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"My the time I left him I was no longer under the illusion that he loved me as he always professed. He hated me. I paid."
The western thinking of karma is that it works in the same way that the Christian judgment at the moment of death works.
In Buddhism you don't pay for past karma in death. You could be a serial killer in one life, and then be reincarnated as a child of a very rich family in the immediate next life. However, your past karma would catch up to you in that next life. You would make the wrong decisions, people you had wronged in your past life would have a disposition in their soul against you, and, although you were born wealthy, your life would be terrible, unless you atoned for past indiscretions. Think of it as Dick Cheney being a mean homophobe (or racist) in his past life, but in this life he has been blessed with gay daughter, so that through her he can atone for his evil ways of his past life. Of course his opposition to hate crime legislation may cause him to come back as gay in his next life.
