The reflection connecting the principle of karma with equanimity is meant to clear the decks so that you can focus right there, on your present actions. That’s where the true issue is. That’s what underlies the basic structure of reality.

"There’s a passage where the Buddha talks about the skillful and unskillful ways of teaching karma and of thinking about karma. An unskillful way is to say that everybody who does evil is going to go to hell; everybody who does something bad is going to suffer. You look back and you realize that you, like everyone else, have done some bad things in your life: the times when you acted on less than noble or less than your best intentions. If you simply brood over your big mistakes, you put yourself into a spiral that goes down, down, down. It doesn’t help you at all. What you should do is to remind yourself that even though there’s past karma, there’s also new karma, a fresh slate. You can choose freely right now to act as skillfully as possible. Whatever you’ve done in the past that was unskillful, just put it aside. Make up your mind that you’re not going to make that same mistake again. And then move on. It’s not that you deny your mistakes. You freely admit them. It’s not that you’re blasé about them. You realize that a mistake’s a mistake and you don’t want to repeat it. But if you simply brood on the mistakes you made in the past, you don’t leave yourself the energy needed to act skillfully in the present moment.

It’s a matter of priorities: Where are you going to focus your energies to get the best results? The reflection connecting the principle of karma with equanimity is meant to clear the decks so that you can focus right there, on your present actions. That’s where the true issue is. That’s what underlies the basic structure of reality. When you can focus here, you don’t get all caught up in all the “what ifs” about the past: “What if I had done this? What if I hadn’t done that?” All those “what ifs” about the past are a massive waste of time. The important “what if” is: “What if I act skillfully now?” Try that out."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Intelligent Equanimity" (Meditations3)

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