If all you’ve got is memories of sensual pleasures, it’s a pretty shifty treasure. But if you know that you’ve done good in this lifetime, the sense of self-worth that comes with that keeps the mind from falling down.

"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 happens to people’s memories as they get older. If all you’ve got is memories, it’s a pretty shifty treasure. But if you know that you’ve done good in this lifetime, the sense of self-esteem, the sense of self-worth that comes with that keeps the mind from falling down.

So it’s good to take kamma as a working hypothesis because it helps you create the conditions for living well and dying well with a sense of your own worth, a sense of well-being, a sense of solidity inside, which is a kind of pleasure or happiness that’s very different from the happiness that comes simply from consuming things, consuming experiences, consuming feelings.

So learn to use the teaching on kamma, develop a good relationship to it so that you can use it wisely, thinking about the long term, not just what immediate emotion is coming up inside.

You have to learn to look at your emotions in the light of kamma. Indulging in a particular emotion has karmic effects. When you act on this kind of emotion, where does it lead you? When you act on that one, where does it lead you? Do they lead you to where you want to go?

So we’re not just sitting here in the present moment. The present moment is moving toward the future, so you want to move in a good direction — and you have it within your power to do that. That’s what the doctrine of kamma teaches. Learn how to relate to it well."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Relating to Kamma"

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