Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"I’ve forgotten which Western philosopher said it, but I remember it from one of my classes at school: that all wisdom begins with consciousness of death. Realizing that we’re going to die forces us to take stock of our lives and our actions, in light of the fact that we have a limited amount of time and it’s important to make the most of the time we’ve got. Of course, that reflection can go off in all sorts of directions. Some people say, “Well, eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.” So it takes more than just consciousness of death to make you wise. It also requires a consciousness of your actions, the power of your actions to make a real difference in how your death goes, and what your death will result in. This is why the Buddha said that heedfulness lies at the root of all skillful qualities. You realize that it’s not just a matter of limited time. There are also lots of important choices to be made. You want to be very, very careful about those choices because t...

"When you come to meditate you’re already acting on certain assumptions. One is that the training of the mind is worthwhile. That means you believe that your actions are important and that knowledge and training will make a difference in how you act. Those are big assumptions right there, but when you look at your life, you’ve seen that acting on those assumptions has brought you at least some happiness. That’s called a pragmatic proof. It’s not an empirical proof. An empirical proof would be able to trace the energy that goes from our decision to act to the actual action, and from the action to the results that we experience. You’d have to run experiments with controls and actually be able to measure happiness in a very precise way. But you can’t do that. All those tests that they say they’ve run about measuring the happiness in different countries or measuring the happiness of people in different social groups, with different levels of income: When you ask people to rate their h...

"It is possible, even as the body weakens with age, to accomplish great things in strengthening the mind’s tendency to form and act on skillful intentions. Given that the skillfulness of your intentions will determine how well you face illness and death, the best investment of your energy is acting in skillful ways that will help you in that regard. So it’s not wise to compose a bucket list of last-minute sensory pleasures to cram into what little time remains before you go. Instead, your bucket list should focus on the goodness you can create in your thoughts, words, and deeds. This goodness includes two sorts of qualities: general qualities, such as conviction, virtue, generosity, and discernment that will create the conditions for a good rebirth; and specific meditative skills, which will be needed to master craving at the moment of rebirth." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Undaunted: The Buddha’s Teachings on Aging, Illness, Death, & the Deathless"

"[The Buddha] didn’t ask that his listeners all commit themselves to an unquestioning belief in the possibility that their actions might lead to rebirth, but he wasn’t interested in teaching anyone who rejected that possibility outright. As we’ve already noted, he saw that heedfulness lay at the root of all skillful qualities. If a listener couldn’t be persuaded to develop an appropriate level of heedfulness around the risks of action, any further teaching would be a waste of time." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Truth of Rebirth and Why It Matters for Buddhist Practice"

"Then there are the intentions. These are things that come totally from inside. They may be influenced by past actions, but you can train them here in the present moment to be something new. This is a freedom that’s available to all of us, and that we don’t take advantage of as much as we should. Simply in the way we breathe, we can have a sense of well-being in the body. By the way we talk to ourselves, which the Buddha calls verbal fabrication, we can totally change our mood. And then in terms of mental fabrication — the perceptions and feelings we focus on — we’re totally free to perceive a situation in lots of different ways, all of which are true. Then we can ask ourselves: “Which of these ways is the most conducive to keeping the mind happy, keeping the mind acting in skillful ways?” Choose that perception; choose those feelings. Then you can feed on those. That’s the food of intention." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Food for Endurance"

"We’ve all made mistakes in the past, but we’ve all done some good things, too. Focus on the good things. Those are what give you strength to keep on doing more good things. If you focus on the bad things you’ve done, you just start spiraling down and it’s hard to pull yourself up. So focus on the good that you’ve done. Dedicate that to your future, dedicate that to the people you’ve harmed in the past, so that you can live in this world without a sense that you’ve got a big debt. You’re working on paying off your debts, so work at it every day, every day." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Focus on the Good"

"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 ser...

