To be successful in Feng Shui, to help many people, depends on creating good

Karma (merit) in the past. For example, in both primitive and well-developed countries around the world, one can find people with little education who have become extremely wealthy and successful in life. On the other hand, there are people who have university degrees, who have completed many years of education, but who cannot find jobs, who are unemployed and unable to attain material success in life. This clearly indicates that for success, education is not enough. The ultimate answer is to have collected merit, to have good karma.

Those who have achieved success, even without much education, have collected many merits in the past. Those who are educated but unsuccessful have not collected many merits in the past, have not accumulated sufficient good karma.

To understand the details of karma more clearly, let us examine the explanations of karma given in the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha. The following explanation draws specifically from Buddha’s sutra teachings, The Chapter of One who is Truthful and Sutra of the Ten Bhumis.

Each complete negative action, such as the ten non-virtuous actions of killing and so forth, has four suffering results:

(1) the fully ripened result: rebirth in one of the suffering lower realms (the hell, hungry ghost, or animal realms) where one experiences far greater unimaginable suffering than in the human realm.

(2) experiencing the result similar to the cause: when one is reborn in the future as a human, experiencing the suffering result of the harmful action committed in the past.

(3) the possessed result: the result that ripens as aspects of your environment in the future when one is reborn as a human.

(4) creating the result similar to the previous cause: continuing to commit the same action in the future, and continuing to create the same negative karma over and over again.

Similarly, each of the ten complete virtuous actions has four happy results.

Here, we will examine the four specific results of each of the ten virtuous actions.

The complete virtuous action of living in the morality abstaining from killing has four happy results:

(1) the fully ripened result: You will receive a good rebirth in the body of a happy migrator being in the human or deva realms instead of rebirth in the suffering lower realms.

(2) experiencing the result similar to the previous cause: You will have a long and healthy life.

(3) the possessed result: When reborn in the human realm, you will live in a glorified place where food, drink, medicines, and crops are very nutritious. Food and drink will be easy to digest and will be the causes to be healthy and not causes of illness. You will not experience an untimely death.

(4) creating the result similar to the previous cause of living in the morality abstaining from killing: In future lives you will again be able to practice Dharma and will continue to practice the morality of abstaining from killing. This is, therefore, a cause of being able to stop harming others in this way in future lives.