The teachings on karma are very closely related to these two very positive parts of human life. They show that they do have meaning. Gratitude is appropriate. Generosity is appropriate and meaningful.

"A lot of us, when we first hear the teachings on karma, think about the bad things we did in the past, which is one of the reasons why karma is a very unpopular teaching. Things that were past, we hope to leave past. But karma says, “They may still have their fangs.” Of course, “karma” doesn’t mean just bad karma. It also means good karma. In fact, the Buddha, when he introduces karma, introduces it in a very positive way, connecting it with generosity and gratitude, both of which are really good parts of human life.

The Buddha says that generosity has meaning because our actions have meaning. They have meaning in the sense that we choose to do things. That means that people have meaning, too. When we give meaning to other people, we give meaning to ourselves: that it’s worthwhile helping someone else, either materially or in terms of our knowledge or in terms of our time. If we didn’t have freedom of choice, all of this would be meaningless. We’d be just mechanical robots, pre-programmed, with no choices at all, in which case generosity would be meaningless.

And so would gratitude. We have gratitude to people for things they’ve done for us, realizing that they could have not done those things, but they chose to do them. Often they had to go out of their way to be helpful. This help starts with your parents and goes to your teachers and other benefactors. The fact that they had freedom of choice means that we should be grateful for what they’ve done for us. And, as the Buddha said, gratitude is a sign of a good person. If you’re not grateful for the help you’ve been given, then it’s very unlikely that you’re going to be generous and give help to others.

So the teachings on karma are very closely related to these two very positive parts of human life. They show that they do have meaning. Gratitude is appropriate. Generosity is appropriate and meaningful. And as for things done in the past, the Buddha says, you don’t necessarily have to suffer from bad things done in the past. After all, this is a teaching on how to put an end to suffering, and there’s no caveat saying that he’s talking only about undeserved suffering. Even “deserved” suffering is something you don’t have to experience, putting deserved in quotes there.

He talks about how your state of mind right now is what really matters. This is one of the reasons why we meditate, to develop a good state of mind so that when results of past bad karma come, they don’t have to make an impact on the mind. The Buddha talks about the qualities you want to develop to counteract the impact of past bad karma: virtue, discernment, an ability not to be overcome by pleasure, an ability not to be overcome by pain, and having an unlimited mind."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Power of Present Kamma"

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