Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Often we think of the teaching on karma as something deterministic or fatalistic. “I’ve got to suffer because of my past karma,” or, “This had to happen because of past karma.” That puts your whole life out of your control. But when you start playing with the breath, you begin to realize that a lot of the shaping of your present experiences is something you’re doing right now. You improvise it. You cook it up fresh every moment. That puts an element of freedom into your life. What we’re doing as we meditate is to explore this freedom we have right here in the present moment to see how far it goes. As the Buddha said, when you explore this area, that’s when you start learning how to put an end to suffering. That’s the best use of your freedom." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Right Learning"

"Every time we chant the five themes for daily recollection, I’m struck by the contrast between that chant and the one that follows it: “May I be happy.” The themes for recollection are not happy things. We’re subject to aging, subject to illness, subject to death, subject to separation. And even the principle of karma, which is what the Buddha offers as hope in our practice, still sounds pretty onerous. You slip up and you’re going to suffer. And then we chant, “May I be happy.” That contrast right there says a lot about life. We live in a world where there’s a lot of suffering. In addition to the basic suffering that comes from having a body, there are also all the horrible things that people do to one another: killing, stealing, cheating, abusing in one way or another. Yet in the midst of all this, we want happiness. It’s this desire for happiness that underlies the whole practice, coupled with an understanding of karma: Without that understanding, the desire for

"You look at your thoughts; you look at your words; you look at your deeds. These are things you can see, and things you can have some power over. You can will yourself to be less harmful. When an idea comes up in the mind, you can decide: “Am I going to continue thinking this idea? Or is it something better to steer clear of?” These are choices you’re making all the time. And the Buddha says you can make them skillfully." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "What You Can Do"

"What is your life besides what you do, what you say and what you think? As for the things coming in from outside, that’s the result of past actions. But the actual practice, the actual environment you’re creating, if you have the right attitude toward what’s coming in, you can make a good place to practice out of anywhere. So you focus on your thoughts, your words, your deeds. Those are the important elements in your life and those are the important elements in the practice. As for everything else, you let it pass. If there are things you can do within the boundaries of right speech and right action, you go ahead and you do them. Anything that lies outside of that, you don’t want to touch. This focuses your responsibility where you really can make a difference, and it takes you off the hook for a lot of things you really can’t make a difference. All too often we get upset about things we can’t control, which means that we’re ignoring the things we can control. When

"People who are doing wrong are just as deserving of our compassion as those who are being wronged. There’s no need to like or admire the people for whom you feel compassion. All you have to do is wish for them to be happy. Then you do what you can to alleviate the suffering that comes from past mistakes and to stop the mistaken behavior that causes suffering now and into the future. The more you can develop this attitude toward people you know have misbehaved or are misbehaving, the more you’ll be able to trust your intentions in any situation." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sublime Attitudes: A Study Guide on the Brahmaviharas"

"Someone was saying today that she had trouble seeing that she deserved happiness. But the Buddha never talks about deserving happiness or not deserving happiness. He was here to put an end to suffering, whether deserved or not. We can think about lots of different ways we might deserve to suffer or other people might deserve to suffer, but that’s part of our views that are making us continue to suffer, unnecessarily . The opportunity to stop making yourself suffer is here. And in not placing the burden of suffering on yourself, you’re putting less of a burden on other people. You’re actually more able to help them." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Clinging, Addictions, Obsessions" (Meditations8)

"As Ajaan Suwat once pointed out, there is an important riddle to contemplate in the practice. On the one hand, the Buddha said that all phenomena are not self, and seeing things in that way is part of the path. On the other hand, there is that point we’re supposed to contemplate everyday: “I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, whatever I do for good or for evil to that will I fall heir.” There is very definitely an “I am” there. So it’s good to think about that riddle."   ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu  "The Riddle of 'I Am'"

Question: Kamma and Rebirth, second try. How does individual kamma migrate from this life to the next one? Is this a relevant question? If no, how can our next life be better if we don’t have the benefit of a kind of karmic legacy? Thank you, Ajaan, for clarifying this “critical” question. Thanissaro Bhikkhu: It’s not a matter of migrating. Our kamma is actually what creates our experience of the next life — or rather, it supplies the raw material for our experience of the next life. When we leave this life and go to the next one, it doesn’t feel like we’re going someplace else. Just as we have a sense of our present life as “right here,” the next life will also have a sense of being “right here,” right at our consciousness. It’s like going from one dream to another. Even though the appearance of the location in the second dream is different from the location in the first, it still has a sense of happening “right here” just as the first one did. To give another example,

