Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"There are three kinds of fabrication: bodily, verbal, and mental. On the large scale, that refers to bodily kamma, verbal kamma, and mental kamma as they give results in this lifetime and on into the next. But in the present moment, the three fabrications get boiled down to what leads to bodily, verbal, mental kamma on the large scale, and here the Buddha gives different definitions. Bodily fabrication is the in-and-out breathing. If you weren’t breathing, you couldn’t do anything physically. Verbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation, how you talk to yourself: You direct your thoughts to a topic and you make comments about it. You may ask questions about it, and when you’ve thought in those ways, that’s when you open your mouth to speak. Finally, mental fabrications are perceptions and feelings: the labels you put on things, the feeling tones you have. These are the building blocks for all mental kamma." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "How to Change" (Meditation...

"We’re creating our lives. And even when the mind seems to be simply spinning its wheels, it’s not just idly spinning its wheels. It’s creating new states of being, new possibilities — some of which are good, some of which are not so good. You have to keep that principle always in mind as you’re meditating. You’re not simply here innocently watching what’s going on without any responsibility for what you’re experiencing. You’re responsible for your experiences — through your actions in the past and in the present moment. On the one hand, this sounds a little onerous because nobody likes to take responsibility. On the other hand, though, it’s empowering. If you don’t like the present moment, you can create a new present moment because the opportunities to do so are endless. We’re not just consumers of experiences. We’re also producers. We have to keep this principle in mind as we go through the practice. Our training in the precepts reminds us that we shape our life ...

"This reflection on kamma, like the other four reflections, teaches heedfulness. But it also teaches confidence: That through the power of our actions, we can find a way out of the sufferings of repeated birth and death. We keep in mind the fact that our only true possessions — given that we are subject to aging, illness, death, and separation — are our actions and their results. Ajaan Suwat liked to comment that the Buddha often teaches that this thing is not-self, that thing is not-self, this thing is not mine, that thing is not mine, but then would have you say to yourself, “I am the owner of my actions.” In this case, the sense of “I” does not increase your clinging. It actually makes you more heedful of your only real treasures — your actions and their results — and confident that developing skillful actions will really make a difference. So the “I” here is a useful “I” to develop for the sake of following the path. Now, if you look at your actions over the past week or so, ...

"Karma, what people do, in the present moment, this is one thing you can know directly. You can know directly what you’re doing. When you focus the mind, you know you’re focusing the mind. When the mind settles down, you know it’s settling down. When the mind wanders off, you know it’s wandering off. These are things you really know here and now. When you experience suffering, you know. When you experience a lack of suffering, you know. So those are the two issues the Buddha focused on: the feelings of suffering and the knowledge of actions. The second knowledge suggested that there was a connection between the two, so the Buddha decided to see if this was true. These two are very certain things. When you’re suffering, no one can convincingly tell you, “That’s not really suffering; you’re not suffering.” Other things you might know can be shaped by the rules of the languages you’ve learned, but your experience of suffering is pre-linguistic. You know it more directly...

"We’ve all made mistakes in the past, but we’ve all done some good things, too. Focus on the good things. Those are what give you strength to keep on doing more good things. If you focus on the bad things you’ve done, you just start spiraling down and it’s hard to pull yourself up. So focus on the good that you’ve done. Dedicate that to your future, dedicate that to the people you’ve harmed in the past, so that you can live in this world without a sense that you’ve got a big debt. You’re working on paying off your debts, so work at it every day, every day." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Focus on the Good"

"After all, what does goodwill [mettā] mean? It means, “May that person be happy.” How is the person going to be happy? Through his or her actions. So basically you’re wishing, “If this person is behaving in an unskillful way, may he or she see the error of his or her ways and be willing to change, willing to become more skillful.” That’s an attitude you can have for everybody. Then you can ask yourself: “Is there anything I can do to help that person be more skillful?” Rather than tallying up all the bad things that person did in the past, you’re looking at him or her as someone with potential, the potential to change for the better. So, make it your challenge: Is there anything you can do to help that person become more skillful — to want to become more skillful?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Metta Math" (Meditations12)