"When a Buddhist takes refuge, it is essentially an act of taking refuge in the doctrine of karma: It’s an act of submission in that one is committed to living in line with the principle that actions based on skillful intentions lead to happiness, while actions based on unskillful intentions lead to suffering; it’s an act of claiming protection in that, by following the teaching, one hopes to avoid the misfortunes that bad karma engenders. To take refuge in this way ultimately means to take refuge in the quality of our own intentions, for that’s where the essence of karma lies." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Going for Refuge"

"Learn to look at what other people say as the result of your past actions; what other people do is the result of your past actions. In other words, the karma you’ve done in the past is coming back at you. It’s a sobering thought to think: Your past actions were done with the desire for happiness, and now you’re experiencing the skillfulness or lack of skillfulness in your past actions, in your past desires for happiness, your past efforts to bring about happiness. When you have that attitude, it’s a lot easier to live with other people. If they do something outrageous, you realize that you probably were a real character sometime in the past. And let it go at that. Your focus right now should be on what you’re doing and saying and thinking in the present moment." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Your Own Karma"

"This is another reason why the Buddha taught rebirth: as one of our motivations for practicing and for being really strict with ourselves as we practice. After all, some cravings and clingings in the mind appear at first glance to be no problem at all. They don’t seem to be affecting anybody else. We’re okay with them. But if you think about the fact that these cravings are creating not only your identity now, but also the world into which you’re going to be reborn, you realize that they’re dangerous. It’s like tuning your radio: It’ll connect with whatever’s on that particular frequency: hard rock or Beethoven or the ravings of some lunatic. Are your cravings on the frequency of the kind of world you’d really want to create and inhabit long-term? Sensual passion is the worse offender, because all of the worlds of intense suffering and conflict are on the frequency of sensual passion. Are those worlds you’d want to inhabit long-term?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Rebirth is Re...

"Mundane right view focuses on kamma and rebirth, and specifically on the value of generosity on the one hand, and gratitude on the other. Most of us, when we first hear the teachings on kamma, tend to think about punishment. You hear that you’re going to suffer from the results of your past bad actions, and the first thing that comes to your mind is, “Oh my God! That thing I did in the past when I hurt that person or did this thing I know was wrong: It’s going to come back and get me!” That’s our normal first thought about the teaching on kamma. But that’s not what the Buddha emphasizes when he teaches kamma. He emphasizes the positive side of karma: The fact that we can do a lot of good with our actions. He starts with reflecting on the gratitude we owe to people who’ve helped us — because they actually chose to do it. It wasn’t that they were acting under determined forces that forced them to help us. They chose to help us. We owe them gratitude — particularly, our parents. An...

"It’s not that we go around with a magic wand to touch beings on the heads and say, “Okay, whatever you’re doing right now, be happy.” Because a lot of activities that people do are harmful to themselves, to other people. Part of being truly happy — and that’s the important part, that it’s true happiness — part of being truly happy is to learn how to stop doing unskillful actions." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Can All Beings Be Happy?"

"We can’t wait until the world gets straightened out before we straighten out our own minds, because the cause is in the mind. The world out there is the realm of effects. The realm of causes is in here: That’s one of the basic lessons of dependent co-arising. All the causes of suffering come prior to your engagement with the world. If you want other people to change their behavior, you’ve got to straighten out your behavior. You have to walk your talk, so that your talk is compelling. You can’t force other people to follow your example, but at least you establish that example here in the world. It’s good to have these examples in the world. Otherwise the world would be a totally depressing place." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "True Protection for the World"

"So get your ‘self’ out of the picture. This is the actual opposite of a narcissistic practice, trying to make yourself a wonderful person or whatever attitude you might have. Even when we’re really negative on ourselves, that’s an aspect of narcissism, too. When we’re really taken up with what kind of person we want to be: That’s narcissism again. Get your idea of who-you-are out of the picture. Just say, “Just look at this action; look at this situation. Is this the action appropriate for the situation?” If it’s not, find something else to do. Approach it in a different way. Because what-you-are is not something that you are, it’s an action. It’s a strategy. And you want to be the sort of person who habitually tries to master the most skillful strategy in any given situation. So when you look back on the practice, if you need some encouragement when you start getting discouraged about how things are going, remind yourself, “Well, at least I have this good habit, which is trying...

