Conversations of the Taoist Master Fu Hsiang

Men Chow: This cannot be right.

Tsia Tung: Why not?

Men Chow: If the Lords of Karma were like the Chinese police, you would be able to bribe them.

Tsia Tung: A good point.

Fu Hsiang: To understand karma you must understand that in the life of every individual, there is a battle between Destiny and Fate. Our task is to fulfil the first and battle the second.

Tsia Tung: What is Destiny and Fate?

Fu Hsiang: Destiny is what we undertake to do when we come down to the earth plane. It is our mission for that life. We undertake to reincarnate in order to learn a lesson, and it is our Destiny to learn it. Fate is what stands between us and our Destiny. Fate seeks to distract us.

Tsia Tung: Where does Fate come from?

Fu Hsiang: Fate arises from the thoughts and intentions of past lives. Every thought is a rudimentary being with a life of its own. Repeated thoughts are habits. Habits formed over years become powerful entities in their own right. Buddhists call them samskara. They can live on after we die and they rejoin us when we live again. In this way, we inherit our dispositions of previous existences. Fate is the sum of those habits which distract us from our Destiny.