The teaching on karma is not there to judge other people. It's there to remind you that you have to act in a skillful way. You have opportunities to act in a skillful way.

"When you look at other people, the Buddha says the best lesson to learn is, if you see them doing something unskillful, ask yourself, “Do I do those unskillful things, too? This is what it looks like, this is the impact it has.” Or if you see someone suffering, he doesn't say, to think about what past bad karma they have and why they deserve to suffer. That's not what he says at all. That's not the skillful use of the teaching on skillfulness. He asks you to reflect that you've been there as well. And you might be there again. If you were in that position, what kind of help would you like to receive? Perhaps you can give that help now.

So the teaching on karma is not there to judge other people. It's there to remind you that you have to act in a skillful way. You have opportunities to act in a skillful way."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Large Canvas"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Connectedness through karma can go either way — the connections can be good, or they can be bad. So you want to foster the good ones.

The mind doesn’t operate totally on its understanding of things. Feelings of pleasure and pain do play a role in the way we act, the way we think. We try to give rise to feelings of well-being within ourselves through the meditation.

We’re never going to get a perfect society, but you find that the wiser you are in your generosity, the more consistent you are in your virtue, then the better the world you create around you. And it can be done without force, without imposing your will on other people.