If we have neither attained any realization nor dedicated merit, but are constantly filled with anger, virtuous karma will be destroyed very easily. For ordinary people, the best way to save accumulated good karma is dedication of merit.

We can be as virtuous as we would like in this life, retribution may still await us if we cannot purify all our negative karma of the past. Once this type of karma matures, there is no escape but to bear its effect albeit temporarily.

There are some who have never stolen things, killed or hurt anyone; rather, they have kept their vows and practiced virtue. Yet, they often seem to be less fortunate than others in many aspects. Such cases tend to make people wonder, “If karma was true, why should good people run into bad luck?” Lay practitioners who do not have in-depth knowledge of karma or fully understand the viewpoints of Abhidharma-kosha-shastra may ask the same question. Some would even say, “I have attended many pujas and read so many scriptures. I should not have to suffer this or that illness or misfortune.” This is a wrong view. The fact is that all the virtuous actions committed have been stored in our alaya consciousness. It is due to the relevant conditions not yet matured that karma derived from those actions has not come to fruition. This is like a farmer who sowed all his grains in the springtime and must wait five to six months for the harvest. In the meantime, he is just a poor fellow with nothing left to eat at home. Some people may question, “You have toiled hard every day, tilling the land. Why don’t you have any food to eat?” Question like this is pointless. Everyone knows that there is a waiting period between sowing and harvesting.The reason why he has no food now is because he did not plough the land properly last year to reap a bumper harvest this year. His hard working this year would not have directly affected that outcome in any way. Similarly, attending pujas or liberating animals would not have any direct impact on the pain and misfortune we suffer now as those are the manifestations of the ripening of past negative karma.

Under normal circumstances, what we do now, either good or bad, definitely will affect future karmic results but not quite so imminently the manifestation of karma at present. However, exceptions are possible with special circumstances.

After a person has killed a being or stolen things, the karmic seed of such action will remain in this person’s alaya consciousness. When it will germinate is uncertain, however.

The Buddha also proved the existence of causality in the sutras through the following example. It seems that some people can never become wealthy, no matter how hard they try. There is nothing wrong with the way they work or operate, but they remain poor their whole lives. Others enjoy fabulous wealth throughout their lives without having to work hard for it. The same also happens with people’s health and life span. We may think that these seemingly unreasonable outcomes are due to the variable external environment, but they are not. For example, once a Tibetan king, wanting to help the poor, divided all the wealth of the nobles evenly among the poor three times. However, after some time, everything went back to where it was—the poor remained poor, the nobles stayed noble and well-off. The king could do nothing more. Actually, not all those nobles were smart and capable, the poor foolish and lazy. Most likely, in this case, it could be the workings of cause and effect. Of course, the example is not saying that we are all destined to be rich or poor, so the rich would never need to work for anything and the poor would labor to no avail. Nevertheless, the law and the workings of cause and effect are present in this example.

The complexity of the cycle of cause and effect and how it passes through the past, present and future make it possible only for the Buddha to comprehend entirely its causal relation. Others merely glimpse different parts of the cycle.

when a karmic seed is planted in the alaya consciousness, it will yield fruit when all the right conditions come together. This fruit is also called karmic effect.

Mutable karma. Since the strength of this karma, virtuous or not, is weak, it will likely not cause any effect when met with a counteracting condition. For negative karma to become mutable, we must bring forth this counteracting condition, i.e., repentance. According to the Mahayanabhidharma-sangiti-shastra, the way to turn all evil karma committed since beginningless time into mutable karma is to repent and vow never to commit again. To repent past wrongdoings and resolve never to repeat again are the two key elements to turn immutable into mutable karma.