The teaching of karma is precisely what tells you not to give in, it places power in your hands. And you learn how to not be complacent.

"[Ajaan Suwat] came from a very large peasant family, and large peasant families usually don’t have much to hand down to their children. He met a forest monk who said, “Hey look, it’s your actions that matter. And the fact that you’re poor now: You may have not been generous in the past, but you’ve got the opportunity now to practice the Dhamma.”

So this quality of conviction is what sees us through. When things are going easy, the idea of having conviction doesn’t speak that much to us. But when things get hard: We look at our lives, we look at the people around us, the situation we’re in — and the last thing you need is something that teaches you to just give in.

The teaching of karma is precisely what tells you not to give in. It places power in your hands. You have to think, “Well, I may have misused that power in the past,” and learn to accept that fact as a good sport. We all have bad karma in our backgrounds. It’s not the case that you look at a person right now and you can see the sum total of their running karmic balance. We’ve got lots of different seeds, some of which are sprouting now, some of which are not sprouting yet — some good, some bad. And so when the bad seeds sprout, you learn to take it as a good sport.

When the good seeds sprout, you learn how to not be complacent — that’s what conviction does, too. It convinces you that the good things you’ve got right now are not there just for you to enjoy. They give you the opportunity to practice further good actions."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Faith"

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