Saṁyutta Nikāya 35:145 Kamma Sutta: Action, translated from the Pāli by Thānissaro Bhikkhu “Monks, I will teach you new & old kamma, the cessation of kamma, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of kamma. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak. “Now what, monks, is old kamma? The eye is to be seen as old kamma, fabricated & willed, capable of being felt. The ear… The nose…The tongue… The body… The intellect is to be seen as old kamma, fabricated & willed, capable of being felt. This is called old kamma. “And what is new kamma? Whatever kamma one does now with the body, with speech, or with the intellect: This is called new kamma. “And what is the cessation of kamma? Whoever touches the release that comes from the cessation of bodily kamma, verbal kamma, & mental kamma: This is called the cessation of kamma. “And what is the path of practice leading to the cessation of kamma? Just this noble eightfold path: right view, right resolve, right speech, ri...

"As Ajaan Suwat used to say, each of us has one person. You’re responsible for yourself. You can’t be responsible for other people, but you can provide a good example. This is what the Buddha did. He showed that a human being can, through his or her own efforts, find freedom from suffering. He didn’t go out and release people from their suffering, but he did show them that there’s a way. And that was enough. That opened people’s minds to new possibilities. That in and of itself is quite a gift. Otherwise, we go through life thinking, “Well, this is as good as it gets. We might as well learn to content ourselves with fighting over what’s out there.” The image the Buddha gave is of a pond that’s gradually growing drier and drier, becoming just a puddle. The fish in the pond are fighting over what little water that’s left. As long as you think that the only happiness in life lies getting that water, you’re going to resign yourself to fighting for it. But if you realize that if you de...

"As you’re engaging the whole mind, that’s when you get to know the whole mind. You have to take responsibility for what’s happening. There’s a quality of integrity underlying all of this. The mind doesn’t settle down? Well, you have to figure out what you’re doing, what you’re doing wrong, and be cheerful enough to admit when you’ve done wrong. A lot of people don’t like the idea of right and wrong. Sometimes they come to the Dhamma, thinking, well, you can get beyond right and wrong just by willing yourself to transcend them. But you can’t get beyond them that way. You get beyond right and wrong by figuring out what’s right and what’s wrong, dropping what’s wrong, working with what’s right until it’s completed the job. Then you can let go of that, too. Until you’ve completed the job, though, you have to be very much concerned with what’s right and wrong, what’s skillful and what’s not." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Engaging the Whole Mind"

"You know the story about Angulimala who had killed 999 people and then, not long after the Buddha taught him, became an arahant. A lot of people like that story. It shows that no matter what your background, there’s hope. But we have to remember that, at the time, there were a lot of people who didn’t like what had happened and were pretty upset. Here was Angulimala who had killed all these people and he was literally getting away with murder. You could say that he deserved to suffer, but the Buddha didn’t take that into consideration at all. He said, “Here’s a person who’s suffering really badly and his suffering is spilling out and affecting other people.” By curing Angulimala’s suffering, or showing him how to cure his suffering, he saved a lot of other people, too. So if there’s the question of whether you deserve to be happy or not, you learn how to put that aside. Realize that that’s a non-issue. The issue is that you’ve got actions. The mind is an active princi...

"The Buddha’s teachings on karma are often presented as a form of determinism — fatalism even: What was done in the past is going to determine what you’re going to experience in the present, and if you do something in the present moment, you have some hope that it will have an effect on the future. But there’s that question: Well, do you really have choice in the present? If the present moment is shaped by the past, what can you do? That would be a problem if the teaching were deterministic, but it’s not. The Buddha makes it very clear that if you believe everything that you experience is shaped by past karma, you have no way of practicing. There’s nothing you can do. You just have to accept what’s coming. There’s even the question of whether you could legitimately say you had the choice of accepting or not. If everything were already shaped, then there could no directions as to what you should or shouldn’t do, what’s skillful and what’s unskillful in the present mom...

"There are people who complain that if you’re really serious about the practice you lose your spontaneity. Well, spontaneity may have its good side but it has its bad side as well. You want to be really careful, you have to be heedful, your actions do have consequences, you can’t pretend that they don’t. As for the pleasure in the practice, the Buddha says it’s loaded there in the practice of right concentration. If you want to find joy and spontaneity, look there. As for your other actions, you have to be very careful to be restrained. Otherwise, you end up doing and saying and thinking things that you later regret. And that regret is very hard to get rid of. Especially as life goes on and you don’t see any progress coming in your practice, you begin to wonder, “What’s this all about? What have I been doing?” Don’t be the sort of person who realizes that a lot of time was wasted, a lot of time was thrown away. After all, we don’t have an infinite amount of time. Th...

