#Buddhist_Myth
Premature death, disease, ugliness, poverty etc are caused by bad karma in the previous life.
Buddha was a strong believer in the doctrine of karma extending to the previous lives. He propounds a strange doctrine of cause and effect.
He says that killing in previous life makes one short-lived in the present life; a short-tempered person in the previous life is born ugly in this life; a stingy person in the previous life is born poor in this life; if a person does not ask moral or spiritual question to a monk in the previous life, he would be born stupid in this life and so on.
This is obviously false.
Take the example of poverty. Buddha is saying that by not giving charities in the previous life, one becomes poor in the present life:
Chula-Kammavibhanga Sutta [The Shorter Exposition of Deeds] (Majjhim Nikaya 135)
13. ¨ … some woman or man is not a giver of food, drink, cloth, sandals, garlands, perfumes, unguents, bed, roof and lighting to monks or Brahmins. Due to having performed and completed such kamma (deed), on the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in a state of deprivation... If instead he comes to the human state, he is poor wherever he is reborn. This is the way that leads to
poverty …. ¨
But what about those who were born poor but have become rich in this very life either by personal effort or by economic policy of the government or by a combination of both? If they were bad in the previous life, why did they become rich in the present life?
How do we explain rags-to-riches success stories of countless persons on this planet? What if a poor man gets a lottery or wins a quiz test withheavy prizes?
Buddha failed to understand that one’s poverty is linked to the economic system of the society and one’s choice of appropriate economic activities, rather than moral or religious activities of the previous life.
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