Ancestral Force Series - 7: Ancestors roaming like ghost (Buddhist Scripture reference)

The database of Ancestral force writings can be found here: Ancestral Force Series Database

Excerpt from "An Introduction to the Law of KAMMA"- Sayadaw U Silananda

(Bhikku Nanamoli have also written a book on this topic)

The link of the free ebook is here: http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/volition.pdf

Questions and Answers

Q: Is the intention of sharing merit to inspire others to gain
merit for themselves?

A: Yes. When you are glad at the meritorious deeds
of other people, that gladness itself is a meritorious deed. This sharing of meritorious deeds is
most effective for persons who have departed. For
example, a person dies and is reborn as a hungry
ghost, a peta. If other people, relatives, do meritorious deeds and share them with the ghost (by
saying: ”let the ghost come here and rejoice at our
meritorious deeds”), then the ghost, by hearing
that and rejoicing at those deeds, can get good
results immediately. The peta gets results immediately, but we in this life do not get results so soon.
There is a story of the relatives of the King Bimbisara of India who became a disciple of Buddha and
attained the first stage of sainthood. In his past
life, he had many relatives who did an evil deed.
Some people were preparing to offer some food
to the sangha headed by Buddha, and Bimbisara’s
relatives helped themselves dishonestly to some
of it. On account of that, they were reborn as
hungry ghosts who could not get enough shelter
and nourishment. Bimbisara offered food to the
Buddha, and the hungry ghost expected Bimbisara
to share merit with them. But Bimbisara did not
know about sharing merit, and the ghost got nothing.

This angered them, and they showed fearful
appearances to the king during the night. He told
the Buddha about this the next morning, and the
Buddha advised Bimbisara to share merit with his
relatives when doing meritorious deeds. Bimbisara
followed the advice and specifically dedicated his
share of merit to them. They said, “Sàdhu, sàdhu,
sàdhu,” and they got good results immediately.

Q: Can we escape the results of bad kamma?

A: There are different kammas. Some give results in
the next life; some in lives after that. The ones that
gives results in future lives are a store of kamma,
which everyone has. We have gone through this
saÿsàra (rounds of rebirth) for many aeons, and
we have done good things and bad things. Some
of the kammas may have given results, but some
may have not yet given results. Both good and bad
kammas are, in a way, waiting for a chance to give
results. Bad kammas give results when they favorable opportunities, favorable circumstances to give
results. If you do bad kamma here, then bad kamma from the past is more likely to give results by
your doing new bad kamma. But if you do good
kamma here and now, you can block, but not eradicate totally, the bad kamma from the past. That is
why people are asked to do meritorious deeds.
Buddha once put this in the form of a simile. If
you put a spoonful of salt in a cup of water, that
water becomes very salty. But if you put the sameamount of salt in a lake, that water will not be very
salty. In this way, when you have a large amount
of good kamma, you can counteract or dilute the
effects of bad kamma.
Only when you attain arahantship (Arahant – one
who has attained the highest level of spiritual
development, who is free and will not be reborn
again) can you completely eradicate the effects of
kamma altogether. But we can block the effects of
bad kamma here, by doing good deeds. By doing
good deeds, we make circumstances unfavorable
for the bad kamma from the past to give results.

My experience:

I have had some bad dreams where I was roaming and flying as ghost in astral earth like places and lifting people off the ground and doing crap things. The roaming hungry ghosts is a hellish dimensions, it is not worth to be aspired for,

I was dragged into such dimensions due to bad ancestral karma of my in laws. When my mother in law came to visit me, she brought in a bunch of negative ancestral karma of her ancestors, she is literally a storehouse of negative sins of all her clan (her aunts and sisters are too involved with it). This is not the first time, this has happened, I have reported even in my previous writings (in this link) on her impact and trauma on my psyche. 

I am aware of her shady ancestral and psychic background but I could not stop her interaction or visitation as she has earned enough rights and credits by raising the spouse of my current life and infringing or blocking her rights will earn bad deeds (paap) and that can again accumulate bad deeds soon enough to lead me to some untoward incidents. Still I tried my best to stop her visitation but destiny and the future impressions (her samskaras) have already manifested and no force could stop the incoming visit, now the reactions has to be managed in a damage control mode. 

The fate has given her a choice to rectify some of her old past life mistakes (suicide in past lives) and earn good deeds in this life to have better rebirths in future and it won't be right to block her opportunity to uplift herself or earn some good deeds even though it will lead to short term inconveniences, trauma and damages to my psyche by being dragged into hell by association. I was advised to do some offerings to my ancestors just like King Bimbisara was advised here by Buddha to alleviate some of the sufferings of these pretas or deceased ancestors who are roaming like hungry mad ghosts to calm some of their psychic storm.