Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"You want to look at the attitudes you’re fostering in your mind and make sure they’re skillful ones — because the whole issue of kamma boils down to this: What you do right now is important. What was done in the past may have some influence on what you can do right now, but what you do right now is what’s really important. And the possibility of doing something skillful right now is always present." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Story-telling Mind" (Meditations1)

"Most of the issues that seem so big when you take the view of just one lifetime become very small when you think about eons and eons of lifetimes. Think about the Buddha as he finally got to the town of Kusinara, where he was going to pass away for his last time and go into total nibbana. Ven. Ananda was upset because it was just a little tiny town — he called it a little daub and wattle town, which means basically that the houses were made of nothing but bamboo and mud. It’d be better for the Buddha to go to a great city for his unbinding. There the people would give him a proper send-off. The Buddha said, “No. This little town here used to be a great city as well.” Then he went into a long description of how great it was. In fact, there’s another sutta that goes into an even longer description of how great it was. He happened to be king that time. And in the story, there comes a point where he’s about to die. His wife, the queen, comes to him with tears on her fac...

"Ajaan Suwat came from a very large peasant family, and large peasant families usually don’t have much to hand down to their children. He met a forest monk who said, “Hey look, it’s your actions that matter. And the fact that you’re poor now: You may have not been generous in the past, but you’ve got the opportunity now to practice the Dhamma.” So this quality of conviction is what sees us through. When things are going easy, the idea of having conviction doesn’t speak that much to us. But when things get hard: We look at our lives, we look at the people around us, the situation we’re in — and the last thing you need is something that teaches you to just give in. The teaching of karma is precisely what tells you not to give in. It places power in your hands." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Faith"

"When I first went to stay with Ajaan Fuang, I asked him about the whole issue of past lives, because I had heard some people say that the Buddha never really taught about past lives, while other people said that he had. Ajaan Fuang’s answer was: The important thing to believe in when you’re practicing here is not that issue. The important issue is the principle of karma, that you shape your experience through your actions. How long you’ve been doing it is not the issue. The issue is that you’re doing it right now. The meditation is an exploration of exactly how you shape it, and how much you shape it, and learning other ways to shape it skillfully." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Up for the Challenge"

" “All living beings are the owners of their actions, heir to their actions....Whatever they do, for good or for evil, to that will they fall heir.” This reflection actually turns up in lots of different contexts. In the five reflections, the reflection on karma is the one that gives hope. You realize that you’re in charge of your actions. You’re not simply a victim of fate or of the stars or of some other being acting through you. You’re the one who’s making the choices. That’s what gives you hope. But it’s hope coupled with heedfulness. You’ve got the power to do good with your actions, but also the power to cause harm. The principle of karma is a double-edged sword. If you’re not careful, you can use it to cut your own throat. This is why the Buddha recommends reflecting on the principle of karma as a way of inspiring heedfulness. Taken a little further, the universality of the principle of karma is a reflection for developing equanimity both toward yourself and toward other pe...

"What you’re doing right now is shaping your experience right now, and if you’re not satisfied with what you’re experiencing right now, then, as they say, “If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” If you don’t like your experience now, you can change what you’re doing to shape it. Try to detect what you’re doing to shape your experience and change it for the better. This is why we meditate, because the source of all our actions, the source of all our experience, is the mind. So you’ve got to look at your mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Dispassion Isn't Depression" (Meditations10)

"The Buddha once said that the results of action are an imponderable, which may sound strange given that his teaching on action is so basic to all his other teachings. The main principle is simple: You do, or say, or think something with a skillful intention, and the results are going to be good; you do, or say, or think something with unskillful intentions, and the results are going to be bad. That’s simple — but the problem is that that simple principle gets iterated many, many, many times. And that makes its results complex. How many times in the course of the day have you done something, or said something, or thought something? You can’t count all the actions, and that’s just in one day. And it spreads out over lifetimes. You begin to realize that you’ve got a lot of things going on here. Some of the actions will give results quickly; others will give them slowly. Others are ready to give the results, but you’re not watering them, so they don’t give the results. Others are a l...

