The world’s great religions agree that a kind and helpful life will lead to a happy and peaceful existence after death, whereas a hateful and harmful one will bring harsh consequences.

Christianity, for example, extols good works and acts of charity, and Judaism urges the performance of good deeds commanded by the Torah.

Buddhists speak of merits, which we accumulate by cultivating positive thoughts and deeds.

These and other traditions accept that a natural law of causation operates in our universe.

Karma is the word that Buddhists use for this law, which governs every event.

Every mental and physical action initiated by mental volition becomes a cause that precipitates an individual effect as the result; Buddhism, in particular, teaches in great detail what exact consequences will follow from what specific acts.

Generally speaking, the patterns of positive thoughts, emotions, words, and deeds cause happiness, while negative mental and physical actions cause suffering – the events of life’s cycle.

All our destructive emotions, as well as our habitual mental concepts and patterns of thought, are rooted in what Buddhism calls grasping at “self” and the dualistic notion of subject and object.

As stated by Nagarjuna, one of the great philosophers of Buddhism: “All beings have come from grasping at ‘self.’”

That is, the mind’s tendency to grasp at and become attached to objects of thought and perception is the very cause of our coming into existence in the world of duality.

Grasping at self is the mind’s way of perceiving mental objects by apprehending them as truly existing entities.

Mental objects include all the phenomena that arise in our awareness, such as “myself,” “you,” “he,” “she,” “money,” or “table,” as well as ideas, feelings, and sensations such as “pain.”

As soon as we have grasped a mental object and held on to it as real and solid, we have formed a subject-object duality.

Then comes the concept of liking or disliking the mental object, and that tightens the mental grip of grasping.

In the end there is the feeling of excitement or pain, full of stress and pressure.

In the Buddhist view, “self” includes “me” and “mine,” but it also encompasses all phenomena arising in our consciousness.

However, according to the highest understanding of Buddhism, there is no “self” that truly exists as a solid, fixed, unchanging entity.

Our grasping attitude is thus based on delusion.

However, because we are in the grip of karma, our delusory thinking and behaviour result in pain and suffering that are all too real to us.

That cycle of grasping goes on repeating itself continuously as the causal order, the karmic law of life.

It produces and enflames the afflicting emotions (Skt. klesha) of confusion, hatred, miserliness, greed, jealousy, arrogance, and fear.

These afflicting emotions rooted in grasping at self are the causes of rebirth, while positive states of mind are the means of liberation.

The changing theaters of life, death, and after death take place neither by choice nor by chance.

No one else has created them for us. They are reflections and reactions of our own thoughts, words, and deeds.

Therefore, we must train our minds and practice steadily to secure a happy and peaceful death and rebirth.

Source: Based on Thondup, Tulku. Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth: A Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook. Shambhala. Kindle Edition.

by