As the quality of your intention is good and you’ve made sure to keep the amount of delusion in your intention down to the absolute minimum, you find that your actions do have a good impact on yourself and on the people around you.

"We were talking this afternoon about ethics, of how our actions have an impact on other people and how that might in turn have an impact on still other people and ripple out that way. When you try to track down the ripples you go crazy.

The Buddha once said pretty much the same thing. If you try to track down the results of action, the results of karma in all their ramifications, you would go crazy because it’s so complex. But, he said, there’s a way of cutting through that complexity so that you actually can make choices.

And that’s to focus on your own intentions. Make sure that your intentions are skillful. You can check them by looking at what you do and then looking at the results that come about. At the very least, make sure there’s as little greed, anger, and delusion as possible in your intentions. The impact of your actions will have to be a good impact.

Whether you’ve worked out all the channels through which that impact is going to go — and of course you can’t work through all those channels, you can’t anticipate them all — but as long as the quality of your intention is good and you’ve made sure to keep the amount of delusion in your intention down to the absolute minimum, you find that your actions do have a good impact on yourself and on the people around you."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Minding Your Own Business"

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