"You’ve got karma: You’ve got to keep thinking about that all the time. What kind of life are you creating for yourself if you keep acting on anger? The Buddha said, for one thing, that you make yourself ugly. You end up destroying things that have value. You can destroy friendships very easily. You can destroy things physically and you say and do things that, in the moment, you think are really clever. But when you reflect on them later, you realize you’ve done a lot of harm. So as I said, the first order of business is to see anger as something really harmful. As for the voice that says, “Well, how are you going to get things done in the world? How are you going to change things that need to be changed?” there are lots of ways you can make change without having to be angry about it. In fact, when you can think more calmly and clearly about things, you’re more likely to come up with an effective idea of what should be done." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Anger"

"Some people have problems with the teaching on kamma, but what exactly is the Buddha asking you to believe in when he asks you to have conviction in kamma? First, action really is happening — it’s not an illusion. Second, you really are responsible for your actions. There’s no outside force like the stars or some good or evil being acting through you. When you’re conscious, you’re the one who decides what to do. Third, your actions have results — you’re not just writing on the water — and those results can be good or bad depending on the quality of the intention behind the act. So the teaching on kamma puts you in charge of shaping your life. It’s a good teaching to believe in. And how does this relate to discernment? It provides the basis for the questions you’re going to ask to give rise to discernment. And because the principle of kamma places a lot of emphasis on the need to act on skillful intentions to get the good results you want, the basic question becomes: How can you t...

"When [the Buddha] introduces the topic of kamma, he doesn’t talk about the bad things you’ve done in the past; he talks about good things. The first topic he mentions in connection with kamma is generosity. Generosity, he says, is something real. It’s a good thing to be generous. He even has you use it as a topic of focused contemplation. When things are going dry in your meditation and everything seems to come to a stop, remind yourself of the ways you’ve been generous in the past. The other topic the Buddha uses to introduce the topic of kamma is gratitude. Think of all the people who have helped you in the past — the ones who volunteered to help without you’re doing something nice to them first. They helped you out of the goodness of their hearts. That sort of action is worth appreciating, worth emulating. You realize how much you benefited when you were fed by them or clothed by them or taught or helped in whatever way they did. And this, combined with the princ...

"A lot of people don’t like looking at their actions because, after all, they’ve done a lot of unskillful things. Well, just remind yourself, all human beings have been doing unskillful things. If we had no unskillful behavior in our background, we wouldn’t be here, we’d be someplace else. So we all have habits that we have to learn how to undo, and new habits that we have to learn how to develop. But it’s in exploring the potential we have for choosing freely between different courses of action that we find a different kind of freedom ultimately. It’s a freedom that’s not conditioned. Now, looking at our past actions and looking even at our present actions is often like looking at a bramble patch. That’s where we want to say, “Forget about that, let’s just go for the larger Oneness.” But it turns out that you have to go through the brambles to get to the nice part inside the bramble patch — those brambles are protecting something. It’s not brambles all the way. But you explore y...

"It’s easy not to believe that the quality of your intention is going to determine the results of your actions, because you see a lot of people acting out of greed, hatred, and delusion, and yet they seem to be pretty happy, in the short term at least. So it is a matter of belief. And the Buddha’s proof simply is a pragmatic one: If you believe in your actions, you’ll act more skillfully." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Believe in Your Actions"

"When you take the long, long view like this, it makes a lot of your problems in your present lifetime seem pretty small. It helps give you some equanimity, gives you some patience. Because there are a lot of things in life that, if you thought, “This is your one lifetime, this is your one chance,” would strike you as very unfair. It would be hard to live with the idea that, say, someone smeared your name and you couldn’t get it un-smeared. Other people who don’t seem to have any right to power have taken over a lot of power. But if you take the long view of things, you realize that this is going to pass, and this is not your only chance. It makes it a lot easier to live with the things you can’t change, and focus on the ones you can." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Patience & Hope"

"In dependent co-arising [paṭiccasamuppāda]: As we will see, present kamma consists of fabrication [saṅkhāra] and the sub-factors [perception, feeling, intention, contact, attention] coming under the factor of “name” in name and form [nāmarūpa] . Past kamma is the experience of the six senses [SN35:145], which comes after the factors of fabrication and name [SN12:2]." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"Our actions really do make a difference, the difference between causing and not causing suffering really does matter, and the principles of skillful and unskillful action are patterned enough that we really can learn useful lessons from our mistakes." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Practice in a Word"

"As the Buddha said, winning out over your self is better than winning out over thousands of other people, because when you win out over other people it’s never resolved. If they don’t get killed off they’re going to plot their revenge, plot their return. If you do kill them off, they come back as your children — and then you’ve got a real problem! Karmic debts with your own kids. Victory over other people, victory outside, victory in war — even if it’s not victory in war but just everyday back-and-forth — never resolves anything. Even when issues get settled in court in the most fair and just way; well, there will always be some people who feel mistreated, and they’ll find some way to get back. This is the way of the world. Nothing gets settled really. The only way to reach any kind of closure is to disentangle yourself. And this is your way out: through training the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Outside of the Box"