"People who’ve come back from near-death experiences often say that the things they regret most — when they look back on their lives, thinking that they’re about to die — are the opportunities where they could have helped someone else, been kind to someone else, but they didn’t. So, be generous with others and have some restraint in your behavior: no killing, no stealing, no illicit sex, no lying, no taking of intoxicants; no divisive speech, no ill will. Then as you look back on your life, you realize there’s nothing for which you have to reproach yourself, or anything you have to be afraid of, that you’re going to be punished for. That’s one fear that can be alleviated by generosity and virtue." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Fear of Death"

" “I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, whatever I do for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.” So we do have the power of our actions. This was so important in the Buddha’s teachings that even though he wasn’t the sort of person who would go out and start arguments with people, there were times when he would go to argue with people who were teaching that what you’re doing right now didn’t have an impact right now. Three different groups of people stand out: 1) those who taught that whatever you experience right now is the result of past actions; it’s your vipāka, so you’ve got to put up with it; 2) those who taught that whatever you experience right now is the result of some creator god having created the world, so you’ve got to put up with it; and 3) those who taught that whatever you experience right now is totally random, there’s no pattern of cause and effect that you can understand or master to make a change in things. So put up with it. As ...

"In dependent co-arising [paṭiccasamuppāda]: As we will see, present kamma consists of fabrication [saṅkhāra] and the sub-factors [perception, feeling, intention, contact, attention] coming under the factor of “name” in name and form [nāmarūpa] . Past kamma is the experience of the six senses [SN35:145], which comes after the factors of fabrication and name [SN12:2]. What this means in terms of our direct experience is that by the time we’re aware of sensory input, we’re already primed to experience it in a certain way. This fact can cause us a lot of trouble, but it also opens the way to free us from suffering. If suffering depends on the way we prime our minds, then if we prime them in a skillful way, we don’t have to suffer even when the input from the senses — past kamma — is bad." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"You can follow the path of action by looking at your actions. Ask yourself, “Okay, what are the results I’m getting here? Are they satisfactory?” If not, go back and change what you’re doing. Remember Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. We want to be sane, so we have to figure out where to change our actions so that we can get the results we want. If you don’t like the results of your actions, that’s perfectly fine. That’s a kind of discontent that the Buddha actually encouraged. But don’t stop there and give up. And don’t make the mistake of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” Instead, ask yourself, “Where am I acting in a way that’s not skillful? And how can I change that?” Those are the questions that can take you far." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Ask Yourself the Buddha's Question"

"Get your own mind in shape, and then from there if you come out into the world and see something you can do, something you can help with, you’re coming from a much better place. All too often, people who meditate are accused of being irresponsible in the face of all the troubles of the world. Well, the world’s going to have troubles on and on and on, there’s no end to that. But you can put an end to your own contribution to the troubles." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Autonomous Good Karma"

" Dhammo have rakikhati dhammacāriṃ: The Dhamma protects those who practice the Dhamma. Sometimes it seems like those that practice the Dhamma are at a disadvantage. Other people get to lie, but we don’t. Other people can push for their own advantage without any scruples, but we have to stick by our principles. But those principles are what protect us. The advantage that people gain by harming themselves, harming other people, doesn’t last very long. It’s good to remember that, because we’re here for long-lasting well-being. That’s what wisdom is all about. Which means that we have to train the mind to be patient." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Dhamma Protects"

"You start out with mindfulness. The Buddha teaches you to be mindful of the body in and of itself, feelings in and of themselves, mind states, mental qualities in and of themselves. Why? So that you can be really clear on what your actions are and what the results are. If you’re concerned with other issues — as the Buddha says, “things in the world,” things that other people are doing — you miss what you’re doing. So you focus right here, get yourself in the present moment, not simply because the present moment is a good moment in and of itself, but because it’s the only place where you’re going to see your intentions in action." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Giving Rise to Discernment" (Meditations1)

"If a teaching is going to protect you, the first level of protection has to be on the theoretical level: You have to understand that your present actions are free, to at least some extent, to shape the present moment — for good or bad — and to have an impact on the future. This understanding of kamma would then provide you with motivation for looking carefully at what should and shouldn’t be done right now to avoid causing suffering. And this is precisely the understanding of kamma that the Buddha taught: As he pointed out in AN 3:101 , past actions do have their impact on the present moment, but your experience of that impact is filtered through your present-moment state mind. This is one of the reasons why Buddhist meditation focuses on being alert to what the mind is doing right now. If you’re sensitive to your present actions, you can shape them well enough to mitigate the influences from any past bad kamma and, through your present skillful kamma, to provide conditions for p...

