Developing the faith of conviction that is the root of all temporary happiness and ultimate goodness. Thus, you may fear the miserable realms and yet not be able to escape what you fear.
Consequently, in order to be protected from the miserable realms at the time when you must experience the effects, you have to restrain the mind from engaging in nonvirtue at the time when you are creating the causes. This, in turn, is contingent upon attaining conviction about karma and its effects.
All happiness in the sense of feelings of ease-whether of ordinary or noble beings, including even the slightest pleasures such as the rising of a cool breeze for a being born in a hell-arises from previously accumulated virtuous karma. It is impossible for happiness to arise from nonvirtuous karma.
All sufferings in the sense of painful feelings-including even the slightest suffering occurring in an arhat’s mind-stream-arise from previously accumulated nonvirtuous karma. It is impossible for suffering to arise from virtuous karma.
Consequently, happiness and suffering do not occur in the absence of causes, nor do they arise from incompatible causes such as a divine creator or a primal essence. Rather, happiness and suffering, in general, come from virtuous and nonvirtuous karma, and the various particular happinesses and sufferings arise individually, without even the slightest confusion, from various particular instances of these two kinds of karma. Attaining certain knowledge of the definiteness, or non-deceptiveness, of karma and its effects is called the correct viewpoint for all Buddhists and is praised as the foundation of all virtue.
An effect of immense happiness may arise from even a small virtuous
karma. An effect of immense suffering may arise from even a
tiny nonvirtuous karma. Hence, internal [karmic] causation seems
to involve a magnification that is not found in external causation.
Like a poison that has been ingested,
The commission of even a small sin
Creates in your lives hereafter
Great fear and a terrible downfall.
As when grain ripens into a bounty,
Even the creation of small merit
Leads in lives hereafter to great happiness
And will be immensely meaningful as well.
If you have not accumulated the karma that is the cause for an experience
of happiness or suffering, you will in no way experience
the happiness or suffering that is its effect. Those who enjoy the
fruits of the innumerable collections amassed by the Teacher need
not have accumulated all of the causes of these effects, but they do
need to accumulate a portion.
Those who have done virtuous and nonvirtuous actions create
pleasant and unpleasant effects.
The brahmins say that virtue and sin,
May transfer to others-like giving and receiving a gift.
You [0 Buddha] taught that what one has done does not perish,
And that one does not meet with the effects of what one has not
done.
Furthermore, the King of Concentrations Satra states:
Once you have committed an action, you will experience its effect;
And you will not experience the effects of what others have done.
Even in one hundred eons
Karma does not perish.
When the circumstances and the time arrive
Beings surely feel its effects.