"The purpose of the practice is not just to accept what’s happening and to simply let it happen. When you look at the Buddha’s teachings on karma, you realize that what we experience in the present moment is not something that’s beyond our control. We do have a role in shaping it. That’s what allows for a path of practice. If we didn’t have that role in shaping it, we’d just have to accept things, like a TV show. Wherever the writers decide the show is going to go, you have to accept that. You can’t yell at the screen and tell the characters to do something else, or go back and rewrite it. Actually, experience is more like an interactive game. You have some control over how things are going to go. You have some choices that can steer the action in new directions." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Change Your Mind"

"I know some people who say that when you’re working with kamma, you’ve got to realize that your intentions are simply the result of causes and conditions. They don’t have anything to do with you. But that doesn’t give you any motivation to try to make skillful choices. Those people say you have to let go of every sense of “I” because it causes you trouble. Well, it’s actually necessary for certain skillful decisions." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters" (Meditations11)

 "The causes will take care of the results. It’s not the case that by imagining results you’re going to get the causes to go in that direction. If that were the case, Right Imagination would be one of the steps on the path. But it’s not. What you want to do is develop the path, develop Right View. So concentration, mindfulness — all the elements of the Eightfold Path — are things to be developed. And where do you find the things to be developed? They’re right here, right in front of your nose. That’s where the work is to be done — not in your anticipation of where you’re going to go, but in paying really close attention to the breath right here and now. This is your path." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Laying the Infrastructure"

"People sometimes wonder what the teaching on karma has to do with meditation. The first thing it has to do with is this: The fact that you’re meditating is a type of karma. You set up an intention and you try to stick with it. Now, the original intention itself is the karma, and the intention to stick with it is also karma. Because it’s karma, you want to do this as skillfully as possible. In other words, you don’t just set up a good intention and hope that the good intention on its own is going to take care of everything. You check carefully to see what you’re doing and the results you’re getting right now." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Meditation"

"Don’t let yourself be hemmed in by your past mistakes or be hemmed in by your past karma, because these things don’t have to totally shape the present moment. We have some freedom right here, right now, and a lot of the practice is learning how to recognize that fact and maximize it to get the best use out of it. Because all the aspects of the path are possible, whatever the limitations from your past karma are. You can learn how to be generous. You can learn how to be virtuous. You can learn how to develop good qualities of mind. When you’ve made a mistake, you admit the fact. And you say, “I’m going to learn from that. I’m not going to repeat that mistake.” And that’s as far as you have to go. You don’t have to punish yourself." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Limits of Old Kamma"

"Then there will be part of the mind that says, “I don’t want to think about [the Dhamma right now] because it means I’ve been acting unskillfully in the past, and it just hurts too much to think about that.” That’s where the Buddha recommends developing the right attitude toward your past mistakes. It’s not inevitable that you’re going to have to suffer a lot from your past mistakes. As the Buddha said, if you can develop an attitude of limitless goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, that’ll mitigate the results of your past bad actions. If you can train yourself so that the mind isn’t overcome by pleasure, isn’t overcome by pain — in other words, you don’t let these feelings get in the way of your seeing what’s actually going on — then again, the mind is immune, or at least the results of your past mistakes will be mitigated. So the proper attitude to have toward your past bad actions is, one, realize that remorse is not going to undo them. Simply ...

"When, while you’re trying to develop compassion and empathetic joy, you run across cases where you can’t help the other person, either to become happy or to maintain happiness, that’s when you have to develop equanimity. This is the equanimity of a good doctor who realizes that he can’t solve all the cases in the world. But if he lets his heart get broken over all the cases he can’t solve, he won’t have the energy to help the cases he might have been able to solve. So for the people who come to him and have the karma that allows him to help — and he himself has the karma that allows him to help them — he should think of that as a precious opportunity. It’s not always there. Make the most of it and don’t let yourself get distracted by things you can’t control or where you can’t be of help. Because, as I said, karma is complex. The combination of the patient’s karma to be in a position where he or she can be cured, and the doctor’s karmic connection with that patient: ...

