หากลูกหลานทวงคืนที่ดินที่พ่อแม่ถวายวัดไปแล้วสำเร็จ บาปที่สั่งสมไว้จะกลายเป็นวิบัติในภายหลัง เช่น ไฟไหม้ น้ำท่วม โจรขโมย แต่ถ้าทวงไม่สำเร็จก็ยังต้องทุกข์จากการก่อเหตุ เพียงแต่ไม่มีวิบัติทำลายทรัพย์ ส่วนพ่อแม่ผู้ล่วงลับที่ทำบุญไปแล้วจะไม่สาปแช่งลูก มีแต่ความสลดใจ เช่นเดียวกับเทวดาที่เพียงไม่ช่วยเหลือ ไม่ได้สาปแช่งผู้ใดIf children successfully reclaim land their parents donated to a temple, the demerit they accumulate ripens later as loss — fire, flood, theft. If the attempt fails, they still suffer from the effort itself, though no completed karmic pattern forms to destroy property. Deceased parents who already made the offering do not curse their children, only feel sorrow — just as guardian spirits never curse anyone, they simply withdraw their help.
A questioner asked: if parents offer land to a temple, and later the children reclaim it — whether the reclaiming succeeds or fails — what karma follows for the one who gave and the one who took back?
The Principle: Cause and Condition
Whenever we examine anything, Buddhism reduces it to just two things: cause (เหตุ) and condition (ปัจจัย).
Cause is the root that has no root behind it — the three underlying natures of mind: wholesome (กุศลธรรม), unwholesome (อกุศลธรรม), and indeterminate (อัพยากตธรรม). It isn't that someone incited it, or that it's simply the fruit of craving or anything else — trace it back far enough, and what stands behind everything is these three natures.
Condition is the fruit of that nature — the energy that becomes or demerit, arising from mind (จิต) and its s (เจตสิก). That's the whole principle.
When the Land Is Successfully Reclaimed
When parents offer land to a temple, a wholesome state of mind moves them — it leads them to let go of and give. In the children's generation, an unwholesome state moves them instead, stirring up stinginess and a reluctance to let the gift stand.
If they succeed in reclaiming it, misfortune follows — because mind's aim is exactly that: to bring about ruin. Its intention is to harm, to break, to grind that life down until it collapses.
The unwholesome mind drives them to go reclaim it, even though they themselves already know their parents completed the act of giving. They don't rejoice in it — instead they go and take it back, and succeed. The demerit side gets exactly what it was aiming for: a “completed pattern”.
Through the whole process of reclaiming — planning, hiring a lawyer, drawing on effort and endurance to fight for what the parents already gave away — demerit keeps flowing in moment by moment, because the whole effort unfolds under the power of the unwholesome mind. Once the reclaiming from the abbot succeeds, every moment of that inflow gets sealed inside a “completed demerit” — full of defilement, the very thing that breeds trouble and obstruction, difficulty, suffering and danger, a state that is hard to bear and must be endured.
That completed pattern of demerit then gets placed on the timeline of that life, both near ahead and far ahead. Once it's placed there, the countdown begins. When the time comes for it to ripen, misfortune shows up — a fire, a flood sweeping things away, a thief. Whatever remains of the property meets that fate, whether or not it combines with other karma that also works to destroy it.
When the Attempt Fails
If the attempt fails but still causes trouble for the temple, the person still suffers for it — but no “completed pattern” of demerit forms. Since the reclaiming never succeeded, the misfortune that would destroy property can't take hold.
Still, they generate suffering — plenty of problems, trouble in their affairs. As the demerit already incurred ripens, more suffering keeps arising fresh, because every moment spent pursuing the reclaiming lets demerit flow in right alongside the misfortune. But because the act itself never succeeded, no completed pattern forms — and with no completed pattern, nothing gets placed on the timeline of that life.
What they get instead is just trouble and hardship of many kinds — bad luck, lawsuits. When it's time for that to ripen, disputes pile up, wasting time, money, and of mind — but it can never actually cause real destruction.
Do Deceased Parents Curse Their Children?
Parents who have passed and were reborn in a good realm can indeed look down and see what their children do — but they don't curse them. They are simply in a different realm, where feeling works differently. Seeing a child driven by defilement to act this way, they only feel sorrow.
The parents already completed their act — their minds were wholesome, drawing merit to them, and that merit is already theirs. When the child comes to undo it, the parents just grieve.
This situation actually involves three parties: the parents, the child, and the abbot who received the offering — which makes it karmic fruit for the abbot too, since he had once given something away and had it reclaimed before, and now it happens to him again. As for the parents, their part is already finished — their merit is already theirs. What remains is between the child and the abbot: old karma for the abbot, new karma for the child.
Guardian Spirits Don't Curse Either — They Simply Withdraw
There's a story sometimes told: a spirit comes and waits to rejoice in someone's merit-making, and when the household makes none, it spits and leaves. But that doesn't actually harm the person — the spirit simply doesn't help.
These are the spirits close to the human realm — earthbound devas (ภุมมเทวา) and the like, holding right view, wanting to see merit made. Say one house gives alms each morning — its guardian spirit rejoices, and grows more radiant for it, in dress, in complexion, day by day.
Meanwhile, the guardian spirit of the house next door watches that other spirit's mansion glow brighter and brighter every day, while its own household sleeps in late and makes no merit at all. Watching this, the spirit feels only pity and a kind of contempt — enough, at times, to spit.
But nothing bad reaches that person because of it. The spirit simply doesn't help — has no wish to help. That person only reaps what's already theirs, given over to unwholesome or indeterminate states. That's just how it is — such is the nature of things (ตถตา). Whatever a person does, that's the fruit they get — not because a spirit withheld it, but because a spirit simply doesn't support, doesn't help, doesn't watch over or protect anyone. That's all it is.