"If you’re serious about doing what’s skillful — trying to be compassionate, trying to have integrity in your actions, respecting everyone’s desire for happiness — then this ability to think of death is not all that scary. It lifts your fears, living your life with that perspective. You can ask yourself, “If I were to die and were looking back at my life, looking back at today, what would I wish I had done today? What would I wish I’d said today?” Knowing that most of your ordinary worries and cares are rendered pretty meaningless by death, then live your life from that perspective. Say the good things you will have wished you had said, do the good things you will have wished you had done. If you stop and think about this, you’ll see that you will have wished you’d spent more time training the mind. When you’re dealing with other people, you will have wished you had said the kind thing, the helpful thing, the appropriate thing, something that wasn’t worried about what you could g...

"The Buddha’s pragmatic emphasis is further illustrated by the cluster of topics he treats through cross-questioning: how to understand the workings of kamma, how to understand pleasure and pain, how important caste is in comparison to action, whether the life gone forth can benefit as many people as the practice of sacrifice, what his qualifications for teaching are, and why he teaches the way he does. And actually, all six of these topics are permutations of one: kamma. Pleasure and pain are best understood in terms of the actions that lead to them; people are to be judged by their actions rather than their caste; the life gone forth enables one to find and teach to numerous beings the path of action leading to the end of suffering, something no sacrifice can do; the Buddha is qualified to teach because of the skillful way he has mastered the principles of cause and effect in training his mind; and the way he teaches — and in particular, his use of cross-questioning itself — is ...

"So if you’re using visualization as part of your goodwill [mettā] practice, don’t visualize people simply as smiling, surrounded willy-nilly by wealth and sensual pleasures. Visualize them acting, speaking, and thinking skillfully. If they’re currently acting on unskillful intentions, visualize them changing their ways. Then act to realize those visualizations if you can." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Head & Heart Together: Bringing Wisdom to the Brahmavihāras"

"In this process of self cross-examination, the perception of self is not the prime focus of inquiry. Instead, the questions shift the focus from concern for self to concern for mastering the principle of cause and effect as it governs the results of actions. At the same time, the questions help blur the line between concern for one’s own happiness and concern for the happiness of others. MN 61 recommends avoiding not only actions that would lead to self-affliction, but also those that would lead to the affliction of others, or of both. The qualities encouraged by the inquiry in AN 10:51 — being “uncovetous, without thoughts of ill will, free of sloth & drowsiness, not restless, gone beyond uncertainty, not angry, with unsoiled thoughts, with [one’s] body unaroused, with persistence aroused, & concentrated” — benefit not only the person practicing but also all the people with whom he or she comes into contact. The same holds true for the practices of generosity and virtue...

"It’s important to see that patience and endurance are very intimately connected with goodwill [mettā]: You can maintain your goodwill because you can put up with a lot of the stuff that’s out there in the world and it doesn’t make you wish ill for anyone. We don’t pretend that the people around us or in the world at large are all wonderful, that they’re all well-intentioned. They’re not. People have all kinds of intentions, and we can’t be responsible for or control their intentions. But we can be responsible for our own intentions, and we can make our mind large. We wish them goodwill not because they’re good but because we want to master the power of endurance so that the things that other people do to us are not going to have that much of an impact and persuade us to do unskillful things. So those are the types of little things that you want to keep little: the things other people do, that they say, the way they infringe on your boundaries, where they go against your idea of...