Question: So there’s no self. So in that case, who acts and who creates the kamma? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: The Buddha never said that there is no self. When he teaches not -self, he’s teaching a technique, a strategy for getting rid of attachment. There’s a common misconception that the Buddha starts with the idea of there being no self, and in the context of no self teaches the doctrine of kamma, which doesn’t make sense: If there’s no self, who does the kamma and who receives the results? But that misconception gets the context backwards. Actually, the Buddha starts with the doctrine of kamma, and then views ideas of “self” and “not-self” as types of kamma. In other words, he focuses on seeing the way we define our sense of self as an action. Then the question becomes, when is the activity of identifying things as your self skillful, and when is it not? When is the activity of identifying things as not-self skillful, and when is it not? There are some instances where the Bu

"As [the Buddha] noted, you can’t see all the results of actions here in this lifetime. Some people say, “Everything I’ve seen in life is enough to convince me that kamma works.” Well, No, it’s not. There are plenty of people who do all kinds of horrible unskillful things, yet they’re still alive. They thrive. The Buddha has a long list of people who thrive because they kill, steal, engage in illicit sex, lie, or take intoxicants [Saṁyutta Nikāya 42:13]. They do it with the right people and they do it in the right way to please someone in power, so they actually get rewarded by society in one way or another. But as the Buddha commented, those are only the short-term consequences. You’ve got to take the long-term consequences into consideration as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Rebirth is Relevant"

"The Buddha defines the world as your six sense media: the external sense media that make contact at your internal ones, plus the feelings and awareness that arise through that contact. That’s the world. And the Buddha adds that that’s your old kamma. Try to see it simply in those terms. He also says that it’s burning. So if we try to straighten out the world, we’re working at the wrong place. It burns us because our greed, aversion, and delusion try to hold on to the results of our past kamma. And, of course, those results are going to slip through our fingers. They often may not be what we want, but we can’t go back and change our past kamma. So the problem is not with the world. The problem is with our greed, aversion, and delusion. Now, this doesn’t mean we don’t try to change the world when we can. Our kamma is such that it does allow for some things to be changed for the better. But the real cause of the suffering in the world is not the world itself. It’s the mind. This is

"In AN 3:62 [the Buddha] did something that he rarely ever did, which was to seek out other teachers and attack them for their teachings. The harm they were causing was, in his eyes, that serious. He criticized, in particular, three doctrines: that whatever pleasure or pain you experience is (1) determined by past actions, (2) determined by a creator god, or (3) occurs randomly, without cause of condition. In each case, his criticism was the same: If you adopted any of these teachings, you’d believe yourself powerless in the present moment to change things here and now. You’d have no motivation to think in terms of what should and shouldn’t be done, because the choice would be meaningless. All your actions in the present moment, in your eyes, would either be predetermined or ineffectual; the duality between good and evil, an empty convention. The Buddha’s argument was identical in each of the three cases, so here are his words on just the first: “In that case, a person is a kille

"We live a life full of the power of kamma — old kamma and new. You can’t do anything about old kamma. You have to accept it like a good sport. That’s why you practice equanimity. But as for the new kamma you’re creating right now, you can’t practice equanimity with that. You have to be very concerned about what you’re putting into the system because you realize that this is the only chance you get to make the choice. Once the choice is made and it gets put into the system, then whatever the energy — positive or negative — that’s the sort of energy you’re going to have to experience. So pay attention: What are you putting into the system right now? This is the important thing to focus on. Whatever other people do to you, whatever arises in your body in terms of pains, illnesses, aging, death, or whatever: That’s old kamma that you simply have to learn to take with good humor, with a sense of equanimity. As for what you’re putting into the system right now, that’s serious business.

"For most of us, whatever was the last big danger we had to face, that’s the fear we’re prepared for. But a lot of other things could go wrong. Just look at your body. Every part of the body has at least one disease to go with it, sometimes more than one. It’s ready to fall apart, even though we do our best to keep it going. And the mind is even more changeable than that. So it’s no wonder that these are the things that grab our attention right away. But, the Buddha says, those aren’t the things to be afraid of. The real thing to be afraid of is that you’re going to do something unskillful — particularly in trying to protect this identity you’ve taken on, to ward off whatever you think is going to be the next big danger to threaten it. There are a lot of really horrible things that people do out of fear. And it turns out the horrible things are the things they really should be fearing more than the other fears they have. This is why a large part of our training as meditators is to

