Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"The Buddha talks about your good kamma as being like wealth, noble wealth: the kind of wealth that fire can’t burn, floods can’t wash away, nobody can steal. It’s yours. Even as you leave this lifetime, it goes with you. In some ways, it actually goes before you, prepares the way. So it’s good to think about that kind of wealth, because it comes from inside. It’s something you can create yourself. It’s not like the wealth of the world where you have to work for somebody else and only then do they give it to you. You create it yourself. You’re independently wealthy in a way that’s really secure." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Economy of Goodness"

"Have some positive feelings toward this teaching on kamma. It’s not there just to punish you. It’s there to offer you opportunities. It’s there to remind you that your actions are important. And even though you’ve done unskillful things in the past, you’ve got a new opportunity right now to do something skillful. And then again right now. Each right now. So if you do find yourself in the middle of having made some unfortunate choices, you can say, “Well, I’ll stop.” And the fact that you stopped becomes positive kamma right there. Part of the mind may say, “You’ve been doing unskillful things in the past, you’re going to give in to unskillful impulses in the future, so why bother resisting now?” Fight that. You’ve got to fight it. And you have the freedom to fight it. That’s the important part of our kamma: that element of freedom. All of these good things associate with the teaching on kamma: gratitude, generosity, goodwill, freedom. So keep those positive associations in mind...

"Your actions are what are real, that have the most reality. The world out there is not the issue. The world that you experience comes from your actions. Your [intentional] actions [karma] are more solid, more powerful than your experience of earth, wind, water, fire, and all the other elements. That’s a pretty radical statement. This is why the Buddha keeps focusing back on what you’re doing right now because what you’re doing right now is the big shaping force in your experience." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "So Little Time" (Meditations8)

"The mind needs a purpose. Otherwise, it begins to blur out or to start looking for entertainment on the side. So there’s the purpose in getting the mind to settle down and there’s a purpose in using the sense of well-being, the sense of concentration, to set your mind on getting some understanding about how you’re creating suffering, and how you don’t have to. This is the purpose. It’s what gives meaning to the meditation — just as in our lives in general, we have to have a sense of purpose, a sense that we’re making choices, and our choices have some impact on our experience. And we can learn how to control that. So you’re going to control your attention and your intentions to try to understand, “What do I do that’s causing suffering?” And here the word “suffering,” dukkha, can spread from heavy suffering to very light." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Take Nothing for Granted"

"Then there’s that reflection on karma. That’s where our refuge is. If you look at it, it says: “We’re owners of our actions, heir to our actions, whatever we do for good or for evil, to that will we fall heir.” And you can focus either on the good or the evil. Karma is scary. There are a lot of things we do that are unskillful and will bear results, one way or another. It’s so easy to slip and forget. That’s one of the reasons why you want to be mindful. But there’s also the good side to karma — there’s a lot of good that you can develop with your actions. When the Buddha teaches karma, that’s what he focuses on — the good that can be done. This is why the reflection on karma is meant to give rise to confidence — that you have it within you that you can do this. If your habits are unskillful, you can change them. They’re not written in stone. Past karma doesn’t control everything. In fact, your primary experience is what your intentions are right now. When the Buddha analyzes th...

"Think about it. When the Buddha taught people how to put an end to suffering, he didn’t ask them first, “What kind of bad karma do you have in the past? Only if you have no bad karma can I teach you.” That wasn’t his approach. His approach was based on the assumption everybody has bad karma, everybody has some good karma. That’s how you get into the human realm. The question is: What can you do in the present moment so that you don’t have to suffer from the bad karma, and not suffer even from the good karma? That’s where his emphasis is. When he’s teaching karma, this is where the emphasis is — on what you’re doing right now, and on your ability to reflect on it and learn." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Return of Wisdom for Dummies"

"The same goes for any anger that you’re carrying around. Is it worth carrying around? “Well, so-and-so did this, and it really was bad.” Well, does it really matter? And do you need to carry that around right now? You can have an image in your mind of all the things the mind carries around as being like a big burden you’ve placed on your shoulders, and how huge that burden can be. Now, if you saw somebody carrying a load like that around, you’d feel really sorry for them: “Why do you carry it around? There’s nobody forcing you. You can put it down.” Part of the mind may complain about putting it down, but look carefully into the part of the mind that’s complaining about putting it down, that says, “It’s not right. I want to get back at that person. Justice won’t be done.” Justice is rarely done in the world. Once one person’s idea of justice has been carried out, other people don’t like it and will come back with their idea of justice. The world has this back and forth, back an...

"Never underestimate the power of the good example you create. This is how goodness gets spread around in the world: not by people talking, not by books, as much as by examples. When you see someone who’s done something really unselfish, it’s very inspiring. You realize, okay, the world is a place with good people, people who are able to overcome their defilements or their narrowness or whatever. The things that keep them bound up in the cycle of suffering and then revenge for suffering and then more suffering and then more revenge for suffering: That goes nowhere. We’ve seen way too much of that. But the people who stand up and say, “No, I’m not going to continue that way”: Those are the ones who make the human world a good world to be in, and they inspire us all. So you want your examples — the examples you set by your thoughts, words and deeds — to be good ones. That’s one of the ways in which you’re acting for the benefit of others." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Only One P...

