When is your payback time?

I attend pujas at least once a week and whenever there are major pujas, I will try to participate. Some people wonder why we being Buddhists need to attend so many pujas. Why don't we just meditate, offer light, go temple offer incense and pray ourselves, as anyway, we can only become Buddha (achieve enlightenment) through the training of our own mind?? Well, each puja is different. And it's wonderful to have a group of lamas (monks) to pray for you, to supplicate to the different Buddhas and deities on your behalf, for different types of obstacles and problems. And attending just one puja is normally not sufficient, as through beginningless time, we do not know how many bad deeds we have commmitted. So one puja may not clear all your problems overnight.

It all boils down to the law of karma. Each of us has committed so many bad deeds and created much bad karma in this life and past lifetimes, sometimes even unknowingly offended and harmed others. What if one day these debtors turn up at our doorstep? For me, I just want to repay the debts as much as possible and as fast as possible. Imagine if we do not repay the debts accumulated since many lifetimes, it will be horrible when one day the bad karma ripens. That's when we encounter many obstacles, problems, mysterious and uncurable illnesses, and even possibly abrupt death.

It is such a pity that many people still do not know about karma, and worse, there are those who know yet they do not do anything about it. Wouldn't it be too late to react only when trouble strikes us?