พระอาจารย์อธิบายว่าการเกิด เผ่าพันธุ์ และการคบหาสมาคมของสรรพสัตว์ล้วนเป็นไปตามกรรมและสัดส่วนของธรรมชาติ 3 ฝ่ายในตัวแต่ละคน ยิ่งสัดส่วนกุศลมากเพียงใด ก็ยิ่งไปสู่ภพภูมิที่สูงส่งเพียงนั้น จึงต้องเพิ่มสัดส่วนกุศลด้วยทาน ศีล ภาวนา และปัญญาThe teacher explains that birth, kinship, and the company we keep are all governed by karma and by the proportion of the three natures within each of us. The greater our share of wholesome karma, the higher the realm we rise to — which is why we must keep increasing it through giving, virtue, meditation, and wisdom.
A student asked the teacher to elaborate on the teaching that "karma is our birth, karma is our kin."
Karma Is Our Birth — and Our Truest Kin
The teacher explained that the world follows karma; all beings divide and keep company according to their karma; and birth itself follows the karma each being has made. Before death, the mind gathers up the karma it has done — whether careless or refined — and that karma determines the birth to come. So whatever this life looks like is not decreed by heaven, not granted by any deity — no one bestows it. Whether one is born beautiful and wealthy or poor and struggling, it is entirely our own doing.
For this reason, and to avoid complacency, we should resolve to build goodness starting today, so as to be born well again and again — and once born well, to also gain good kin, since kin of the same lineage naturally wish to support and help one another. Yet sometimes distance or circumstance makes that help impossible — some things are within reach, some beyond it. But there is one thing that is truly our kin and never once fails us, present with us always — whether asleep or awake, standing, walking, sitting, or lying down — and that is our own karma. Karma is our truest kin and sibling. Nothing good we have done is ever wasted; it follows and bears fruit exactly according to itself.
The Proportion of the Three Natures Within Us Shapes Who We Keep Company With and Where We Are Reborn
Every person carries within them a proportion of the three natures — wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral. This proportion determines who keeps company with whom. Those with a greater share of wholesome karma gather together with others of great merit; those with less are separated into groups with less merit — for instance, those heavy in unwholesome karma often end up together, even in prisons. Those with abundant merit and refined qualities often come together in business and other ventures.
Beyond the proportion of merit, beings are further divided by s () — shared emotional tendencies and familiar habits carried from the past — grouping into different kinds of beings. Humans divide into many classes and groups; devas exist across many heavenly levels; the Brahma realms work the same way. Those who develop meditation to the level of are reborn as form-Brahmas; those who attain the formless absorptions are reborn as formless Brahmas. All of this follows the proportion of wholesome karma that has developed to that level.
Mind and Mental Factors Are What Make Each Being Different
What matters most is the mind and its mental factors. The mind is the voice that guides us, shaped by the nature dominant in each realm. As humans, whichever level of mind guides us determines how we speak and act, and whichever mental factor dominates determines our particular grouping — for example, one dominated by aversion tends toward the yakkha type; one dominated by greed goes another way; one dominated by delusion may be reborn as an asura. The mind has as many as 89 varieties, each guiding according to its own karma and level. This proportion of wholesome karma is precisely what creates the differences in level — the greater proportion, the higher the heavenly realm; the greater proportion, the lower one falls, down to the animal realm, hell, or the asura realm, according to how deeply blackened that unwholesomeness has become. Those with a large neutral proportion tend to cycle through human and intermediate-being (sambhavesī) existences. Even within the same level, groups still diversify according to differing mental factors — those inclined toward scholarship gather with teachers and scholars, those inclined toward music gather with musicians, and so on.
What matters most, then, is that we must keep increasing our proportion of wholesome karma — by perfecting giving, , meditation, and wisdom.