Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"When an intention comes up to do or say or think something, you want to know what that intention is. It’s a teaching that the Buddha teaches his son Rahula: to look at his intentions before he does or says or thinks anything. I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Gee, that’s an awful lot of attention to something like that,” because they have so many other things they have to pay attention to. Well, it turns out that the other things you’re paying attention to are often the results of your own past actions. It’s much better to start at the very beginning to make sure that the new intentions coming out are well-formed. So try to stay right here. Find ways of making the mind happy to be right here, so that it has the energy and the inclination to want to look into what’s going on in the mind and straightening that out. Once you’ve straightened out the mind, everything else gets straightened out further down the line." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Straightened Intentions...

"This is what gratitude is all about: It’s a sense not only that you appreciate the choices that people made but also that you need to respond. The word patikaroti means to repay or to make amends, but it can also mean to imitate. In other words, you imitate the goodness that they did, the intention that they had. You try to carry that out. That’s the response that keeps their goodness alive. There’s that question that people would often ask Ajaan Fuang: “How can I repay you for having taught me?” and his response was, “Be really intent on the practice.” That’s the best repayment right there. So this is why the Buddha’s teachings on gratitude are all surrounded by words that deal with action. You appreciate someone’s good actions and then you realize there’s an action that’s called for from you, an appropriate response. That’s what makes it different from appreciation or contentment. As the Buddha said, it’s a characteristic of a good person to feel gratitude and to want to rep...

"It’s so easy to break a precept, especially when you feel that you’re put at a disadvantage by the precept. We saw all that insanity after 9/11, where people were willing to throw morality out the window because they were so scared. There was even that Buddhist teacher who said, “This principle that hatred is never appeased by hatred, that it’s only appeased by non-hatred [i.e. goodwill,]” was totally useless. Didn’t have any practical application when things were so uncertain. Actually, though, that principle was designed for times when people really are seething with hatred, when they have to be reminded that you can’t put aside your principles in a situation like that. When life is in danger, your first impulse may be not your best impulse at all. You need clear-cut precepts to keep reminding you that under no circumstances would you kill, steal, have illicit sex, lie, or take intoxicants. That’s why the precepts are so simple, to be easy to remember in difficult ...

"It’s not that life is suffering. It’s that we create suffering in our clinging. The source of the suffering is not outside. It’s what we do as we approach experience, as we create our experience out of the raw materials that come from our past kamma and then cling to it. This applies to experience both in meditation and out, so, as you’re getting to know the mind in meditation, you’re also getting to know the mind in everyday life." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Dead Snake Around Your Neck" (Meditations10)

"Think: “What duty needs to be done? I’ll do it today, I’ll do it right now, because who knows, I may not have this chance tomorrow, or even a few moments from now.” If we die, it takes a long time to get back to the practice. Think how long it took you in this lifetime to find your way to sitting right here, learning how to train the mind. If you’re not careful, the next time around may be a lot longer than that. So you’ve got this opportunity right now. Focus on the “right now” because it’s a place where the practice is done and where you can make a difference. That is what it means to be with the present: to see it clearly and — once you see clearly what’s going on — to realize what your duties are right now. Then you do them. That’s when being in the present moment is really auspicious." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "In the Present" (Meditations8)

"Genuine helpfulness: You see what the other person really needs, and if you’re in a position to provide it, you go ahead. You don’t make a show of helping them just to make a good impression on them. You don’t do it for their sake or anyone else’s sake. You do it for the sake of the practice, for the sake of developing your own goodness. You try to see what needs to be done, and then you go ahead and do it. One of the lessons I learned from my father is there are a lot of jobs that need to be done in the world that nobody wants to do. So they provide a huge, wide-open opportunity for you to develop your goodness with no competition. Look for that kind of job, those kinds of tasks around the monastery or wherever you’re living." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Make Yourself Small"

"Be careful about your intentions. Because these are the factors that shape your life, and right here is where it’s being shaped. Past actions, past intentions: Those are already shaped. You can’t do anything about them. As for future ones, you can’t determine anything about how they’ll be handled except through developing good habits right here and now. We have to realize the importance of our choices as we make them because they really do shape our lives and the lives of the people around us." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Decisions"

"Look at what you’ve been doing and see where it’s been unskillful. When you do this, you are passing judgment. But you’re passing judgment on your actions, not on yourself. Your intentions in the past may have been unskillful, or the actions may have been unskillful, but you’re not stuck there. Just because you’ve had unskillful intentions doesn’t mean that you’re always going to have unskillful intentions. You can change your mind. You can change your habits." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Shame & Acceptance" (Meditations5)

