So karma has a dark side. Dale DeBakcsy, an atheist who worked for nine years in a Buddhist school encountered a case where a distraught student having problems memorizing materials for a test was told by monks she consulted that she was doomed forever with this problem due to a past life where she was a murderous dictator who burned books. Perhaps, you may agree with him that this is akin to the Christian idea of Hell fire or the rhetorics of Jihad. Perhaps, not. Depending on whether you see problems in the monks themselves, too many of them in this case, in the way they handle the problem as well as in their interpretation or understanding of karma. Karma, I suppose, is not an ultimatum. One is not doomed forever because of it. In the Anguttara Nikaya, Buddha said: If anyone says that a man or woman must reap in this life according to his present deeds, in that case there is no religious life, nor is an opportunity afforded for the entire extinction of sorrow. But if anyone says that what a man or woman reaps in this and future lives accords with his or her deeds present and past, in that case there is a religious life, and an opportunity is afforded for the entire extinction of a sorrow. That sorrow can be eradicated probably means we can change our karma, past or present.
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