The Jaina Doctrine of Karma And The Science Of Genetics: ▪ Pāpanubandhi Puṇya

There lived a man who one day offered ladoos (sweet balls) to a monk who came to his house for alms. Later, he sat down to eat the left over ladoos and realized how sweet those ladoos were. He felt sorry for giving away such ladoos. He left to track down to monk to ask back those ladoos. Harbouring such thoughts, he sought out to find the monk in order to get the ladoos back. By the time he found the monk the ladoos had already been eaten. He kept regretting offering ladoos to the monk.

As a result of giving alms to monk, he was born as a rich man in his next life, but because he had regrets about his offering be became miser in this life. He could not use his wealth and lived unhappy. In fact, he lived his life in order to collect more money. For this reason, he died and went to hell.

It should be realized that even though both, the boy and man should have been happier because of their offerings, the second one was not. These stories remind us of a very important fact: any time, we offer not only we should offer it happyly, but we should never have regrets about offering it. Otherwise the offering turns sour. In retrospect, puṇya accumulated in the first example are called puṇyānubandhī and those accumulated in the second example are called pāpānubandhī puṇya.^{[10 ]}This is Fruition of karma.