Unethical people don't care to remember their benefactors,
and thus their karma will force them to repay their debts in their future life. They will have to meet each of their benefactors to pay off all that they receive.
HOW TO REPAY DEBTS
Ethical and intellectual people are willing to repay their debts
There are debts that we know about and there are also ones we don't know anything about, because they are from a previous life. For an ethical and intellectual person, he can remember the number of people from whom he received favors. For example, he can remember this person helped him for a month and that helped him many times when he faced difficulties. Only ethical people remember their benefactors and wish to see them again to repay their favors and with interest.
The law of Karma forces ungrateful people to repay their benefactors uneasily
Unethical people don't care to remember their benefactors, and thus their karma will force them to repay their debts in their future life. They will have to meet each of their benefactors to pay off all that they receive.
How can their karma forces ones to repay their debts?
The first way is with love, i.e. we must love our benefactors and voluntarily pay back their debts. So when we love someone, we should recognize that when our benefactors come to us for repayment, we should be happy to repay them. And an important note is that we should repay them with morality to pay off our debts more quickly and they are even indebted to us. This is the first and most ideal way.
The second way is that we have to fall into misery and have no choice but to become a slave to our benefactor. This case is similar to the case when a child lost his parents early and became the adopted son of his aunt. So the brutal exploitation of slaves is just one way for the masters to require the repayment and the slaves are being forced to pay the large debt that they once borrowed.
Buddhists must repay their debts more than what they received
Keep in mind that once you pay back your debts, pay more than you owe, but not less than, because we always wish for blessings and desire to create a good causal relationship with sentient beings. Maybe in our previous life, we owed them 1000 VND, and in our current life, we will pay them 100,000VND - but we should pay 150,000VND in order for them to owe us 50,000VND. When they owe us, we can teach Buddhism to them. Buddhists should go on the path that Bodhisattvas have gone, and Bodhisattvas always desire to create a good causal relationship with sentient beings in order to teach them later.
For example, there is a large ditch that causes people difficulties to cross. Seeing this, we try to save our money to build a bridge for people to go across easily. Making a bridge for people to go across conveniently helps us have a great blessing and we can enjoy it for a very long time. If in this life or the life after, we open a roadside shop, many people will have to visit and buy our goods, and this helps us earn more interest, and in turn, helps us gradually become rich.
This is the reason why when two shops sell the same goods but one has numerous customers and one has a few. It's because one shopkeeper built a stretch of road or a bridge, and the other did not. Only those who owed us will come to our shop. So if you want to have a shop with many customers, try to create a stretch of road or a bridge. Later on, those who went on your road or bridge will come to your shop to buy things. They will also pay you some interest, that is, they pay back their debts to you and they still feel comfortable.
So when you build a road or a bridge, you should not ask for tolls but allow people to pass freely. In your next life when you run a business, those who traveled on your roads or bridges will become your customers. This is how they will pay back their debts and with extremely high interest, that is, they will repay a hundred times or even a thousand times more than the cost of a toll. Therefore, if in this life you ask people for tolls, they will pay off their debts to you and you cannot establish a good relationship with them. This is a way that you can make people be in debt and then ask them for repayment, that is, you enjoy your blessing.
As Buddhists, we don't do things this way. We don't create blessings for our own enjoyment but wish for good chances to convert sentient beings. For example, if in our past life, one built a bridge for people to go across then in his current life, he doesn't open a shop or run a business but builds a pagoda. Those people who went across his bridge in a previous life will naturally feel that his pagoda is beautiful and will stop by. When they enter the pagoda, they will see the abbot. The abbot will give them a lecture. Even if the abbot has many disadvantages in speaking, the listeners will find that he speaks very well because they owe him a debt. Instead of opening a shop to earn interest, he builds a pagoda and waits for his debtors (those who crossed your bridge) to come to listen to his preaching. Because they are his debtors, they will listen. Bodhisattvas do things this way. Bodhisattvas always do favors for beings and take advantage of these favors to convert sentient beings later. They do not do favors and later enjoy their blessing. This is a very huge gap between the purpose of doing the good deeds of Bodhisattvas and of ordinary people like us.
As Buddhists, when we pay back a debt from our previous lives, we should always pay more than we owed. For example, in our neighborhood, there is a child that we love and want to help. We pay for his tuition fees and buy a bicycle for him. When he enters university, we buy him a motorbike. After a long time of helping him, we feel that what we have done is enough, meaning that we have paid off our debt to him. However, we should not stop helping him. If we can afford to help, then we should continue. When we do so, we make the child owe us. For example, we can serve him a meal or give him a drink. If we continue doing so, we make human beings owe us. However, we do not ask for repayment; we just concern ourselves with their debts to make them practice Buddhism easily for their own benefit. It's the way of Bodhisattvas.
Bodhisattvas never use Their psychic powers to force beings to be Their disciples. So saying Bodhisattvas use Their mysterious power to turn beings into Their disciples is unreal and immoral. A Bodhisattva who appears in this life always hides Their identity and never uses supernatural power to teach beings. Bodhisattvas only use Their morals and merit to do favors for beings and depending on these favors, they will educate beings in the future and nothing more.
Therefore, if a Master boasts that he has supernatural power in order to attract believers, then we should know that he is not a Buddhist Bodhisattva. Conversely, if we admire and revere ones for their virtue then we should know that they are Buddhist Bodhisattvas. So when we admire a Master for his mystical power then we should realize that the Master is wrong as well as ourselves. We are superstitious people, who like mysteries and are not traveling in the right direction in Buddhism. A true Bodhisattva never shows off His mysterious power, He just uses his virtue and morality to teach beings and uses His hands and strength to sow good seeds for life and never takes advantage of His special power.
Paying back our debts is required by the law of Karma as well as our conscience
So, when we owe a debt, we have to pay it back with no exceptions. Our karma forces us to repay our debts in two ways stated above. The first way is we repay our debts with love, and the second is we have no choices except becoming our benefactors' slave. These two ways are created by our karma. In the Dhammapada Buddha teaches us:
Never is there a place
In the air or in the sea
Or in somewhere else
Where we can hide from our karma
But for ethical people, repaying debts is required by their conscience. We have a conscience and morality, so we will never forget those who did us a favor and we will keep them in mind to return their favors later. We must come to visit our old teachers or our old neighbors in order to express our gratitude to them; we should do it whenever we can. Also, we should always keep in mind those who help us even with a small thing. It is a requirement of our conscience.
As for favors that are not in this life but from our previous lives, let's consider the favors of our parents to us as an example, what should we do? Our parents not only give birth to, raise, and educate us, but also endure so many hard things in order for us to live a happy life. These favors are not from this life but from past lives, so we have to be a good child and have a filial duty for our parents. If not, we are not worthy people. Thus, whoever you are, you have to worship your parents. In Buddhism, there is a festival of filialness to honor one's filial piety to his parents and to remind him never to forget filiality.
Filial piety is the first fundamental morality of men and above other kinds of morality. If you do not have filial piety, you are nothing, even when people call you saints, philosophers, preachers... because these titles are just on the surface. You must have filial piety for your parents and must return their favors with all your heart.
In one sutra it says that although we carry our parents on our back and take them around a mountain for all our life, we cannot pay off our debts to our parents. Of course, we cannot pay in such a way. The sutra says it literally. We cannot pay off our debts to our parents though we carry them around a mountain for all our life. we can repay the sacrifices they made for us if we bring the Dharma to them. We love and feel grateful to our parents, so besides taking care of them, we should help them know Buddhism and understand the law of karma so that they can then step on the holy and virtuous path heading toward enlightenment.
Written by:
Janna
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