karma QUESTIONS & ANSWERSQ. Does our past karma affect the present life? How can we believe it? What is the proof? Thank you.
M. It is not easy to prove this, but I can try. We do not need to talk about a past life which is unreachable for our mortal understanding. We will talk about the present. It's easier to understand. For example, if every day you drink alcohol, if in the morning you drink alcohol, then in the afternoon what do you feel? Lovely, no? Fantastic? Or you feel drunken, and terrible, with a headache, and lousy and sluggish? You feel terrible, right? Yeah! That is the effect of it, what we call, "the past karma affecting the present. If you did not drink alcohol so much in the morning, then at noon you don't feel so terrible, or in the afternoon you don't feel so terrible. You will feel clear headed and very happy, yeah, and very normal. That is the karmic effect, we call "the past affects the present". It's very easy. Now, these things are easy to understand because they are in the same time, and in the present time. But if something happened so long ago, in the centuries of times, then of course we do not understand. Every time we're born again we change into new clothes, and this body is the new clothes, and we've forgotten the last time we wore what kind of clothes.