พระอาจารย์อธิบายผ่านคำสอนของหลวงพ่อว่า ทำดีย่อมได้ดี ทำชั่วย่อมได้ชั่วเสมอ เพียงแต่ผลอาจมาช้าหรือเร็วต่างกันตามเหตุปัจจัย และผู้ที่พูดว่าทำดีไม่ได้ดีมักถูกอกุศลชี้นำให้เข้าใจผิด สิ่งสำคัญคือต้องหมั่นสั่งสมความดีต่อเนื่องเพื่อให้สัดส่วนของกุศลมีมากกว่าอกุศลDrawing on his mentor's teaching, the teacher explains that good deeds always bring good results and bad deeds always bring bad ones — only the timing differs according to conditions. Those who claim otherwise are usually being misled by unwholesomeness, and what matters is steadily accumulating goodness so wholesomeness outweighs unwholesomeness in us.
A lay follower asked the teacher to elaborate on a teaching for the public given by his mentor, concerning the idea that good deeds bring good results and bad deeds bring bad ones.
The Mentor's Teaching
The teacher read out his mentor's words: the same cause can bring good results for one person and bad results for another — so the same cause is never uniformly good, nor uniformly bad. Whatever seed a person plants, that is the fruit they receive: good deeds truly do bring good results, and bad deeds truly do bring bad ones. Anyone who says that doing good brings no good, or that doing wrong brings good fortune, is simply mistaken — because the result of an action always eventually appears to the one who performed it; only the timing, sooner or later, differs. When doing good is aimed at its highest purpose — freeing the mind from greed, aversion, and delusion — the good result appears in the mind immediately. But results that manifest in tangible, external form require time, because each kind of karma bears fruit differently; even the very same act, performed at different times, by different people, in different places, yields different results.
The Mechanism Behind How Karma Bears Fruit
The teacher explained further: when we do something good, a sphere of merit surges up within us until it is complete, containing an image of that goodness showing what family it will lead us to be born into, and what our life will look like from childhood until our final years. Doing wrong sets a program in exactly the same way. When many actions accumulate together, they take turns bearing fruit in sequence — and whoever has the greater proportion of wholesomeness or unwholesomeness becomes the dominant force managing that person's life. We must therefore race against time to build up as great a proportion of wholesomeness as we possibly can.
Who Is Behind the Claim That Good Deeds Bring No Good?
The teacher pointed out that unwholesomeness itself lies behind such claims — meant to soothe those doing wrong who, deep down, know it isn't right, who feel the weight of sin in their hearts and fear its consequence. Unwholesomeness offers beautifully persuasive words to comfort them into continuing down that path. The pull of unwholesome energy arises whenever unwholesomeness seizes control, even for a split second; once it has accumulated enough, it sets its own project into motion as a completed blueprint, stored away to bear fruit somewhere on our life's timeline, whether in the near or distant future. The system of wholesome works the very same way in reverse, helping to clear away and lighten our impurities.
What We Should Do
Since both merit and demerit each have their own manager constantly watching over us, we should never be complacent — we should steadily accumulate merit and goodness: chanting and paying respects, keeping precepts, radiating , making resolutions, and consistently doing good in our daily routine, so that side can look after and support us ever more effectively.