The Karmic Retribution of Selling Pork

Question: I do marketing for a company that sells black pork. You mentioned that I have the karmic offenses of polluting minds and inducing others. Are these two types of karmic offenses considered heavy or light? Will I fall into hell?

Answer: Selling pork itself constitutes the karmic offense of killing, while marketing it constitutes assisting in killing, or indirect killing, making you equally guilty as the company owner. Additionally, selling black pork amounts to deceiving customers, passing off inferior products as superior, and getting away with it through deception, which constitutes false speech and assisting in false speech, again making you equally guilty as the company owner. However, if you were forced or deceived into selling black pork, you are not guilty.

This type of negative karma is not direct killing, nor is it killing humans, so it will not result in falling into hell. However, by assisting the company owner in creating much killing karma, this negative karma is not light either. You have forged many negative karmic connections, and the karmic retribution in future lifetimes will be quite severe. Naturally, you will fall into the three lower realms to undergo retribution, especially the animal realm, which is inevitable. Once reborn in the animal realm, you will have to repay the life debt owed to the pigs. Karmic offenses that lead to hell typically involve actions driven by severe hatred, primarily motivated by killing for revenge, with a mind state of great or extreme hatred. Marketing activities aimed solely at making money stem from greed, not hatred, and therefore do not create hell-bound karma. The more pigs that die, the heavier the killing karma this person accumulates. The karmic retribution in future lifetimes will be twofold: first, frequent illness; second, being killed by others. When the karmic conditions mature, you will also be killed by pigs.

Many marketing activities in the world belong to the category of polluting karma, capable of contaminating oneself and others with the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion, thereby increasing the greed of sentient beings. Using false and deceptive advertising to induce sentient beings into unreasonable consumption and high consumption for profit, thereby increasing their greed, is not a minor offense. If, as a result, you and the company earn more money, this is not meritorious karma but rather karma that depletes blessings. If the marketing is exceptionally successful, leading to extremely high sales of pork and consequently more pigs being killed, what karmic offense should the marketer bear? It is a subordinate negative karma; assisting others in evil deeds also results in negative karmic retribution. Many industries in the world involve negative karma, such as the usury industry, which is also negative karma. While others suffer financial losses, you yourself lose corresponding blessings, and when the karmic conditions mature, you will repay what you gained a thousandfold.