Sources for the preface
Yinlü Wuqing, the author’s preface, the opening account of the Heavenly Emperor, Dizang’s teaching and rescue accounts, and Dao Lan’s postscript to volume 1. The chapters and their notes give further sources for Buddhist terms and historical background.
The Law of Cause and Effect
The word wuqing in Yinlü Wuqing describes a law that makes no exceptions out of personal favour. Wealth, reputation, religious standing and family connections cannot place anyone beyond the consequences of their conduct. This is what the book means by the objectivity of cause and effect: the law holds whether a person understands it, ignores it or hopes that someone powerful will intervene on their behalf.
Karma, rendered in Chinese as ye, concerns intentional action through thought, speech and bodily conduct. Its fruits may appear in the present life or in a later one. An action can therefore continue to matter long after other people have forgotten it. Dao Lan, the author of one of the book's postscripts, explains the severity of the title through this continuity. The same law applies to beings of every age, sex, social position and skin colour.
Even the ruler of the underworld remains subject to it. The City God, who oversees records of rebirth, recounts an earlier life in which the ruler was a general defeated by an enemy's deceit. In his distress, he vowed to punish wrongdoers and bring them to reform, but his wish also contained revenge and anger at his own failure. That vow led to his position in the underworld. Its harmful intention has a consequence too: three times a day, for fifteen minutes, he suffers hot iron sand being poured down his throat. His authority has not cancelled his responsibility. [2]
Buddhas and bodhisattvas also act in accordance with cause and effect. The judge says this explicitly when explaining their help in the hells. Their compassion responds to suffering, while their wisdom recognises when and how a being can be helped. Elsewhere, he describes awakened beings who enter the human world freely by vow, unconstrained by the fixed karma of ordinary rebirth. Freedom of this kind gives them the ability to teach and assist others; it does not turn rescue into an exemption for someone who continues to do harm. [3]
How, then, can a future change? Dao Lan distinguishes a cause from the conditions through which it bears fruit. The Chinese word yuan refers to these supporting conditions. Before a result has fully matured, reform can alter them. Someone who abandons a harmful intention, stops the conduct it encouraged and begins to act for others' benefit is changing what follows from that point. The law remains consistent because the change itself has causes.
This is also why influence or forgiveness alone cannot settle the matter. In a discussion of cruelty towards a family member, the judge says that knowing an official brings no reduction of punishment. Even the injured person's willingness to forgive does not by itself remove the wrongdoer's karmic responsibility. A repaired relationship matters, but it does not make the earlier action disappear. The person who caused the harm must face what they did and change the conduct that produced it. [4]
Repentance names this personal acknowledgment and resolve to change. It reaches beyond wanting pain to stop. A person may be frightened of punishment yet still defend the cruelty or deceit that led to it. Sincere repentance begins when that defence gives way: the wrong itself is recognised, and the person wants to abandon it. Teachings and help from others can support this change. The accounts of Dizang, the bodhisattva who assists beings in hell, show how relief and opportunities to learn become possible when a being begins to respond.