fruit The first step of your training is learning to give up something of which you have more than you need and to give to someone whom you love or for whom you care. Learning to give up something you don’t need is called sharing. We can share knowledge, experience, things and forgiveness. These are steps you can take to slowly develop your understanding of kamma. 2) Giving Support Bears Fruit Once we practice more and more sharing, we will develop the spontaneous desire to give to others, even though we may be giving something that we ourselves may need, but we consider others may need it more. We give it to them because we want to alleviate their suffering and protect them from bad things. Giving to others bears fruit in that it removes suspicion and promotes love and goodwill between the giver and the receiver. We advance to the next level of our training when we start inspiring others to engage in the habit of generosity and giving support which ensures the continuity of sharing, compassion and charity. The continuity is the fruitful effect of our actions in inspiring others with this right view that motivates people to overcome life’s obstacles together rather than each individual looking out only for themselves. 3) Giving Respect Bears Fruit People that perform wholesome deeds command respect from others, and the trainer should find inspiration and guidance from those whom are observed to perform good deeds by respecting their virtuous thoughts, words and actions. By emulating these virtuous people others will in turn respect you; this is the fruit of observing and practising respect. 4) Consequences of Wholesome and Unwholesome Actions Virtuous people provide the example of the consequences of our right views and the fruits that are to be harvested from wholesome deeds, while people who do not practice right views offer us an example by the suffering and retribution they attract as a result of their actions. This means that each action, be it good or bad, has good and bad effects respectively and is the basis of understanding the Law of Cause and Effect, or Kamma. 5) Belief in the Reality and Existence of This World Through Dharma study and meditation we are able to gain a better understanding of the Law of Kamma. We become aware of the existence of this world and how it is affected by our actions in previous lifetimes. What we have done in the past will have the result of what we experience in the present. What we do in the present will have far reaching effects into the future. By this realization we acknowledge the reality and existence of this world. 6) Belief in the Reality and Existence of the Next World Once we believe in the existence of this world and understand the Law of Cause and Effect, it follows that what we do now will have an affect on all that follows and so from this lifetime to the next. Understanding one’s karma is affected in this way, by our thoughts words and actions, and that our karma was present at birth, it follows that karma we were born with is the result of our previous lifetimes and what we do in this lifetime will carry forth to our next lifetime. By this realization we acknowledge the reality of the existence of the next world or the hereafter. 7) & 8) Mothers and Fathers are Influential Figures The circumstances and parents to which we are born are a direct result of the kamma we have accumulated in previous lives. To be born into propitious Right View family circumstances we have to accumulate sufficient merit by our thoughts, words and actions. Once we are born into such circumstances we owe our parents a debt of gratitude as we are well positioned to continue to accumulate more and more merit, or good kamma, with each rebirth.