Question: Are we destined to be co-victims of collective karmas (共业) that are evil (恶), which will result in suffering (苦)?
Answer: While there is the reality of collective karmas to deal with, there are also many levels of separate karmas (别业) experienced ‘sub-collectively’ and individually, for better or worse. This explains why while we, as earthlings, have universal experiences worldwide, there are also different groups of human beings and even individuals with different experiences.
As an example, while we are all ongoing victims of the climate crisis, which gives us suffering to some extent, exactly how it is currently experienced depends on where we are at the moment, and whether we can move to elsewhere doing better for now. This is connected to economical well-being, which also results from our karmas.
The fact that we can have some distinct better karmas despite the larger picture of collective karmas does not mean we should be complacent and negligent of others with less well-being. However seemingly ‘better’ off we might seem at the moment with our good karmas (善业), they can be depleted in time, especially if there is creating of evil karmas (恶业) too, with apathy and other ills.
While we should be thankful for having better karmas, we should also be mindful that we still play our parts in our global collective karmas. We can make things better or worse for one and all, be it by a little or much. Those with better karmas have the capacity to support those suffering more now. We can also prevent or mitigate potential future suffering with kinder and wiser choices with our way of life.
As Stonepeace put it, ‘Even much evil collective karmas are not written in stone if there are more good and pure separate karmas rewriting them now.’
