PureInsight | February 11, 2002
There are causes for all occurrences and phenomena in this world. Only with causes can there be effects. If there is an effect, there has to be some kind of cause. 'Reaping what you have sown' is a very vivid description for the principle of causation.
Mankind’s search for the relationship between cause and effect in various matters has never stopped. The investigations and research into the cosmos, nature, anatomy, living beings, society, and everything else is called science by contemporary people. Science, in the course of its development, has explained cause and effect relationships to a certain degree and has brought material comfort to human beings. While human beings enjoy material comfort, they unconsciously and obliviously come to depend on science, which ultimately leads them to follow science blindly. All things that don’t conform to the paradigm of modern science are taken as unscientific or are rejected. Since science emphasizes objectivity and reproducibility, any phenomena that don’t conform to these two standards will be cast aside or ignored. They will be dismissed, even if they are clearly observed. People have limited themselves and, therefore, the cause and effect relationships that today's science can reveal on many matters are limited.
Only the Buddha Fa is truly able to reveal the causes and effects of things. Since I started cultivating, I have come to recognize more and more cause and effect relationships. Today's scientific research on causes and effects of things is limited to the phenomena that are visible to the flesh eye or to man’s investigative instruments. What the Buddha Fa exposes in terms of cause and effect goes far beyond this dimension where human beings exist. It is able to view the cause and effect from different and larger dimensions as well as from a longer time frame. Thus, the Buddha Fa is capable of revealing the truth.
Why are some people born with a handicap? Why do many people have more hardships than others, while some people have good fortune and get everything that they want? Why is there a legend about a large flood among so many different cultures? Why can many prophecies correctly foretell major events? What do the pyramids tell us? How did the Mayan culture reach such a high level of civilization? The Mayan calendar mentions 1992AC to 2012 AC as a 20-year period for universal renewal, and it is during this very period that Falun Gong was made public. Is this merely a coincidence? Human beings spend one third of their lives sleeping; why are dreams just explained away? How is it that some people can dream of things that happen later on? Why can’t “smart” modern people understand and interpret ancient Chinese books such as Zhouyi and Bagua?
Today’s scientific research does not deal with the existence of other dimensions and reincarnation of lives. Instead it offers an isolated, non-dynamic type of research on the universe, nature, life, and society, which severs causal relations among things. This is why it is never able to truly expose causal relations. A human being's life span is only one segment of ones life. Some cultivators have seen their previous lives. Some cultivators, during their sitting meditation, experienced their main spirit’s leaving their human body and entering other dimensions. There they were able to see the reality revealed to them in that realm. Some other cultivators have seen their assistant spirits stay close to them. Other dimensions are also made of matter but that matter exists differently in terms of format, level and realm than the matter in our current dimension. It should be noted that modern science has made some research advances on the issue of reincarnation.
The transformative relation between virtue/merit (de) and karma mentioned in Zhuan Falun clearly explains many unsolved enigmas in human life. A human being’s good fortune, bad luck, misfortunate, and karmic relationships are all forms of karmic retribution. Virtue and karma both have a real material existence in another dimension. Current scientific techniques and instruments cannot verify their existence. The honors or insults, fortunes or misfortunes, sickness and hardships, wealth or poverty, and karmic relations with others in a human being’s life or even in several of his lives all depend on one's virtue/merit and karmic situations. Virtue/merit and karma are the result of that person’s conduct in the human world. This goes according to how much pain he has undergone, how much compassion he extends, and how many bad deeds he perpetrates. We know when we wake up in the morning that we are the same beings that we were yesterday. We also know that tomorrow we will still be the same being that we are today. What we don't remember yet is that our previous and future lives are the same being that we are in this life.
Science talks about evidence as empirical proof, but this proof it requires is very limiting. There are too many things in this world that cannot be proved or detected by modern instruments. Cultivation is based on faith, capacity to be enlightened and inborn quality. The cultivator of Buddha Fa, through constant and continuous cultivation, is able to validate/prove greater universal principles, discover causal relations of a bigger scope, and get closer to the truth of the universe.
Whether a human being believes in the principle of causation is a very serious matter. Believers take into consideration causation before any thought and action. They are able to exercise self-restraint, avoid doing things against their morals, and to tolerate suffering. A better future can be built In this way. Non-believers have no principles in their hearts, are without moral restrictions, and are unable to stay in control of their life amidst the moral degeneration of humankind in general. Someone once said, 'Faith works when there is belief and does not work when there is no belief.” In essence, the person does not believe. But, regardless of whether someone believes or not, what exists continues to exist. Something that is physically there does not disappear just because someone says it doesn’t exist.
Everything in human society is subject to the law of causation. Nothing is accidental, “natural phenomenon” is a lame explanation for things beyond human comprehension. Today’s scientific approach will never be able to reveal the truth of the universe, as it is unable to discover the real cause of any occurrence.
The Buddha Fa is the true science. It is able to expose everything in the universe, elucidate all mysteries, and expose every causality, indeed encompassing all and leaving out none. Of course, the Buddha Fa, unlike knowledge, is obtained through faith and cultivation. The level reached through cultivation brings enlightened understandings of causal relations that conform to the Fa’s principles at that level.
Wishing that you all sow the seeds of good cause and reap the fruit of good results.
Translated from
http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2002/1/12/13302.html
