Purifying Negative Karma

The three ways that negative karmas become purified are:

1) The best way: One never experiences the suffering results of the most powerful negative karmas.

2) Although you were going to experience the negative karmas as being reborn for many eons in the hell, animal, and hungry ghost realms, instead you experience all of that negative karma in this life by being criticized by others, by having bad dreams, nightmares, toothache, headaches, or some other discomfort. Then you don’t need to reincarnate in the lower realms where you would experience heavy suffering for many eons.

3) You experience suffering due to the negative karmas, but you experience them much more lightly and for a shorter time, for example, even just for one minute or second, like the time it takes for a stone you threw to hit a rock.

This is how to experience problems and use them to develop compassion for others. It is good to meditate on these two verses from Guru Puja:

Please grant me blessings to realize that the chronic disease of cherishing the “I” is the cause giving rise to undesirable sufferings. Put the blame on that, begrudge it, and destroy the great demon: cherishing the “I.”

Please grant me blessings to cherish all mother sentient beings (the all-obscured suffering beings) and to have the thought to lead them to happiness. This is the door to infinite happiness. Even if all migratory beings become my enemy, may I be able to cherish them more than my life.

You can put these two verses on your wall and read them all the time.