Question: Is there a difference in kamma between a person who dies from a natural death such as a heart attack, etc., or a person who commits suicide? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Dying of a natural cause is the result of past kamma, whereas a suicide is based on a decision you make now. When you’re dying a natural death, you’re simply receiving the results of past kamma, whereas if you commit suicide, you’re creating new bad kamma. Question: The next question: Is there a difference between the kamma of someone who commits suicide due to an event in life such as a disappointment in love or the loss of a job, as opposed to someone who commits suicide when suffering from a mental depression or anxiety? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: It’s hard to measure the karmic consequences of a particular act, because in each case they’re going to depend on many other actions in that person’s life. I have a friend who is a psychic. All her life, she’s had to deal with a lot of spirits of people who’ve passed away. A

"There’s no wrong that goes unpunished, no good that goes unrewarded. That’s simply the way kamma is. Therefore, we don’t have to carry around ledger sheets — which person did this, which person did that — with the fear that if the ledger sheet disappears then that person’s not going to get the retribution he or she deserves. The principle of kamma takes care of that. But remember that it also takes care of you as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Story-telling Mind"

"If you’re going to ponder kamma, this is what you ponder: what you’re doing right now, and the results of what you’re doing right now. The skills you’re going to develop in order to do this well will send their results back to protect you from the past and forward to protect you in the future. So these are skills that will protect you all around." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Honest & Observant"

Question: The precept against killing is often translated into adopting a vegetarian diet. Is this necessary? Aren’t you also killing these poor vegetables, stripping their skin off while they’re still alive and boiling them? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: For the monks, our rule is that we’re not allowed to eat meat if we either know or suspect that it was killed for the purpose of feeding us. The precept against killing is specifically against either killing something on your own or telling someone else to kill. Now, if you want to take the precept further and adopt a vegetarian diet, that’s perfectly fine. But the precept doesn’t require it. Just make sure that when you go to a seafood restaurant and they have a fish tank with live fish, don’t choose any of the live fish. As for vegetables, they don’t come under the concept of sentient being — they don’t feel pain — so the precept doesn’t cover them. We’ve received several questions on the issue of the relationship between the first precept

"One of the phrases we chant is, Sabbe sattā averā hontu: May all beings be free from animosity. The word animosity here, vera in Pali: It’s hard to get a precise equivalent in English. It’s basically the animosity that comes when two people have been mistreating each other and they just keep going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. “You did it to me, now I’m going to do it to you”: that kind of attitude. It’s very closely related to the desire to get revenge. And this can go on for lifetime after lifetime. This is why an important part of goodwill [mettā] is also forgiveness. There was an article recently saying that forgiveness has no role in the teaching of kamma. It’s true that your forgiving someone else for having abused you is not going to erase their kamma. You’re not the owner of their kamma. But forgiveness does help avoid future unfortunate actions. You realize that this back-and-forth has gone on long enough, you’re not going to try to continue it, you’

"Simply stating, “I don’t know,” is not an adequate response to the questions of rebirth and the efficacy of karma. The attitude behind it may be honest on one level, but it’s dishonest in thinking that this is all that needs to be said, for it ignores the fact that you have to make assumptions about the possible results of your actions every time you act. It’s like having money: Regardless of what you do with it — spending it, investing it, or just stashing it away — you’re making an implicit wager on how to get the best use of it now and into the future. Your investment strategy can’t stop with, “I don’t know.” If you have any wisdom at all, you have to consider future possibilities and take your chances with what seems to be the safest and most productive use of the resources you’ve got. So it is with all of our actions. Given that we have to wager one way or another all the time on how to find happiness, the Buddha stated that it’s a safer wager to assume that actions bear r

"So when we talk about having faith in the principle of karma, it’s not just saying, “Oh, yes, I think that’s a good idea.” It means that you have faith in the people who are teaching it. And you have so much faith that you actually try to act in line with it. The Buddha makes this point over and over again — your actions show what you really believe in. So when you believe in something, make sure that your actions are good. That provides you not only with the theory but also with the appropriate emotions — a sense of saṃvega, a sense of pasada, heedfulness, equanimity — as these things are needed. This way, the teaching on karma is not just something that you give your intellectual assent to. It’s something you assent to with your whole heart and you carry it out into your actions. Because this is how you benefit the most from it — as you bring your actions into line with the theory. When the Buddha gained awakening, he learned an awful lot of things. But he taught only the th

