Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Ordinarily, the Buddha was not the sort of person who would look for people to debate with, but there were a couple of issues when he would actually approach other teachers and say, “Do you really teach this?” Then he’d point out how destructive it was to teach those things. There were three cases, one of which was people who taught that everything you experienced in terms of pleasure or pain came from past actions. He approached those people and asked, “Do you really teach this?” They said, “Yes.” Then he sorted out the implications: “Well, in that case: People steal, people kill, have illicit sex, they lie, they drink because of something that’s totally beyond their control — what’s happened in the past.” He says, “When you teach people that, you’re leaving them unprotected and bewildered.” Now, that statement connects to two other teachings, one having to do with the problem of suffering. As he says, people are bewildered because of their suffering, and they sea...

"Remind yourself that your life isn’t already written in stone, that you’re not a slave to fate or a little nameless cog in the big machine. You’re actually a doer, a mover, a shaper. You can shape your life in the direction you want it to go." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Impossible Things" (Meditations1)

"All of [the Buddha's] really basic teachings have to do with action, which is why kamma is so central to what he taught. Kamma consists of your intentions, and your intentions are shaped by your views. If your views are concerned with what you are or what the world is, you’re going to be sloppy in your actions. But if your views deal with what are you doing, what kind of actions are skillful, what kind of actions are not skillful, they focus your attention where it really can make a difference — where it really can be of use. The rest of the path then follows on that. You make up your mind that you’re going to act on intentions that are not harmful, and you apply that principle to your daily life." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Expert's Mind"

"Some people say Buddhism is selfish or harsh with its teachings on karma, selfish in the fact that each person is looking out after his or her own well-being, harsh in that people are being held responsible for their own suffering. If the Buddha could have saved us all, he would have. He had an enormous immeasurable heart, but he saw that this is the way that karma is. There are lots of things about karma that are not fair. Look at Ven. Angulimala: He had killed almost a thousand people and yet he was able to become an arahant without having to undergo a thousand deaths to pay off that karmic debt. By training his mind, he was able to mitigate a lot of the suffering he would have otherwise undergone. A lot of people were unhappy about that. They felt it wasn’t fair. The Buddha didn’t design the teaching on karma to make things fair or to be consoling. He didn’t design it at all. He just pointed out that this is the way things are, this is how they work." ~ Thani...

"So the different aspects of the path — virtue, concentration, and discernment — all help one another along. And they all provide you a safe space: a physical safe space inside the body where you can have a sense of ease; a mental safe space inside the mind where, whatever thoughts come up will come up in the arena of your understanding of kamma: your understanding of where suffering actually comes from and how it can actually be cured. And you resolve to do what you can to put an end to the causes of suffering in your attitudes toward yourself, in your attitudes toward others. So regardless of whatever mess there is in the world outside, or in your personal life, or whatever mess there has been in the past, you can find a safe space in the present moment where you can sort things out: both with the sense of well-being of a mind in concentration, friends with the breath inside, so you have a sense of being grounded, a sense of belonging here; and in the safe space of...

"Sometimes we believe in the power of our actions and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we say, “I really hope that my actions give results,” other times you do something and you say, “Well, I hope this doesn’t give results.” You try to convince yourself that the law of karma is something you can turn on and off. But actions always give results, and the results are in line with the quality of the action, and particularly the quality of the intention behind the action. So if you want good results, you have to make sure that the intentions are good. If you want those good results to be consistently good, then you have to make sure your intentions are consistently good. Remind yourself that you have the choice: You don’t have to act on every intention that comes in the mind. Even though some of the unskillful ones based on greed, aversion, and delusion seem awfully strong, they don’t have to overwhelm the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Intentions in Line with Results...