The Buddha taught karma more as a process by which we can shape our experience right here, right now, and learn how not to suffer from good or bad things that are coming up.

"When we think about karma, we tend to think about things you did in a past lifetime that are totally unknown, and they just come in and smack you up against the head without any warning. But that’s not how the Buddha taught it. He taught it more as a process by which we can shape our experience right here, right now, and learn how not to suffer from good or bad things that are coming up."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Lessons of Equanimity"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Buddhism is not saying that if you have anger you’re a bad person and it’s all your fault. Rather, it’s saying that the anger is the unskillful element in the equation of sensing that something should be done — and that’s what you want to deal with.

"Real injustices are being done out there. The question is: what to do about them? Often we see a situation that we don’t like, anger arises, and we try to think of what to do about the situation while the anger is still in the mind. From the Buddha’s perspective, the problem is not so much that we want to do something about the injustices, but that we allow the anger to color our perception of the situation and of what should be done. So he’s not telling us to simply accept things as they are and try to swallow your anger, feeling that we’re to blame for the anger. Rather, he’s saying that we have to deal with the anger in such a way that it doesn’t get in the way of responding in an appropriate way, or a skillful way, to what we see as wrong. Once you get the anger out of the way, there are two things that can happen. One is that you may see that the situation is not as bad as you thought it was, but simply that your opinions had colored the situation. The other is that you can ...
Read more

A lot of people are embarrassed to think about the fact that they may have committed some pretty bad karma in the past. But we’re all in that boat, simply that some people’s karma is showing now and other people’s is going to show later.

"The fact that you’ve done bad things in the past doesn’t mean you’re a bad person now . A lot of people are embarrassed to think about the fact that they may have committed some pretty bad karma in the past. But we’re all in that boat, simply that some people’s karma is showing now and other people’s is going to show later. Because you can’t look into your karmic account and figure out what the running balance is or when good things are going to come, when bad things are going to come. The Buddha’s image is more like a field. You plant seeds, and some of the seeds sprout quickly, some seeds sprout slowly. What you’re seeing right now are the seeds that are sprouting right now, but you don’t know what else you have planted in that field. You don’t know what else other people have in their fields. Use this thought to depersonalize the issue." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Karma Storms"
Read more

We’re never going to get a perfect society, but you find that the wiser you are in your generosity, the more consistent you are in your virtue, then the better the world you create around you. And it can be done without force, without imposing your will on other people.

"Look at the Buddha. If anybody could have created a perfect society, it would have been him. But he saw that it was useless. There was a time when Mara came to him. The question had arisen in the Buddha’s mind, “Could it be possible to rule in such a way that you wouldn’t have to create bad kamma and that you could do nothing but good for all beings?” Mara shows up, and says, “Ah, yes, do that.” And the Buddha realizes that this idea of creating a perfect society is all a trick of Mara, because you’re using people for ends. And how skillful are those ends? Even if the ends are good, there’s a tendency to try to attain them in unskillful ways, to impose them on people. If you tell people that things will be good and they’ll be happy only if society is perfect, people would die before they could find true happiness. On the other hand, the solution is not a matter of simply accepting things as they are. It’s learning how to reshape them in a skillful way, starting wit...
Read more