“When a child is born, we don’t see any good or bad kamma. There’s just a body. It comes naked. This shows that the things in one life can’t be held in our hands to see in the next life. This is why, when a child is born, it doesn’t bring anything along in its hands. But there are things that come along, simply that they come along somewhere else. They come along in the mind.

I’ll give you an example, like a mango seed or lamyai seed. As long as it’s still a seed, you can examine it carefully and not find a tree in there, any flowers in there, because they’re very subtle. But there’s something in there.

Even though a person coming into this life doesn’t hold anything in his hands or carry anything over his shoulder, these things appear when nature begins to mature—for they’re already there. Like a mango seed: the trunk, the leaves, the branches are all there in the mango seed. If we plant the seed in the ground,  it’ll turn into a trunk, leaves, and flowers on its own.

This is why the Buddha said that kamma is what sorts people out so that they’re different.”