If you learn how to think about kamma in the right way, you find that it is a good working hypothesis

"If you meet up with the results of some past bad kamma — suppose somebody does something bad to you — it doesn’t mean that your past kamma compelled them to do something bad. It’s simply that your past kamma left the opening. They saw the opening and they took it. And of course, that becomes their kamma now.

The fact that you had that past bad kamma: There are unskillful ways and skillful ways that you can think about it. The unskillful way would be to think, “Well, this person was simply carrying out the dictates of kamma. So the person’s not responsible or is actually doing something good.” That’s unskillful. There’s no excuse for that person’s behavior, because the person did choose to take that opening.

The skillful way is to say, “Well, I must have some past bad kamma, so I’ll learn how to take it in stride and not get too worked up about it. And I’ll take it as an incentive to try to be more skillful in the future.”

As for times when someone does something really nice to you, again, there are skillful and unskillful ways of thinking about the kamma involved in that. The unskillful way would be to think, “Well, I deserved that good thing. That person had nothing to do with that. I don’t have to be grateful to that person because, after all, it was my own kamma that opened the possibility.” But that’s an unskillful way of thinking.

The skillful way would be to think, “Okay, I had that past good kamma, and here it’s coming around, so now what am I going to do with it? I worked so hard to do that good deed in the past. Am I just going to sit here and enjoy the results, or am I going to invest them further? Am I going to take advantage of the opportunity that this good fortune has brought my way?”

As for the person who chose to do something good for you, have a sense of gratitude, because they were free to choose not to do that. That opening could have been just left there. Maybe someday something would have come in and filled it up, but that person chose to take advantage of that opening at that point. That was that person’s goodness.

This is why gratitude is real, why gratitude is one of the things that the Buddha pointed out as part of teaching on mundane right view. When you understand kamma from his point of view, gratitude makes sense, generosity makes sense. So, if you learn how to think about kamma in the right way, you find that it is a good working hypothesis."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Happy About Kamma"

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