"Your actions will have consequences even as everything is winding down in your life. That doesn’t mean things are going to come to an end. It’s just the end of a chapter, and then there’s another chapter, and another chapter. You want to make sure that those following chapters are headed in the right direction, so you avoid unskillful qualities and develop skillful ones." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Conviction & Focus"

"Narrative and cosmological modes of thinking would lead one to ask whether the agent who performed an act of kamma was the same as the person experiencing the result, someone else, both, or neither. If one answered that it was the same person, then the person experiencing the result would have to identify not only with the actor, but also with the mode of action, and thus would not be able to gain release from it. If one answered that it was another person, both oneself and another, or neither, then the person experiencing the result would see no need to heighten the skill or understanding of his/her own kamma in the present, for the experience of pleasure and pain was not his or her own full responsibility. In either case, the development of the fourth type of kamma would be aborted." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Wings to Awakening"

"For the Buddha, any teaching that denies the possibility of freedom of choice contradicts itself and negates the possibility of an end to suffering. If people aren’t free to choose their actions, to develop skillful actions and abandon unskillful ones, then why teach them? ( AN 2:19 ) How could they choose to follow a path to the end of suffering? At the same time, if you tell people that what they experience in the present is independent of what they choose to do in the present, you leave them defenseless in the face of their own desires and the desires of others ( AN 3:62 ). Kamma, however — despite the common misperception that it teaches fatalism — actually teaches freedom of choice, and in particular, our freedom to choose our actions right here and now. It’s because of this freedom that the Buddha found the path to awakening and saw benefits in teaching that path to others." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "We Are Not One"

"The six sense media (āyatana) are old kamma in that they themselves and many of the objects that impinge on them are products of past actions. However, this is not true of all the objects of the senses, for when a person does a present action, the action and its immediate results impinge on the senses as well. At the same time, one’s experience of the input from the senses goes through many stages of mental filtering, as some sensory contacts are highlighted or elaborated on, while others are ignored or suppressed. This filtering is a form of present kamma, too, which means that all kamma — past or present — is experienced through the agency of present kamma. Now, present kamma may often be influenced by past kamma, but it does not need to be. The mind can, if it wants to, make a break with old habits. A change in knowledge — new information, new standards of judging what is important and not — can lead to a change in one’s present decisions. This means that past k...

"Your ability to appreciate other people’s happiness is going to help your ability to appreciate your own. It’s not infrequent when people come to meditate that they gain a sense of pleasure from the meditation and they don’t feel that they’re worthy of it. They feel they don’t deserve it. To get past that feeling, they should look back on their own attitude toward not only their own happiness but also toward other people’s happiness. If you resent other people’s happiness, then it’s going to be hard for you to feel that you deserve happiness. The question of deserving gets in the way. When the Buddha was teaching, as in that passage we chanted just now on how to put an end to suffering, there was no question about how this teaching was only for people who don’t deserve to suffer. The path to the end of suffering is for everybody, for all kinds of suffering, “deserved” or not. The question never comes up in his teachings — simply the question that people are doing thi...

"Look at everything, even your sense of who you are, as types of action, and then look at whether they’re skillful or not. This is where that reflection on karma can take you. That fifth reflection may sound very simple, very basic — some people call it kindergarten Buddhism: You do good, you get good results; you do bad, you get bad results. But it’s exploring that basic principle that can take you all the way." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Up for the Challenge"

"Another guardian meditation is goodwill [mettā] . This is for times when you’re feeling angry at other people. You have to remind yourself: If you want safety in this world, you have to give safety to others. This is one of the reasons why we observe the precepts. No harming. Period. And as the Buddha said, when you’re resolved to be harmless to all in line with the precepts, with no exceptions, when your virtue is universal, then you have a share in that universal safety. If the safety you give to others is partial, then your safety is partial, too. So you want to learn to see your anger and your aversion as dangers within you. Then you develop goodwill for yourself. You don’t want to inflict those dangers on yourself and you don’t want to inflict them on others. So you develop lots of universal goodwill, spread thoughts of goodwill around to everybody without exception. The Buddha said you should care for this universal goodwill in the same way that a mother would...

"The Buddha’s recommendation to examine the results of actions while doing them relates to the first principle, that actions can shape the present moment. When you slam the door on your finger, you don’t have to wait for the next lifetime to feel the pain. The Buddha’s instructions to check the long-term results of the action relate to the second principle, that actions can take time to show their results. When you plant a seed, it’ll take time, sometimes a lot of time, for the plant to mature. Keeping these two principles in mind as you look at your actions teaches you to be responsible for what you do. Seeing results in the present shows you that you don’t have to be a passive victim of present circumstances. You can take the initiative to make changes. Seeing results that take time to ripen teaches an important lesson in delayed gratification: Don’t measure your pleasures and pains only by how they feel in the present. Think about the long-term harm that can come from indulging...

"The Buddha says that you don’t go to heaven or to hell because of other people’s actions. Yet all too often we find ourselves in our own mental heaven or hell because of what someone else did. Actually, though, we’re the ones who create that heaven and hell. It’s through our own actions that we take what they did, what they said, or even what we think they thought, and turn it into our own private heaven or our own private hell." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Other People"