BEN KINGSLEY: The Five Precepts of Buddhism can be understood as a parallel to the Ten Commandments. They might be translated as follows:

Don’t take any human or animal life.

Don’t take what is not one’s own.

Refrain from slander and untruth.

Don’t engage in illicit sexual conduct.

Abstain from intoxicating or mind-muddling drugs.

Buddhist doctrine constantly emphasizes that one’s fate is the result of one’s past deeds. If one suffers from physical ugliness, deformity, disease, or any ill fortune, it is due to one’s own past action.

BEN KINGSLEY: Existence as a human being is a great privilege because only a human can produce karmic merit. A person should eagerly seize his or her priceless opportunities for producing good karma, for, again, only a human can ascend to nirvana.

At least in popular Buddhist thinking, much more than love or hate is carried on from life to life. Personal characteristics and subconscious memories also are transmitted. Genius may suddenly crop up in a family that seems ordinary. A loving married couple may meet again in a new life. A child closely resembling a deceased ancestor must be that ancestor, now reborn in this new form, and so on and on.

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