"People have noted how ironic it is that in a teaching that emphasizes not-self we have some of the earliest spiritual autobiographies of the world. The Buddha, when talking about his quest for awakening spoke very much in terms of: This is what I did, and looking at what I had done and seeing that it hadn’t given the results I wanted, I tried something else. That’s the pattern. When you think of the issue in other terms, though, this way of speaking is not ironic at all because the Buddha’s main teaching was kamma: We suffer because of our actions, but we can find the end of suffering by understanding our actions — the actions that lead to suffering, and then the actions of the path to the end of suffering. That understanding is what opens the way. The Buddha’s autobiography shows the lessons he learned about action in the course of his awakening, and he tells his story to show how we can follow his example and learn from our actions, too. Now, in doing an action and learning fr

"A lot of people say they have problems with karma, but that’s because they think of the larger cosmological questions, “Is there really rebirth or is there not rebirth?” But the main point you’re asked to believe is that what you’re doing right now is important, and that the results of your actions as they come back to you are shaped by your intentions, which are — or can be — under your control. This is a good thing to believe. If you don’t believe this, so much of your life gets thrown away. Opportunities get thrown away, and you end up making choices without being clear about what you’re doing, about what the results are going to be. Your life becomes a mess. So when we develop conviction in the principle of karma, we take responsibility for our actions. We look carefully at what we’re doing and at what the results are. That’s why it’s such a good teaching to adopt." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Right Now"

"When an intention comes up to do or say or think something, you want to know what that intention is. It’s a teaching that the Buddha teaches his son Rahula: to look at his his intentions before he does or says or thinks anything. I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Gee, that’s an awful lot of attention to something like that,” because they have so many other things they have to pay attention to. Well, it turns out that the other things you’re paying attention to are often the results of your own past actions. It’s much better to start at the very beginning to make sure that the new intentions coming out are well-formed. So try to stay right here. Find ways of making the mind happy to be right here, so that it has the energy and the inclination to want to look into what’s going on in the mind and straightening that out. Once you’ve straightened out the mind, everything else gets straightened out further down the line." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Straightened Intentions"

"We know that people who simply follow their whims are psychologically not very happy. The people who can channel their desires in a direction that they find worthwhile: those are the ones who are really happy. And the teaching on kamma encourages that. You focus on the practice. You may not be able to get all the way to nibbana in this lifetime, but your efforts are not wasted. You can pick up in the practice again; you can create the conditions for being able to pick it up again after you die. So there are lots of ways you can learn how to get a better emotional relationship to the teaching on kamma, a relationship that will really sustain you. Ajaan Suwat would comment on how people who follow a life of sensual pleasures, when the time comes when they’re about to leave this life of sensual pleasures, look back and all they can have is regret and fear and grasping, because there’s nothing of any substance there in the memories of past pleasures. And of course, you know what happ

"When the Buddha described his quest for awakening as a series of responses to questions of the form, "Why am I doing this?" he was indicating the point at which the search for a way out of stress turns inward: the realization that stress may be caused by one's own actions. He was also indicating that an important part of the path consists of the realization that one's habits — and in particular, one's intentions — are not to be blindly accepted or taken for granted. They should be called into question and subjected to honest scrutiny. However, he also was indicating that not everything is to be questioned — in particular, conviction in the efficacy of action should be maintained as a working hypothesis all the way to release." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Skill in Questions: How the Buddha Taught"

"The good news here is that we don’t have to wait for a perfect society to find true happiness. It’s possible to put an end to our own sufferings — to stop “saṁsāra-ing” — no matter how bad the world is outside. And this should not be seen as a selfish pursuit. It would actually be more selfish to make people ashamed of their desire to be free so that they will come back to help you and your friends establish your ideas of justice, but with no true end in sight. A final, established state of justice is an impossibility. An unconditioned happiness, available to all regardless of their karmic background, is not. And the road to that happiness is far from selfish. It requires the activities of merit — generosity, virtue, and universal goodwill — which always spread long-term happiness in the world: a happiness that heals old divisions and creates no new ones in their place. In this way, those who attain this happiness are like the stars that are sucked out of space and time to enter

Question: Kamma and Rebirth, second try. How does individual kamma migrate from this life to the next one? Is this a relevant question? If no, how can our next life be better if we don’t have the benefit of a kind of karmic legacy? Thank you, Ajaan, for clarifying this “critical” question. Thanissaro Bhikkhu: It’s not a matter of migrating. Our kamma is actually what creates our experience of the next life — or rather, it supplies the raw material for our experience of the next life. When we leave this life and go to the next one, it doesn’t feel like we’re going someplace else. Just as we have a sense of our present life as “right here,” the next life will also have a sense of being “right here,” right at our consciousness. It’s like going from one dream to another. Even though the appearance of the location in the second dream is different from the location in the first, it still has a sense of happening “right here” just as the first one did. To give another example, when you’re i