SUTTA 135

[^1223]: See MN 99. According to MA, his father, the brahmin Todeyya, was reborn as a dog in his own house because of his extreme stinginess. The Buddha identified him to Subha by getting the dog to dig up some hidden treasure Subha's father had buried before his death. This inspired Subha's confidence in the Buddha and moved him to approach and inquire about the workings of kamma.

[^1224]: If the kamma of killing directly determines the mode of rebirth, it will produce rebirth in one of the states of deprivation. But if a wholesome kamma brings about a human rebirth - and rebirth as a human being is always the result of wholesome kamma - the kamma of killing will operate in a manner contrary to that of the rebirthgenerative kamma by causing various adversities that may reach their peak in a premature death. The same principle holds for the subsequent cases in which unwholesome kamma comes to maturity in a human existence: in each case the unwholesome kamma counteracts the wholesome kamma responsible for the human rebirth by engendering a specific type of misfortune corresponding to its own distinctive quality.

[^1225]: In this case the wholesome kamma of abstaining from killing may be directly responsible for either the heavenly rebirth or the longevity in a human existence. The same principle applies in all the passages on the maturation of wholesome kamma.