"That’s some of the mystery of the present moment: Not everything in the present moment is determined by the past; you have to have some input from the mind right now. You look into dependent co-arising: The intentions of the present moment come prior to sensory contact. Now, sensory contact, as the Buddha said, is old kamma coming at you. This means that you actually experience your present kamma before you experience your past kamma. But we pay so little attention to it — because we’re more interested in the things coming in through the senses — that we don’t really realize what we’re contributing. So, try to gain a sense of what you’re bringing. You have some preconceived notions, you have some perceptions, you have some intentions. Air them out. Open them up." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Power of Present Karma"

"Learning how to get along with one another also requires skill. You don’t just do what you feel like doing. You have to think about, “When I act, what are the results going to be? How is this going to impact the people around me?” And then try to have the best kind of impact you can think of." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Happiness as a Skill"

"The Buddha once said that concentration, when nurtured by virtue, has great fruit, great reward. Now, he wasn’t saying that you can’t do concentration without virtue. There are many examples around of people who have very strong powers of concentration but very little virtue at all. What he was saying is that if you want your concentration to yield great fruit — in terms of bringing about the discernment that leads to release — it has to be done in the context of life where you’re trying to be virtuous in your actions, taking your actions and your words seriously, and also taking seriously their impact both on yourself and on others. This sensitivity to your actions and their results is what helps to bring your concentration to the state where it can lead to great fruit. If you go through life not really being careful about what you do, or not being sensitive to the impact of your actions, it’s going to be very hard for you to be very careful about your meditation, and to be sens...

"So focus on right now, and what can be done right now . And if it so happens that you’re still going to live for a much longer time, well, you keep creating good right nows all along. And it’s all to the good. The effort that goes into training the mind, the effort that goes into trying to be as skillful as possible in what you do and say and think is never wasted. It’s your wealth. It’s your investment in the future." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An Auspicious Day"

"We’re all active creatures. Our minds are active. We’re not simply sitting here passively observing the world and asking, as an idle pastime, “Well, what is the nature of the world? How does the world act?” We have to know how the world acts because we’re acting in it. We’re pulling the levers all the time, with every moment. We’re engaged in the act of fabrication, and it’s because we do it with a lack of skill that we’re suffering. That’s the problem the Buddha wants to solve. As long as you realize that suffering is one thing and not suffering is something else, and you decide that you really want to stop suffering, you’ve got to think in dualities. This is your protection. It’s what discernment is all about." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Safety of Dualities" (Meditations10)

"If you come to the meditation simply thinking, “What’s in it for me?” you won’t benefit much from the meditation. You’ve got to train yourself to say instead, “What’s in it for the whole mass of beings? To what extent can my meditation help them too?” At the very least, it gets you out of that feeding system. There’s at least one less mouth to be fed. In the meantime, you can be an inspiration. You can take refuge in the Sangha. It’s good to keep having members of the noble Sangha appearing in the world, so that it’s not just a matter of some story way in the past, the time of the Buddha or over there in Asia. When there are members of the noble Sangha appearing right now, that’s an inspiration to other meditators. So we’re not doing this just for ourselves. We’re doing it for everybody. If we can get to the point where we have less greed, aversion, and delusion, we’re not the only ones benefiting. Other people are suffering less from our greed, aversion, and delusion. If we ge...

" When you’re dealing with other people, there are going to be a lot of things you don’t like. You can’t let your likes and dislikes get in the way of your doing what’s skillful. If you treat the people you like well but treat the people you dislike in a shabby way, that becomes your karma. It’s not good for you. So you have to remember, you’re not treating people well because they deserve it. You’re treating people well because it’s part of your training. It’s part of your safety, your protection." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Help Others, Help Your Mind"

"You have to have confidence in the principle of action — that it can have an impact on your suffering. You’re not just a victim. You can come out victorious. After all, that’s what the images of the path often say: unexcelled victory. Victory over what? Over our ignorance, over our craving, over all our foolish tendencies. Our ways of looking for happiness that don’t really work out but we keep doing them again and again and again." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Reflecting on Karma"

"[An awakened person] feels sympathy for others and seeks their well-being, experiencing a sense of satisfaction when they respond to [his/her] teachings, but otherwise [he/she] stays equanimous, untroubled, mindful, and alert. This passage shows that the even-mindedness of a fully awakened person is an attitude not of cold indifference, but rather of mental imperturbability. Such a person has found true happiness and would like others to share that happiness as well, but that happiness is not dependent on how others respond. This is the ideal state of mind for a person who truly works for the benefit of the world." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Wings to Awakening"

