Question

If everybody is the owner of their Kamma, is it my own fault when I am born in Bangladesh, for example, and have to suffer hunger and thirst?

Answer

According to Buddhism, yes, because Buddhism believes in rebirth, and you get exactly what you deserve in this life for whatever you have done in past lives. So if you are born rich, Buddhism says it is because in past lives you were very generous. If you were born poor it was because you were stingy. If you were born beautiful and good looking, it was because in your last life you were kind. If you were born not good looking, it was because you had much anger in your past lives.

Now think about this teaching, think about it for yourself. No matter who you are around, whether they are actually good looking or not, if they are loving and kind, do you like to be around them? Are they basically beautiful when they are loving and kind? It doesn't matter whether their features are what we would normally call beautiful, handsome of whatever, it doesn't matter if they are big, fat, lots of pimples or whatever, if they are loving and kind we will want to be around them, they are beautiful in a different way. And on the other hand, if they are the most beautiful woman, most handsome man, Miss Universe, Mr. Universe, whatever, but they are angry and they are stingy and their speech is really rotten and so on, don't we think they are kind of ugly and we just want to go away from them?

So we can actually see this teaching from moment-to-moment and not just from lifetime-to-lifetime.

As to your birth, Buddhism says you get what you deserve based on your past life. Now what people did in their past life, we can't remember. A person born in Bangladesh, poor and everything, they can't actually remember, and they may feel "this is terrible and I don't deserve this", and whatever else. We can't prove that they deserve it. This is the theory within Buddhism. But quite frankly it is a nicer theory that thinking that it's all God's will and God just wants to pick on people and some are going to have lots of money and some are going to suffer and this and that. That makes no sense whatsoever. So at least the Buddhist theory of rebirth and Kamma that we all get what we deserve does make a lot of sense.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.