"When we think about karma, we tend to think about things you did in a past lifetime that are totally unknown, and they just come in and smack you up against the head without any warning. But that’s not how the Buddha taught it. He taught it more as a process by which we can shape our experience right here, right now, and learn how not to suffer from good or bad things that are coming up." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Lessons of Equanimity"

"Forgiveness seems to be such a basic human activity that we forget that our ideas about forgiveness are picked up from our culture and our view of what’s going on in the world. If you want forgiveness to be a helpful part of the practice, you have to look at how your ideas of forgiveness are tied up with your views about the world. Many of us in the West have a feeling that we’ve picked up from the culture, that there’s a plan for everything: The universe had a beginning point, it’s going to have an end point, there’s a story, and it’s going to come to closure. Now there are different ideas about what exactly that story is and where it’s headed, but just the idea that there is a beginning point and there is an end point, that there’s a purpose to the universe at large: That right there has a big impact on how we think about forgiveness. If there’s a beginning point, you can tally up who did what first: how many times you’ve been wronged, how many times you’ve wronged the other pe...

"Think of people you haven’t forgiven yet, and you can sit right here and forgive them. What does forgiveness mean in the Buddhist context? It means that you pose no danger to them, you’re not going to try to get back at them, you’re not going to carry around a grudge. It doesn’t mean that you necessarily forget that they did something unskillful. Because there are people you’ve got to watch out for — in other words, the people you can forgive but you don’t want to have much more to do with them anymore. But you can remind yourself, okay, even though they’ve done unskillful things to you and they’ve harmed you or harmed people you love, you’re not going to pose any danger to them. You’re going to leave it at that. Now, the prospect of getting reconciled with that person may be impossible, but at the very least you can sit here and unilaterally forgive that person. There are times when you have to forgive yourself for certain things you did in the past. Be generous with that, too. ...

"The suffering that really matters is the suffering you add on to what’s happening outside. It’s all too easy to say, “I’m suffering because of so-and-so.” And there’s a lot of talk nowadays about how we should expand the Buddha’s teachings on the causes of suffering to include social issues outside, but he was very specific. The suffering he was going to cure was the suffering that starts at the real source, craving, because even if society is perfectly peaceful, people are still going to suffer, and the reason society is not peaceful is because of their craving. So either way, the source is inside. But the good news here is that if you can take care of the source inside, then no matter how bad things get outside, you don’t have to suffer. Now, this is not just a matter of saving your own skin, because if you’re not suffering, you’re much less likely to thrash around and make other people suffer along with you. And think: What kind of world would we have to live in if we wanted ...

"Although the Jains, like the Buddhists, teach a doctrine of the moral consequences of actions, the teachings of the two traditions differ in many important details. This discourse points out two of the major points where the Buddhist teaching is distinctive: its understanding of the complexity of the kammic process, and its application of that understanding to the psychology of teaching. The Buddha shows that a simplistic, fatalistic view of the kammic process is logically inconsistent, and also leads to unfortunate results for any person who, with a background of bad kamma, believes in it. The actual complexity of kamma, however, allows for a way in which past evil deeds can be overcome: through refraining from evil now and into the future, and through developing expansive mind-states of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, & equanimity. In such an expansive mind state, the unavoidable consequences of past evil actions count for next to nothing. The Buddha also shows how hi...

"In another passage where the Buddha’s teaching kamma, he starts with the virtues of generosity and gratitude. For most of us, when we hear about kamma, there’s that “Oh darn” moment, where we start thinking about all the bad things we did in the past and all the bad things that are going to happen to us in the future because of that. But the Buddha doesn’t start with the bad things at all. He starts with the good. He does say that certain actions tend to lead to certain results, but the fact that a past bad action has happened doesn’t mean that you, acting in the future, can’t make some changes in how it’s going to be experienced. He gives the analogy of a crystal of salt. You’ve got a crystal of salt, say, the size of your fist. If you put it into a cup of water, you can’t drink the water because the water is way too salty. But if you put it into a large, expansive river of clean water, you can still drink the water in the river. In the same way, if you develop an...