"You know that you’ve got some past mistakes. There’s going to be some pain coming in the future. This shouldn’t be news. So you develop the qualities of mind that can guarantee that pain and pleasure won’t overcome the mind. In other words, you develop concentration; you develop discernment. Having concentration as an alternative to sensual pain and pleasure puts you in a safe place." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Remorse"

"We live a life full of the power of kamma — old kamma and new. You can’t do anything about old kamma. You have to accept it like a good sport. That’s why you practice equanimity. But as for the new kamma you’re creating right now, you can’t practice equanimity with that. You have to be very concerned about what you’re putting into the system because you realize that this is the only chance you get to make the choice. Once the choice is made and it gets put into the system, then whatever the energy — positive or negative — that’s the sort of energy you’re going to have to experience. So pay attention: What are you putting into the system right now? This is the important thing to focus on. Whatever other people do to you, whatever arises in your body in terms of pains, illnesses, aging, death, or whatever: That’s old kamma that you simply have to learn to take with good humor, with a sense of equanimity. As for what you’re putting into the system right now, that’s ser...

"When the Buddha tells you to look inside for the causes of your suffering, it’s not a case of blaming the victim. He’s trying to remind you of what does lie in your power to change. There may be a lot of things outside that contribute to you suffering, but you can’t change them. Or you could change them if you spent a lot of time. But there’s no certainty as to how permanent that change would be. So as meditators, we’re not here trying to settle old scores or to create justice in the world. We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing that’s contributing to our own suffering. After all, we go to all the effort of thinking and acting and speaking with the purpose of causing happiness, and yet the results don’t always come out that way. In fact, most of the time they come out the other way. We end up causing suffering for ourselves. That’s the big paradox in life. Fortunately, the way we act and speak and think depending on our intentions is something we can change. We...

"As a meditator, you have to be constantly self-reflective — and that’s what appropriate attention [yoniso-manasikāra] is. It keeps focusing you back on your actions and the results you’re getting from them. This is what the four noble truths are all about. You’re suffering? You can’t blame it on the weather. You can’t blame it on the economy. You can’t blame it on the political structure. Those things may be miserable, but you don’t have to be miserable because of them. It’s what you’re doing right now. Now, this is not blaming the victim. It’s giving you the power to change the fact that you may be suffering right now and reminds you that you don’t have to be anybody’s victim, that the important element — i.e., the extent to which you’re suffering over things: That’s under your control. Or you can bring it under your control. This is why this self-reflective ability is so important. It’s what makes or breaks a meditator." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Gift of Discernment...

"A good action, an action motivated by a skillful intention, leads to good results. It’s impersonal. Unskillful actions motivated by unskillful motivations lead to pain. Each of us has a lot of actions in the past, so there’s bound to be good mixed with bad. You don’t have to wear off the bad kamma before you can enjoy the good. You simply learn to make the best use of both pleasure and pain when they come along." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Empathetic Joy"

"So when we wish that all beings be happy, part of the reason is that we’re trying to develop the motivation that we don’t want to harm anybody in our actions. Because that’s all we’re responsible for: our own actions. Then you also think about the fact that the happiness there — in “May all beings be happy” — has to come from causes. It’s not that we go around with a magic wand to touch beings on the heads and say, “Okay, whatever you’re doing right now, be happy.” Because a lot of activities that people do are harmful to themselves, to other people. Part of being truly happy — and that’s the important part, that it’s true happiness — part of being truly happy is to learn how to stop doing unskillful actions." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Can All Beings Be Happy?"

"Are your views right? If your views are wrong, they can send you off in all sorts of directions. So you want to make sure that you’re aiming, at the very least, at not harming anyone, finding a happiness that’s reliable and trustworthy that doesn’t require that you harm anybody else, doesn’t require that you harm yourself. Ultimately you want to be able to find a way to put an end to suffering. That’s the right direction in which you should aim your life. So you should ask yourself, “The people I’m associating with: Is that where they aim? How about myself: Is that where I aim?” Look at where you’re aiming your life. If you see that you’re heading off in the wrong direction, you’ve got the wrong target, try to change the target. Change so that it’s the right direction, so that you’re not causing any suffering — you’re not causing yourself suffering, you’re not causing anyone else any suffering. At the same time, you’re developing those treasures you can take with you. Because in...

"You have to be responsible for the skillfulness of your actions. You can’t blame it on your upbringing, you can’t blame it on other things from the past. Now, there are things that you’re likely to do or, through the force of habit, you can’t think of any other way to do them. But as the Buddha said, if people couldn’t develop skillful qualities, then it wouldn’t have served any purpose to teach. If they couldn’t abandon unskillful ones, there’d be no purpose to teaching. But it’s because we have this ability to choose to be more skillful or less skillful: That’s why he taught the Dhamma. So it’s up to you to take advantage of that fact: that the Dhamma is available and you can create some good habits now that will help you in the future. After all, we do have both good and bad qualities in the mind, and our habits tend to push us in one way or another. But the more good habits you develop — by making the right choice right now, right now, right now — the easier it’ll be to make ...

