Many people in the world find it hard to accept Kamma. This is a difficult one. Because certainly physically handicapped people need to be encouraged. I met someone who was actually very ill and handicapped, was also a Buddhist, and was full of self-hatred, thinking so much about what they had done in a past life to cause them to be like this. So I focused more on what they could do in the present life.
I often use this particular analogy of people who have done even negative things in this life in the past, and some of you have heard it. It's like a cup of water and you dump half a cup of salt in it and it's very salty. Most people don't want to drink it. But, rather than getting upset that we have to drink it, instead we can just pour it in a bathtub and start adding lots of fresh water. Buckets and buckets of fresh water until we can fill the bathtub. And then it's easier to drink.
It is also helpful to talk about the fact that we aren't the same as we were before. And that just because we have done something difficult in the past, it doesn't limit our capacity for change and transformation in the present. That we're quite different now. You can always bring up the Kalama Sutta, saying that you don't have to believe these things, it's just a teaching in Buddhism. You don't have to believe it to be true. However, in order to come to peace, people need to come to acceptance, acceptance of their situation, whatever it be, especially in physical disease and physical difficulties.
Even in some health traditions, there is a tendency to encourage guilt in a person because they didn't do the right things health-wise, they didn't do this and they didn't do that, and then make a person feel guilty for a particular disease they have. Which makes it difficult for that person to just deal with what they have. Guilt is a very negative mind state. As well, it is helpful for people to know that even the Buddha had pain in the body apparently, and that the nature of the body is to be diseased, decay and die.
As well, the theory that it's God's will seems pretty heavy, also. Why would God will this being to be physically handicapped and place that burden on this being? So that's pretty heavy, too. Whatever it is, whatever happened in the past we can't do much about. And this is also what Buddhism teaches. We can't do much about the past, but we can do quite a lot in the present. And this is where the power of rising above one's Kamma is possible. So I would focus more on the potential to raise above our Kamma. If it's true, okay, if it's not true, we don't know, but the possibility to raise above our Kamma is present in Buddhism and this is a great potential.
No matter what we've done in the past, we have the power to transform, and be above all Kamma. This is the great message of Buddhism that even though we're bound in the cycle of Kamma, we have the potential to break out of the cycle of Kamma and not be bound by this Dukkha. So focusing on the changing nature of ourselves, that Buddhism also teaches, and that we don't have to be bound by our past Kamma, are all important to balance some of the negativities some people feel towards the first two Noble Truths. And many people get upset with the first two Noble Truths and forget about the third and the fourth Noble Truth.