Many of us believe in karma, innen or fate. The saying goes,” what we sow we reap”.  For many, this may sound negative and hopeless in that we have no control over the future. I have heard people say that they do not know what they did in their previous life, and should not be punished in this lifetime.  Karma or innen does not appear to be fair, as the effects of our actions may not appear until the next life time.  In our religion, most of us are aware tlhat our fate arises from our past actions. We alway worry about what fate will appear in our lives. This brings up an idea which may sound silly. How many times have you regreted what you had said or done in the past? How great would it be to go back in time and change our behavior, so negative fate is not created. I remember television serries on time travel, where the main characters would try to go back in time to  change history. But most of us know that it is not possible to go back in the past to eliminate our negative fates. So are we stuck with our fate, or is it possible to change it without going back to the past in a time machine? The following is a sequence of steps that occur to create our negative fates.

Evil thoughts—> action upon these dusts—> negative fates

Greed (yoku)—>steal——————————–>victim of robbery

If we can presume that the evil thought that caused our evil action is still present in our mind today, and that the evil action caused this particular fate. Then we can presume that the evil thought caused this negative fate. The sequence of steps gets reduced to the following:

Evil thoughts———————————————> negative fates

Greed (yoku)———————————————>victim of robbery

This agrees with the song 10 in the Mikagura-uta that say that the origin of illness or suffering is from the mind. So if we can remove the evil thought, can we eliminate our fate?

So if we could concentrate on eliminating our evil thought, in this instance greed, can we erase the karma, innen or fate of being a victim of robbery in this example?  In our teachings we are told that if we follow the teaching, a large calamity(negative fate) may only turn into a small misfortune. So it appears that by concentrating on removing our evil thoughts, we can eliminate our fates. This is like going back in the past to remove what we have done. But as we find out, just telling ourselves to remove evil thoughts (regret, covetousness, self-love, greed, and arrogance) from our minds is not sufficient. We must constantly remind ourselves because these evil thoughts are rampant among the people in the world, and are easily transferred to ourselves. For many, the purification of the mind will take time. God tells us to ponder the fate that comes from our own hearts, and not act upon the evil thoughts that are in our minds. This is the way to gradually purify our minds. God does not want apologies for past wrong doings, but wants us to ponder our fates, and not repeat the same actions that resulted in the fate. I will leave you with the last verse in Song 10 of the Mikagura-uta:

konotabi arawareta ya

yamai no moto wa kokoro kara

This time it has been revealed.

The origin of illness is from the mind.