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The Buddha wants you to accept the fact that you have a role in shaping your experience. You do have the choice of what you’re going to do right now, how you’re going to look at the situation.

"Our sense of self does have two roles. On the one hand, it’s the experiencer. You’re the one who’s experiencing the pain, experiencing the results of your own actions, the results of other people’s actions. But you’re also the agent. You’re shaping your experience. So when you find yourself in a bad mood, it’s not against the principle of acceptance to try to work your way out of it. After all, what are you accepting? Are you simply accepting the fact that you’re a passive victim of things? The Buddha never asks you to accept that. He just wants you to accept the fact that you have a role in shaping your experience. That’s the essential element in his teaching on conditionality. There are some influences that come in from the past, but there are other things that you have the choice to shape in the present moment. As for what’s happened in the past, you can’t change that. And the effects that you’re feeling from things that happened in the past, you can’t change that. But you do
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Good people may have some bad actions squirreled away in their past. People who seem horrible now may have some wonderful actions in theirs. You never know.

"The second principle to keep in mind is that, in the Buddha’s teaching, there’s no question of a person’s “deserving” happiness or “deserving” pain. The principle of kamma is an impersonal one: that there are actions leading to pleasure and actions leading to pain. In this way, it’s not a respecter of persons; it’s purely an issue of actions and results. Good people may have some bad actions squirreled away in their past. People who seem horrible now may have some wonderful actions in theirs. You never know. The Buddha didn’t create the principle of kamma, or say that it’s good or just. He simply pointed out the way actions produce results. So there’s no question of a person’s deserving or not deserving pleasure or pain. There’s simply the principle that actions have results and that your present experience of pleasure or pain is the combined result of past and present actions. You may have some very unskillful actions in your past, but if you learn to think and act
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We're often the ones who would like to see so-and-so get his just desserts, finding some satisfaction in that. That’s an attitude you’ve got to relinquish if you’re going to have goodwill all around. Otherwise, how are you going to help that person?

"Then there’s relinquishment. Here it’s a matter of thinking about situations where there’s someone you think deserves to suffer. They’ve acted in unskillful ways, and it seems wrong that they’re not meeting up with some sort of punishment. It seems that justice hasn’t been done. You have to relinquish that kind of thinking. The ideal way for people who have been misbehaving to change their ways is for them to have a change of heart. Now, it may happen that they will meet up with the results of their bad kamma, but ideally they would be in a position where they had developed thoughts of goodwill themselves, learning to be virtuous and discerning. They would have developed their minds to the point where they're neither overcome by pleasure nor overcome by pain. That would be the ideal situation—as in the case of Angulimala. The Buddha didn’t say to Angulimala, “Okay, come back after you’ve reaped the results of having killed so many people, then we’ll talk.” He saw that Anguli
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Help ensure that, whatever comes after death, it’s something not to be afraid of, but something actually to look forward to. Not in the sense that you want to die, but at least you feel secure about where you’re going after death.

"We all know that life is going to end at some spot and the question is, what comes next? So you want to develop the qualities of mind that will help ensure that, whatever comes next, it’s something not to be afraid of, but something actually to look forward to. Not in the sense that you want to die, but at least you feel secure about where you’re going after death." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Try This at Home"
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Thoughts that would destroy concentration will come from thinking back on some injustice, where somebody had done something wrong or was doing something wrong and getting away with it.

"I remember that when I first learned about the hindrances and how ill will doesn’t mean negativity or dislike — it means actively wanting to see somebody suffer — I couldn’t see in my own case that I wanted to see anybody suffer. But then I reflected: During my first year in particular, when I was meditating on the top of the hill there at Wat Dhammasathit, the thoughts that would destroy my concentration more than anything else came from thinking back on some injustice, where somebody had done something wrong or was doing something wrong and getting away with it. I could get worked up about that for hours at a time, with a strong sense of righteous indignation — and that’s a lot of what ill will is. You don’t like what’s happened, and it seems wrong that there’s no punishment, that people are getting away with things you can clearly see they shouldn’t be getting away with. But that, the Buddha says, is wrong view. Remember that the right attitude to have toward somebody who has
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True happiness is going to be found in learning how to train your actions. You’re firm in your intent to stick with your precepts. You’re firm on your intent to maintain right view.

"This is where true happiness is going to be found: in learning how to train your actions. Any loss of that conviction would be fatal to a pursuit of happiness that could be reliable, trustworthy. So that’s going to be a serious loss. Fortunately, the things that would be a serious loss are things that are under your control. You can maintain your virtue. People can offer you all kinds of rewards for breaking the precepts, but you can say No. You can maintain your right view. As for loss of relatives, loss of wealth, loss of your health, that’s going to happen at some point anyhow, sooner or later. You lose these things; you get them back. You get them back; you lose them again. But with loss of right view, loss of your virtue: If you lose that, you’re going to be acting on wrong view, acting in unskillful ways, and that’s going to be for your long-term harm. That’s why it’s a serious loss. But it is under your control. You can prevent that. So you work on that — you’re firm in
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Try to maintain that right view that the quality of your actions coming from the quality of your intentions is the most important thing you have to care for. That kind of thing, you want to hold on to. That, you identify with.

"The Buddha says there are five kinds of loss, three of which he says are not serious. When we listen to his list of things that are not serious, we find that a lot of things on that list are ranked by the world as very serious: loss of wealth, loss of your health, loss of relatives. But as the Buddha said, you don’t go to hell from losing those things. And when you lose them, you get them back — as you have, many, many times in the past. What’s serious, he says, is loss of virtue and loss of your right view. These are areas where the world says, “Oh, those things are not important.” So you can see the Buddha’s values are very different from most people’s. He looked at things from the perspective of the really-long-term. If you lose your virtue, you’re going to create the kind of karma that could pull you down for a long time to come. If you lose your right view, you’re tempted to do anything at all because you feel that your actions have no consequences, they’re not real, so you
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