The result of your past actions, your karma, flowers in the form of your life. Every perception every moment, every sensation, is a direct result of what you have done in the past.

 

If you have done wrong and you face it, recognize it for what it is, and determine never to do it again, the bad results caused by what you did will eventually end.

 

If you do good and continue to do it, the quality of your life will sweeten, and good people will be drawn to you, and corrupt people will not want to be around you.

 

Karma burns. So people who appear to have a pleasurable and easy life will soon lose that pleasure and ease if they fail to recognize the source of their pleasure and ease. If they recognize the source of it as their past good deeds, then they will continue to bring blessings into the world, and their lives can continue to bear the fruit of their past good actions.

 

If they ignorantly believe that they simply are better than everyone else and will always inevitably stay comfortable and rich and beautiful, and therefore feel themselves to be free to engage in harmful acts, then they will lose their comfort and ease and beauty, and their lives will bear the fruit of their harmful acts. This is how elites collapse and empires fall and inheritances are squandered and democracy ends and youth fades and old age is wasted and seniors in high school become freshmen in college.

 

Karma burns. One angry word to someone you love can undermine decades of trust and consideration. So we must be constantly vigilant about what we do. And we need to be scrupulous in studying what to do and what to avoid.

 

Your mind, according to Buddhism, is pervaded by three poisons. These three poisons cause all your suffering. Eliminate them from your mind and you will put an end to suffering for yourself and others forever.

 

The three poisons are attachment, aversion and ignorance. Ignorance means not understanding how things work.  In Buddhism ignorance does not specifically refer to a lack of factual knowledge, but to wrong beliefs; beliefs like life is a crap shoot, life sucks, life is good, or that good results will come from doing wrong.

 

Ignorance leads to attachment and aversion. Attachment means we try to get things in order to make ourselves happy without understanding that these things do not have the capacity to make us happy. Aversion means we try to destroy things we don’t like, believing that once they are out of existence we will be happy. Neither of these strategies works. They do not work, because we do not correctly perceive how things exist and what it is that causes us to suffer. And the increased suffering caused by our failed attempts to get happy by acting ignorantly on the basis of attraction and aversion deepens our disturbance and our ignorance.

 

That is why, at the very center of the traditional “Wheel of Life” painting, the one that is supposed to be posted at the door of every Buddhist temple in the world, we will find a graphic representation of the three poisons. They are the engine, spinning the wheel of samsara, the cycle of suffering life.  

 

They are depicted as a rooster chasing a snake chasing a pig chasing the rooster… in an endless accelerating circular race to nowhere. A race very much like the life many of us modern people live.

 

The rooster represents desire, because the rooster, just in case you have not worked on a farm recently, chases after every nearby hen at all times and would like to engage in fowl play with the nearest one, even if they are not in love or have no long term commitment or even if he does not know the first thing about her. Like a rock star, orgy-goer or professor intoxicated by desire, he just can’t help it and could not think of a reason why he should.

 

The snake represents aversion or anger or hatred because the snake, in case you have not wandered in a tropical paradise lately, is inclined to sink his poisoned fangs into any creature who strolls nearby. Just because.

 

The pig chases after the rooster and the snake, or in some paintings, is shown with the snake and the rooster running out of his mouth, because the pig is so stupid and ignorant. Science tells us they do well on standardized animal tests, but when you look at what they eat and how they lay about in anything, you can see how they could look like a good representation of ignorance. 

 

Some people think they can get away with anything and if they are clever enough, it will have no consequences. Crooks think they can lie, steal and cheat all the time, that everyone does it, and that when they get caught they are being singled out for harassment.

 

People think if they can just have sex all the time, take drugs all the time, eat rich food all the time, then they will be happy. Pornographers, junk food makers, Hollywood distracters, and drug dealers believe that although they are infecting the lives of millions of people with poison and misery, they are justified in this act either because they have suffered themselves or because only the strong survive, so tough luck everybody. They worship false gods. Drug dealers may believe if they burn candles to the angel of death, then the angel will like them, favor them, and protect them from their enemies. But it doesn’t.

 

These are ignorant acts and ignorant beliefs. There is no happiness in them and no salvation in them. We will need to renounce them to get out of suffering.

 

There is permanent and complete happiness in training the mind to be strong, the heart to be kind and the mind to be clear and calm. There is no other way, and there are no exceptions. To be in a position to read this good advice is the result of the enormous good karma that you have accumulated by what you have done in the past.

 

We need to use the small amount of good karma we have left in this life to create the causes for our own enlightenment: to put an end to ignorance and suffering for ourselves and others forever.