"Was it Sartre that said hell is other people? No, hell is your own mind! The dangers that other people can pose to you are nothing compared to the dangers you pose to yourself. But the dangers you pose to yourself are things you can learn how to control. Other people are hard to control, but you can control your thoughts, your words, your deeds, and these are the true measure of where you’re going to go, how well you’re going to fare." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Calm & at Ease"

"One of the Buddha’s major accomplishments was to establish a non-tribal religion. His teachings were for everyone — regardless of tribe, caste, or nationality — who wanted to put an end to suffering. Since his time, those teachings have managed to spread throughout the world, transcending boundaries and divisions, because they treat people as responsible individuals, rather than lumping them into groups. They recommend that we evaluate ourselves by our own current actions, rather than by the actions of other members of the group into which we’re currently reborn. We may be interconnected, but it’s not through what we are — or through the categories that other people would use to define us. It’s through what we, as individuals, choose to do to one another. In the Buddha’s terms, we’re “karma-related,” related through karma, for good or for ill. That’s how we find ourselves born into particular groups of people. It’s not the case that first you’re born into a group and then, aft...

"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"

"Without present kamma, you wouldn’t experience the results of past kamma at all. The importance of your present kamma is the reason why we meditate. When we meditate, we’re getting more sensitive to what we’re doing in the present moment, we’re creating good kamma in the present moment, and we’re learning how to be more skillful in creating good kamma all the time, from now into the future." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"You know that you’ve got some past mistakes. There’s going to be some pain coming in the future. This shouldn’t be news. So you develop the qualities of mind that can guarantee that pain and pleasure won’t overcome the mind. In other words, you develop concentration; you develop discernment. Having concentration as an alternative to sensual pain and pleasure puts you in a safe place." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Remorse"

"There was a debate recently over the question of whether there are times when it’s justified to go out and kill people if they’re really evil. Well, that’s making your goodness depend on their goodness or badness. It’s not an independent value; it’s not an independent principle. But as the Buddha pointed out, your goodness has to be generated from within. It comes from your wisdom, seeing that regardless of how bad other people are, you’re not going to behave in that way. And that gives rise to a sense of self-esteem." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Loving Yourself Wisely"

"You know the story about Angulimala who had killed 999 people and then, not long after the Buddha taught him, became an arahant. A lot of people like that story. It shows that no matter what your background, there’s hope. But we have to remember that, at the time, there were a lot of people who didn’t like what had happened and were pretty upset. Here was Angulimala who had killed all these people and he was literally getting away with murder. You could say that he deserved to suffer, but the Buddha didn’t take that into consideration at all. He said, “Here’s a person who’s suffering really badly and his suffering is spilling out and affecting other people.” By curing Angulimala’s suffering, or showing him how to cure his suffering, he saved a lot of other people, too. So if there’s the question of whether you deserve to be happy or not, you learn how to put that aside. Realize that that’s a non-issue. The issue is that you’ve got actions. The mind is an active princi...

"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"

"Sometimes we believe in the power of our actions and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we say, “I really hope that my actions give results,” other times you do something and you say, “Well, I hope this doesn’t give results.” You try to convince yourself that the law of karma is something you can turn on and off. But actions always give results, and the results are in line with the quality of the action, and particularly the quality of the intention behind the action. So if you want good results, you have to make sure that the intentions are good. If you want those good results to be consistently good, then you have to make sure your intentions are consistently good. Remind yourself that you have the choice: You don’t have to act on every intention that comes in the mind. Even though some of the unskillful ones based on greed, aversion, and delusion seem awfully strong, they don’t have to overwhelm the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Intentions in Line with Results"

"The Buddha teaches a path of action to put an end to suffering, so to follow that path you need to make certain assumptions about action. • The first assumption is that actions are real and not illusory. • Second, your actions are the result of your choices. They’re not just the result of some outside force acting through you. In other words, they’re not determined simply by the stars or your DNA. You’re actually making the choices. • The third principle is that actions do have effects. You’re not writing in water, where everything you write immediately disappears. When you do something, it will have an effect both in the present moment and lasting through time into the future. • The fourth principle is that the effects of your actions are tendencies. They’re not strictly deterministic; they don’t lead to ironclad outcomes. • The fifth principle is that the effects of your actions are dependent on the state of your mind, one, while you’re doing the action, and two, when you’re re...

