Buddhism talks about rebirth, one of the scriptures in the 20 Suttas that we edited contains a basic exposition about Kamma. In it, it says that if you are very loving you will be reborn beautiful, if you are very generous you will be reborn rich, if you are stingy you'll be reborn poor, if you ask questions of your teachers you will be reborn smart, if you don't ask questions you'll be reborn dumb. That's in this Sutta and also in other parts of the scriptures.
So we tend to think that somebody who is very beautiful, very handsome, very rich in this life, that this is the Kammic result of something from their past. In their past life they must have been loving, they must have been generous. Ok. So they get reborn this life handsome, beautiful, rich and then why is it they are not happy? Because happiness arises due to causes and Dukkha arises due to causes we also create in the present. If they don't keep putting in the right causes to have beneficial results, then they won't arise. It's quite obvious when we look at people who are very handsome, beautiful, rich, when we look at kids in school who are very popular, very beautiful, such as homecoming queens as we call them in America, it's very easy to see that the vast majority of them get very attached to their physical beauty and wealth.
Why is it a lot of movie stars are so messed up? If they become so attached to their physical beauty, their success, fame and pleasure and what people think of them, then their whole world starts to revolve around it. Perhaps they were generous in a past life, they were loving in a past life, but now that they have the results of being beautiful and rich, many of them don't know what causes will help them stay rich and beautiful in the next life. So this is what Buddhism says about Kamma - what you've got now is based on the past, but what you get tomorrow is based on today as well as the past. So we have to keep putting in the right causes.
Kamma is like a mixed bag. In America we have what is called Halloween. Ok when I was a little kid all the kids go out on Halloween, going up and down the street, to get candy. So when the kids came back they're all excited and they dump their whole bag on their bed and start sorting through their candy, and they'd have a little bit of this and a little bit of that, a mixed bag. Our Kamma is a mixed bag, too, and if we try to work out Kamma with our intellect, thought process, the Buddha said we will go insane. So we are also born with a mixed bag. We might be born rich because we were loving and were generous, but where is the wisdom? Were we actually smart?
It is rarer to find people both beautiful and smart. It is more normal to have the smart people not be the most beautiful or handsome people. And a lot more people have average intelligence and good looks. We have a mixed bag going on here. If people's wisdom is not at a sufficient level and they are very beautiful and very rich growing up, then their whole life will normally center around that and they may not be inspired to do more goodness in their life.
There is an interesting little side story on this. Take a look around you at the people in the retreat and if you can remember the other retreats you've done, by and large there's nobody who's very, very good looking, and by and large there is nobody who is very ugly, very seldom what we consider to be very ugly and very seldom anyone who's very, very beautiful or handsome. That's interesting. In Thailand, for retreat registration, Rosemary and I have a big table and Rosemary sits on one side and I sit on the other, both on the same side at either end. Rosemary receives the women and I receive the men one at a time.
One day a couple came up at the same time, they were together, they were maybe 23/25 years old and they were striking. These were two that could easily be in Hollywood, they were striking. The guy was super good-looking the girl was super good-looking, my "jaw dropped." Rosemary had the same attitude,. After they had finished registering and walked away, Rosemary and I turned to each other and said, "Wow where did they come from?" Because we'd already noticed after about five years of teaching that we didn't get very, very good-looking people in the retreats.
We register people on what we call "Day Zero," and on "Day One" the retreats starts which is the next day. People get to stay over night before we start the silence. Well, they stayed over night and the next day before we actually started the retreat, they changed their mind, left, and never came back. So when we look at Kamma, we feel it could be bad luck to be born very beautiful, handsome or rich. That is very interesting.