"A sutta passage describes four kinds of actions: There are actions that are pleasant to do and give a profitable result, and actions that are unpleasant to do and give an unprofitable result. These two are no-brainers. It’s easy to motivate yourself to do the first sort of action and to avoid the second sort. However, there are also some kinds of actions that are unpleasant to do, but they are profitable. There are others that are pleasant to do, but are unprofitable. And it’s in reference to these last two types of actions that the Buddha says you can be known either as a fool or a wise person. I’ll read you the passage: “As for the course of action that is unpleasant to do, but that, when done, leads to what is profitable, it’s in light of this course of action that one may be known as a fool or a wise person. For a fool doesn’t reflect, ‘Even though this course of action is unpleasant to do, still when it is done, it leads to what is profitable,’ so he doesn’t do it, and thus ...

"You learn from your actions — that’s why we’re focused on our actions and on their results. Given that the principle of kamma is quite complex, the results may not come as quickly as we’d like. That’s where patience and maturity come in. If you’re patient about learning from your actions and learning from your results, and mature in having a good sense of humor about your mistakes, that’s when your focus is on target." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Focused on Results" (Meditations9)

"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"

"So the different aspects of the path — virtue, concentration, and discernment — all help one another along. And they all provide you a safe space: a physical safe space inside the body where you can have a sense of ease; a mental safe space inside the mind where, whatever thoughts come up will come up in the arena of your understanding of kamma: your understanding of where suffering actually comes from and how it can actually be cured. And you resolve to do what you can to put an end to the causes of suffering in your attitudes toward yourself, in your attitudes toward others. So regardless of whatever mess there is in the world outside, or in your personal life, or whatever mess there has been in the past, you can find a safe space in the present moment where you can sort things out: both with the sense of well-being of a mind in concentration, friends with the breath inside, so you have a sense of being grounded, a sense of belonging here; and in the safe space of right view an...

Question: I’ve come to meditation to help me bear the atrocities of the world. What is awakening? Is it a moment of conscience when one embraces all the sorrows of the world, and in that case means hello to all sorrows or is it on the contrary a state of total forgetfulness and egotism, in that case it would be hello to guilt? So, which is it? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Neither. Remember the image of feeding. Ordinarily, we feed on the world, both physically and mentally, in order to gain happiness and maintain our identity as beings. But when you gain full awakening, the mind no longer needs to feed because it already has enough in terms of its own happiness. When you’ve reached that state, you can engage in the world without having to feed on it. You can help those whom you can help, and you don’t have to suffer in cases where you can’t help. In this way, you’re neither embracing the sorrows of the world nor are you running away from them. Instead you have a different relati...

"You can do actions. You can choose to do something that’s more skillful, less blameworthy. And nine times out of ten, the more skillful choice is the obvious one. Maybe not the easiest one, but it’s obvious what’s skillful. There are a few cases where it’s not so obvious, but focus on the ones where it is obvious, and you clear up a lot of problems. As for when the issue is not so obvious, ask yourself why. Is the problem really that complicated?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "What You Can Do"

"So the reflection on karma has lots of implications, depending on the context. It’s part of the five reflections, where its purpose is to develop a sense of heedfulness and confidence at the same time. We tend to think about heedfulness as being primarily concerned with being heedful of dangers. But the Buddha also tells you to be heedful with reference to little good things you can do. He says, “Don’t be heedless of little acts of merit. Just as a water jar gets filled, drop by drop by drop, in the same way, little acts of merit can fill you with goodness.” So it’s not strange that this reflection on action gives rise both to heedfulness and to confidence at the same time." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Reflecting on Karma"

"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 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...

"As the Buddha said, loss of friends and relatives is not all that serious. Loss of wealth is not that serious. Even loss of your health is not that serious. The serious losses are when you lose your right views and when you lose your virtue. With things outside the mind, when you lose them, you can get them back. But if you lose your virtue, you lose your right views, you can do a lot of damage before you get them back." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Near to the Buddha"