Although we don’t know our ancestors as specific individuals, they know us verv well. Therefore, it is just as a mother is concerned for her children. If great grandchildren or descendants ignore them and do not take care of them by holding a Memorial Service, how sad they are. Nichiren Shonin said, “Even though we take our body from our parents, if, after your parent’s death, you do not take care of them and your ancestors no memorial service, no prayers, no respect – do you think that your deceased parents cannot say anything? They become malevolent spirits and curse not only you but also your children and grandchildren, as well as future descendants.”

Cursing means they will punish you with bad things. In fact, it is not a rare case where malevolent spirits have cursed a descendant, for example causing them to meet with a mishap, accident, sickness, domestic discord, relationship trouble, etc. We tend to see and think of everything based on only visible things, never thinking of spiritual influences. You might not believe it, but there are many cases connected with spiritual influences. In fact, most of the things that happen around us are affected by spirits.

O-Bon is a spiritual event held to pay respect and give gratitude to our ancestors, and to pray for all spirits. Why should we respect our ancestors? There is no complicated reason – all we require is respect and sense of gratitude for our ancestors, and we should realize how wonderful and precious our life is. If there were no parents, grandparents, great grandparents or ancestors, we would not be here. Also, we should realize that our nature and characteristics have come from the genes of our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents or ancestors. In other words, we should accept our genes as messages, and know that we are located at the end of the message.

What is penitence in the Lotus Sutra? The first thing you should do is be calm and obedient before the Buddha, and recognize your immaturity by yourself. It does not matter whether you feel a sense of guilt or not, but have penitence to the Buddha and pray to extinguish your bad karma with the Odaimoku. It is said that a penitence or repentance service was held by the Buddha for his disciples or congregation regularly when He was still alive. The echo of penitence with Odaimoku enters into our body through our ears and sinks deeply into the Alaya-shiki, extinguishing the nested bad karmas one after another, and Odaimoku is stored in your Alaya-shiki as good karma.

Nichiren Shonin says: “Even if the bad karma is small, if you don’t have penitence, you will surely have to reap the gravest. Even if you have deep bad karma, through your penitence to the Buddha, the karma will disappear.” (Konichi-bo Gosho)

A person who believes in the Lotus Sutra and who chants the Odaimoku does not have to be excessively scared of bad karma, because the Lotus Sutra has “Sutra Strength” to directly extinguish bad karma. Its power is executed through penitence with chanting Odaimoku.

There is an important concept relating to karma which is called “Jogo-Noten” It means that even though we have some karmic destiny in our lives and live under the influence of karma, we can change our bad karma with good karma. Usually, we human beings think and make decisions by relying on information acquired with our five senses, such as hearing, seeing and feeling things. However, it seems that the direction of our lives is controlled by imperceptible spiritual forces, rather than perceptible physical forces. Karma is a representative of imperceptible spiritual forces. Perceptible physical forces are just the effects of the spiritual world, thus we cannot notice when we are making bad karma. When the harvest comes, we react, “Why do I have to experience such terrible things? I am quite innocent!” No one thinks they are guilty, and we always try to put the blame on others. If we take this way, our bad karma will never improve.

What about good karma? Good karma is caused by the opposite behavior to bad karma. That is, spontaneous and compassionate conduct following the ethics and teachings of Buddhism. It is a factor of happiness which is also caused by the three elements, “Body”, “Mouth” and “Mind”.

• Body: not killing, not stealing and helping others.
• Mouth: not lying, not having a double-edged tongue, not committing abuse, and encouraging people.
• Mind: being honest, not getting angry, being humble and being patient.

With those actions, we can extinguish bad karma.

Nichiren Shonin said, “If you want to see your previous life look at your present situation, and if you want to see your future life look at your behavior in the present.” How much bad karma do we have now? Please think about it calmly. There may be some who feel that they have deep bad karma, and there may also be those who say, “I don’t care about any bad karma.” Whichever, it is actually impossible to measure the depth of bad karma exactly, but you can guess by looking at your life as a whole.

Having been created, bad karma is … transferred into and deeply embedded in the spiritual realm. We human beings have “five senses”: those of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body. Actually they are only the five senses which we can recognize. Buddhism teaches that there are two more undetectable realms stored deep in our psychological mind, “Mana-shiki” and “Alaya-shiki”.

Mana-shiki is a realm which is dominated by illusion or selfishness. This is an unconscious mind which loves the self and prioritizes self-merit. As proof of the existence of this realm, there is an example: When we see a group portrait, we first check ourselves – where we are in the picture and how we look. We do this whether we’re looking at a family portrait, a reunion picture or even a photo with a boyfriend or girlfriend. Mana-shiki always prioritizes the self, unconsciously.

Alaya-shiki is psychologically deeper than Mana-shiki, so we are unable to sense this realm at all. Because this realm stores information on various experiences and rebirths, it is called the “storehouse-consciousness.” All the information on what we see, hear, speak, think and how we act throughout our life is planted and recorded into this Alaya-shiki. In other words, all behavior carried out by the body, mouth and mind are planted into the Alaya-shiki as data which is used to generate spiritual energy for the future, or karma. This information includes things such as previous lives, memory of rebirth and human birth information too, which we are not consciously able to remember. This information is not erased when we are reborn.

What kind of actions become bad karma? The answer is actions which go against the ethics and teachings of Buddhism. There are ten kinds of bad karma or action, and they are carried out by three elements, the “Body”, “Mouth” and “Mind.”

• Body: killing, stealing and adultery.
• Mouth: lying, flattery, having a double-edged tongue, and abuse.
• Mind: greed, ego and complaining.

These three elements influence each other and, when mixed together, cause even deeper karma.