Sin in your previous life?

Do you believe that what you have today is from what you have done in your previous life? I think perhaps our Buddhist teaching says that we should believe that there is karma from our bad deeds or any deed and each and every one of us is scared stiff and sometimes unconsciously worried about what we did in the past.

When I was younger and was told about the sin somebody might have done in the past, I suddenly felt worried and sad about myself. I tried to recall what I did in my previous life, yet I didn’t find a favourable answer. Because I didn’t know and now I don’t even know what I did in my previous life! Can anybody tell me? When listening to poor people say that they become poor due to their past sin, I felt dumbfounded. Strangely enough, many Cambodians blindly connect their disadvantaged lives to their sin they committed in the previous life! If you’re a ladyboy, you may think in your previous life, you rapped a woman or something. If you’re poor, you may think you lacked a sharing spirit. If you’re rich, you may think you did a very good sharing role and in this life you go on enjoying your wealth and think that you’ll forever be happy and content even without working.

Once, my mother discussed her life with me like 5 years ago. She said that she went to a fortune teller who told that she did very good deeds in the past and in this life, she would be more than affluent and probably found wealth under the ground around the house. I was very excited to hear the latter! The wealth underneath!!! I was anxiously expecting this to happen very soon. I made a prayer to God and asked when it would come. Days passed! No news about the wealth came! Just now I realize that it’s all but lie. What I’ve been glad about my mother is that though she believes the fortune teller to some extent, she has always worked so hard/toiled every day in her life. All her entire life, she doesn’t believe in keeping still and doing nothing. She would be the one who started out work if anybody were just standing, procrastinating or looking at each other!

How about you? How about other people? Do you attribute your wealth or what you have today to your past or previous life? Is there life after death? Perhaps, people think belief of sin in the past can be a good scapegoat of your incompetency to struggle for this life. Perhaps, when the fortune teller tells people that they are poor because of their past sin, they will get relieved and can’t blame themselves for their poverty or incompetency.

I lived stupidly for some years before I realized that just thinking about my pervious life would double my insanity and destroy chances of improvement. Buddha teaches that every creature or human-being should be responsible for their own deeds. Whatever they do will reflect them. The Karma they themselves commit will be paid by themselves now! We are what we think.