Understanding Karma and the Continuity of Life
An Introduction to the Background of Yinlü Wuqing
Eight sample chapters
Preface
The World This Book Explains
Yinlü Wuqing is a contemporary Chinese shanshu, a book written to encourage good conduct and the correction of wrongdoing. It describes a world in which the consequences of a person's actions extend beyond the life now being lived. Its accounts of the underworld, together with the teachings spoken there, ask readers to consider what their conduct is bringing into being.
Two ideas hold this account together. Cause and effect form an objective law that applies to every being, including Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Life continues through the birth and death of successive bodies, so an action's consequences need not be confined to one lifetime. The present belongs to that longer history, and what a person does now helps to shape what follows.
The book places the possibility of reform within the same law. Beings enter its hells through the harmful conduct they have themselves created. Recognising that conduct, sincerely repenting and ceasing to repeat it open the way to change. Others can offer help, but lasting change must continue in the person's own life. Goodness, a clearer mind and sustained practice lead towards better forms of existence and, ultimately, freedom from the causes of suffering.
The Buddhist Teaching Behind It
Much of the book's language comes from Buddhist teaching. A Buddha is an awakened one, free from the ignorance that sustains suffering. The Dharma is the teaching and the path of practice. The Sangha, in its monastic sense, is the community of monks and nuns who preserve and practise that teaching. Together, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are the Three Jewels in which Buddhists take refuge, looking to them for guidance and committing themselves to the practice.