"There’s no place anywhere in the world where you can hide and where death can’t reach you. So what are you going to do? You have to develop something in the mind that’s not going to be affected by that. That’s where you’re safe, realizing that things in life may get damaged but you can always come back if you’ve got the strength inside, if you’ve got the resources inside that you’ve developed, that you’ve trained." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Choosing Your Allies"

"There are people who complain that if you’re really serious about the practice you lose your spontaneity. Well, spontaneity may have its good side but it has its bad side as well. You want to be really careful, you have to be heedful, your actions do have consequences, you can’t pretend that they don’t. As for the pleasure in the practice, the Buddha says it’s loaded there in the practice of right concentration. If you want to find joy and spontaneity, look there. As for your other actions, you have to be very careful to be restrained. Otherwise, you end up doing and saying and thinking things that you later regret. And that regret is very hard to get rid of. Especially as life goes on and you don’t see any progress coming in your practice, you begin to wonder, “What’s this all about? What have I been doing?” Don’t be the sort of person who realizes that a lot of time was wasted, a lot of time was thrown away. After all, we don’t have an infinite amount of time. The conditions h...

"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"

"There is a true happiness that can be obtained through human effort. It’s not in a lot of the activities that most people assume will lead to happiness, and that’s something you do have to accept. But, [the Buddha] says, your desire for true happiness is something you should honor. That’s what he himself did. He gave his life to his desire for true happiness. And he got results." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Defeatism? - Anything But"

"It’s so easy to break a precept, especially when you feel that you’re put at a disadvantage by the precept. We saw all that insanity after 9/11, where people were willing to throw morality out the window because they were so scared. There was even that Buddhist teacher who said, “This principle that hatred is never appeased by hatred, that it’s only appeased by non-hatred [i.e. goodwill,]” was totally useless. Didn’t have any practical application when things were so uncertain. Actually, though, that principle was designed for times when people really are seething with hatred, when they have to be reminded that you can’t put aside your principles in a situation like that. When life is in danger, your first impulse may be not your best impulse at all. You need clear-cut precepts to keep reminding you that under no circumstances would you kill, steal, have illicit sex, lie, or take intoxicants. That’s why the precepts are so simple, to be easy to remember in difficult situations....

"Kamma can be a means to happiness if you understand how to use it properly — the principle of action and result. It all comes down to developing good qualities of the mind. You notice that certain ways of thinking are skillful. They take burdens off the mind. They help nourish the mind. So encourage those ways of thinking, because if you don’t, you’ll develop other habits in the mind. It may seem artificial to focus on these habits, but then the construction of the present moment is always something artificial. There’s a large element of intention in every experience, so you might as well intend to do it well. Construct healthy and nourishing thoughts. You have it within your power to do so. So try to make the most of that opportunity." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "May I Be Happy"

" “We’re related through our actions” The connections we have in life with different people are created by our actions: things that we’ve done together with other people or to other people or for other people. These create the connections that we have with the people around us. Interconnectedness is a very popular teaching in Buddhism, especially nowadays, but it’s funny that people like to talk about interconnectedness without the teaching on karma. They turn to dependent co-arising as a model for interconnectedness, this web of connections where one factor can’t exist without a whole lot of other factors, but they neglect to realize that dependent co-arising is a teaching on how ignorance is connected with suffering, how craving is connected with suffering. It’s the kind of connectedness you want to cut, not the kind you want to celebrate. 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. And ...

"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." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Faith in Karma"

"There were people in the time of the Buddha who said that actions didn’t exist at all. The only things that really existed were unchanging elements. Everything else was an illusion. The Buddha, though, said No. Actions really exist. They’re shaped by your intentions and they’re going to give results in line with those intentions. Those results can happen either in this lifetime or in future lifetimes, but the possibilities of future lifetimes are shaped by our actions now. Now, the Buddha didn’t say he could prove that to anybody ahead of time. At least he couldn’t give an empirical proof. But he did give pragmatic proofs. One is that if you accept this teaching, you’re much more likely to behave in skillful ways. You can reflect on your behavior, and there’ll be a sense of well-being that goes with that reflection because you can see that you haven’t harmed anybody. A second pragmatic proof is that it doesn’t make any sense to cut yourself off from possibilities. If you were to ...

"There’s also fear of death. What with the war and with the pandemic, that’s a lot on people’s minds. But the Buddha said that wars and pandemics can harm you only up to the end of this life. The things you really have to be afraid of are your own unskillful actions, because they can harm you beyond that. No one else can send you to hell. But you can send yourself to hell if you’re not careful." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Skillful Fear (2022)"

"The issue is not whether we’re better than other people or worse than other people or equal to other people. The issue is that we’re suffering, and the suffering is coming from our own actions. We’ve got to learn how to train ourselves in how to think, how to speak, how to act in such a way that we’re not causing suffering. We have to be more circumspect. We have to be more alert to what we’re doing." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Getting Yourself"

"The same with having views in common: We start with the views of the Buddha’s teachings on kamma, that you do have choices as to how to act, and that different actions have different consequences, based on the quality of the intention behind the action. So you want to be careful about how you act. That’s the essence of right view right there. It doesn’t require that you be Buddhist in order to believe it. I’ve run into some nominal Buddhists who thought that their actions were totally determined by their genes, which means that deep down inside they don’t feel that they’re responsible for what they do. It’s hard to live with someone who thinks like that. If you want to live together, you have to admit, “I do make choices and my choices are going to have consequences, so I’d better be careful.” As long as everybody shares that view together, we can live with one another." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "What We Have in Common" (Meditations8)