A General Explanation of How Karma Ripens

To give a simple example of how karma ripens: because one observed ethical discipline and made aspirations in a previous life—or even in lives long before that—one has obtained this present human body. However, this does not mean that every event throughout one's entire life has already been predetermined by past karma and cannot be changed.

What, then, is the case? The course of one's life can change according to immediate conditions. Most of these immediate conditions can be prevented, modified, or improved in advance. Therefore, it is extremely important, beginning now, to avoid harmful conditions and deliberately choose beneficial ones.

By doing so, we remove obstacles from our future path and continually increase the favorable conditions that support our well-being and spiritual progress. Thus, where we will be reborn in the future depends upon the karma we create in the present.

Whether we perform wholesome or unwholesome actions is our own choice. In general, whatever karma we create will certainly produce a corresponding result. As the sūtras state:

The karma of sentient beings

Is never lost, even after hundreds of eons.

When the necessary causes and conditions come together,

It inevitably ripens into its corresponding result.

Even if we have already committed unwholesome actions, if we sincerely confess and purify them according to the proper methods, those negative karmic actions can be cleansed.

Therefore, karma and its results are something that we ourselves can influence and transform; they are not forces that irrevocably control us.