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 gainmerit for themselves?

A: Yes. When you are glad at the meritorious deedsof other people, that gladness itself is a meritorious deed. This sharing of meritorious deeds ismost effective for persons who have departed. Forexample, a person dies and is reborn as a hungryghost, a peta. If other people, relatives, do meritorious deeds and share them with the ghost (bysaying: ”let the ghost come here and rejoice at ourmeritorious deeds”), then the ghost, by hearingthat and rejoicing at those deeds, can get goodresults 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 andattained the first stage of sainthood. In his pastlife, he had many relatives who did an evil deed.Some people were preparing to offer some foodto the sangha headed by Buddha, and Bimbisara’srelatives helped themselves dishonestly to someof it. On account of that, they were reborn ashungry ghosts who could not get enough shelterand nourishment. Bimbisara offered food to theBuddha, and the hungry ghost expected Bimbisarato share merit with them. But Bimbisara did notknow about sharing merit, and the ghost got nothing.

This angered them, and they showed fearfulappearances to the king during the night. He toldthe Buddha about this the next morning, and theBuddha advised Bimbisara to share merit with hisrelatives when doing meritorious deeds. Bimbisarafollowed the advice and specifically dedicated hisshare 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 inthe next life; some in lives after that. The ones thatgives results in future lives are a store of kamma,which everyone has. We have gone through thissaÿsàra (rounds of rebirth) for many aeons, andwe have done good things and bad things. Someof the kammas may have given results, but somemay have not yet given results. Both good and badkammas are, in a way, waiting for a chance to giveresults. Bad kammas give results when they favorable opportunities, favorable circumstances to giveresults. If you do bad kamma here, then bad kamma from the past is more likely to give results byyour doing new bad kamma. But if you do goodkamma here and now, you can block, but not eradicate totally, the bad kamma from the past. That iswhy people are asked to do meritorious deeds.Buddha once put this in the form of a simile. Ifyou put a spoonful of salt in a cup of water, thatwater becomes very salty. But if you put the sameamount of salt in a lake, that water will not be verysalty. In this way, when you have a large amountof good kamma, you can counteract or dilute theeffects of bad kamma.Only when you attain arahantship (Arahant – onewho has attained the highest level of spiritualdevelopment, who is free and will not be rebornagain) can you completely eradicate the effects ofkamma altogether. But we can block the effects ofbad kamma here, by doing good deeds. By doinggood deeds, we make circumstances unfavorablefor 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.