A Brief Talk About Cause And Result

Author: Tao Qing Hsu

As we know, the essence of Buddhism is the Emptiness. In China, when someone wants to learn Buddha and become a Buddhist monk or nun, we said that they go into the door of Emptiness.

Some ordinary people think that, there are no causes and results in the emptiness, so they can do any evil things, such as, to damage others, and they would not go to hell, because there would not be such results of hell. In fact, those people totally misunderstand the meaning of emptiness and the state of Buddha.

In Buddhism, it often refers to the relationship between causes and results, especially in teaching the ordinary people. Why? Causes and results exactly exist, when people do something, even though they just have a slight-evil thought that would affect others. There is the doing, there is thus the result which is arisen accordingly. There is no doing, there is thus no such result. Any doing is arisen from any thin thought. No matter any thought or any doing, it could be as a cause, or a condition, and would result in any consequence.

A Buddha is in the stable state of no thought, no desire and no doing. Once any thought, any desire or any doing is arisen, it just wants to help live beings to liberate from the suffering. It is always in such stable state.

However, people always have the desires and thus want to do something so as to benefit themselves or their family, and thus not to concern about the well-beings of others. The Buddha said that the desire is the root of suffering. That is why such people might do the evil thing, be in the suffering and in the result of hell finally.

The basic quality of those people is good, because they also have the Buddha’s nature. In the body of Emptiness, there is no difference between us. That is, we are one. So, the Buddha said that:

To have the great kindness for all sentient beings without conditions, and to have the great compassion for all sentient beings due to we are in the same body of Emptiness.

Therefore, the Buddha never abandons those people who do evil things, and it always does its best to help them go into the path of Buddha. To have a good cause, and to have a good condition, that would result in a good consequence or a good effect. Such as, to learn Buddha is to have a good cause and would result in a pure land to benefit ourselves and all sentient beings.

On the contrary, to have a bad cause, and to have a bad condition, that would result in a bad consequence or a bad effect. Such as, to cheat others by the greedy heart is a bad cause, and would harm others and result in the jail or hell finally.

In a word, it is not totally empty in the state of Emptiness. In fact, the Emptiness contains all existence, including the causes and results.