"Try to stay on top of things in the body and the mind right now, right now, right now. This is where all the important things are happening. The news may tell us that other things in other parts of the world are really important, really worth getting worked up about. And people do get worked up about them. But as the Buddha said, you’re not going to go to hell or to heaven because of other people’s actions. It’s your actions that take you to hell, your actions that can get you to heaven, your actions that can get you beyond heaven and hell, taking you all the way to nibbana. So you want to be on top of what you’re doing right here, right now. Because this is where all the issues are, all the factors of the path — as we chanted about them just now. Even though some of them have to do with your outside actions, they basically come down to your intentions." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "On Top of Your Actions"

"As for what other people are thinking or saying or doing, just remember: They can never take you to hell. If you’re going to go to hell, it’s through your own doing. They can’t take you to heaven, either. If you are going to heaven, it’s through your own doing. And you don’t have to worry about heaven and hell in the afterlife. Right here and now, you can see it. Other people can do horrible things, but it’s only when you let what they’re doing get into your mind, and then you start doing horrible things along with them: That’s when it really gets bad. At the same time, no matter how good other people may be, you can always be worried about how much longer that goodness is going to last. Sometimes, the better the person is, the more you’re worried: “It can’t last. So I’m just going to have to hold on to them.” The issue isn’t what other people are doing, it’s how you’re managing your own mind. This is why you have to give importance, give weight to this ability to st...

"Realize that you don't have to straighten out the world before you're going to be able to gain Awakening or before you're going to be able to sit down and meditate. The principle of karma is at work here. Often, when people have made up their minds to straighten out the world, the things they do to straighten out the world tend to get very unskillful and they end up making things worse. They don't like other people's greed, anger, and delusion, yet in the course of trying to straighten them out, they inflict them with their own greed, anger, and delusion. They simply compound the problem. So your only responsibility to the world is to focus on doing what's skillful. That's all you have to take care of. As for the working out of everybody else’s karma, that will work out on its own without your having to get involved. Just make sure that your own present karma is skillful. One thing you can do that’s skillful right now is to allow the mind to settle dow...

"Your actions really do matter. This is a principle you want to learn from other people: The choices you make really do make a difference, and the quality of your intention determines whether your actions will lead to happiness or not. You want to look for a person who believes in that, because that person is more likely to be kind and generous in his or her actions. At the same time, that person gives you a good example for improving your own attitude." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Brightness of the World"

"Two principles in [the Buddha's] teaching on kamma were especially distinctive. The first is that kamma is intention [AN 6:63]. In other words, action is not simply a matter of the motion of the body. It’s a matter of the mind — and the intention that drives the kamma makes the difference between good actions and bad. The second distinctive principle is that kamma coming from the past has to be shaped by kamma in the present before you can experience it. You actually experience your present kamma before you engage with the results of past kamma. Without present kamma, you wouldn’t experience the results of past kamma at all. The importance of your present kamma is the reason why we meditate. When we meditate, we’re getting more sensitive to what we’re doing in the present moment, we’re creating good kamma in the present moment, and we’re learning how to be more skillful in creating good kamma all the time, from now into the future." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma o...

Question: My friends ask me why it matters which being I will reincarnate as, because it, she, or he will not remember that it, she, or he was me in the former life? Indeed, I have no memories of my former lives. Maybe they were much better, but I do not suffer from it as I do not know. This system sounds like you work really hard all your life for someone else to get the results from all your good actions. What should I tell them? P.S. Personally, I meditate and practice virtue for the benefits it brings me in this very life. Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Are you the same person that you were when you were a child? Yes and no. However, many things that you did when you were a child, like going to school, are definitely benefiting you now. At the time you were a child you felt that “I am me.” Now you feel, “I am me,” even though you now look and act and think like a very different person. The same sort of principle applies whether it’s in the same lifetime or going over to another lifetime. ...

"This same principle [of karmic cause and effect] can make you brave in doing good. If you’re convinced that the results of skillful intentions will have to return to you even if death intervenes, you can more easily make the sacrifices demanded by long-term endeavors for your own good and that of others. Whether or not you live to see the results in this lifetime, you’re convinced that the good you do is never lost. In this way, you develop the courage needed to build a store of skillful actions — generous and virtuous — that forms your first line of defense against dangers and fear." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Freedom from Fear"