"So for this question the mind always has — “What should I do now?” — [the Buddha] provides an answer for it. This is why the Dhamma is so good for the mind, so right for the mind, because it answers your burning question: You’ve got these responsibilities. How do you handle them, for the sake of a happiness that’s worth the effort that goes into it? The Buddha doesn’t waste his time talking about totally irrelevant things. After all, he said he learned a lot of things in the course of his awakening that he didn’t talk about. Why? Because it wouldn’t help with the solution to this problem: Why are we suffering? What are we doing that’s creating the suffering and what can we do to stop? He was very critical of teachers who would engage in what he called “bombast”: flowery words, beautiful sentiments that don’t offer any guidance that could be applied to that question, “What should I do next? What is the wisest thing to do next?” So we should take his teachings and apply them right...

"If you meet up with the results of some past bad kamma — suppose somebody does something bad to you — it doesn’t mean that your past kamma compelled them to do something bad. It’s simply that your past kamma left the opening. They saw the opening and they took it. And of course, that becomes their kamma now. The fact that you had that past bad kamma: There are unskillful ways and skillful ways that you can think about it. The unskillful way would be to think, “Well, this person was simply carrying out the dictates of kamma. So the person’s not responsible or is actually doing something good.” That’s unskillful. There’s no excuse for that person’s behavior, because the person did choose to take that opening. The skillful way is to say, “Well, I must have some past bad kamma, so I’ll learn how to take it in stride and not get too worked up about it. And I’ll take it as an incentive to try to be more skillful in the future.” As for times when someone does something real...

"Ill will you wash away with goodwill [mettā] . Stop to think when you’re wishing goodwill for someone: What are you wishing? You’re wishing that they understand the cause for true happiness and they act on them to the point where they get results. Is there anyone out there for whom you cannot feel that? You might be able to think of a few people. You’d like to see them squirm a little bit before they finally get on the path to true happiness, after all the evil they’ve done. But the Buddha didn’t condone that attitude. There was the case of Angulimala, who’d killed hundreds of people. The Buddha had compassion for him, was able to teach him the Dhamma, and Angulimala was able to escape a lot of the bad karma that would have come to him if he’d continued his ways. A lot of people, however, were not happy for him. They wanted to see him suffer first. They would throw things at him when he was on his almsround. But you want to ask yourself, “Do you want to be the type o...

"Remind yourself that everybody out there has pain to some extent or another. Some people are pain-free for the moment, but pain’s going to come. You’ve got to have compassion for everybody out there who’s got pain. That helps you realize it’s not just you. You don’t feel like you’re being singled out. Maybe you have the kamma that leads to that pain. In fact, you probably do. Now, the next question is: How can you cheat that kamma? We may tend to think that the universe is unfair in the way it hands out pains, but maybe it’s actually very fair. But the Buddha’s path allows you to cheat the system. You can get out. This path, the noble eightfold path, as the Buddha said, is the kamma that puts an end to kamma. Not only does it stop you from creating new kamma, but it also frees you from many of the effects of past kamma. The pains may be there in the body, but the mind doesn’t have to suffer from them. And that’s what matters. They’re like a big rock. The rock may b...

"As the Buddha said, winning out over your self is better than winning out over thousands of other people, because when you win out over other people it’s never resolved. If they don’t get killed off they’re going to plot their revenge, plot their return. If you do kill them off, they come back as your children — and then you’ve got a real problem! Karmic debts with your own kids. Victory over other people, victory outside, victory in war — even if it’s not victory in war but just everyday back-and-forth — never resolves anything. Even when issues get settled in court in the most fair and just way; well, there will always be some people who feel mistreated, and they’ll find some way to get back. This is the way of the world. Nothing gets settled really. The only way to reach any kind of closure is to disentangle yourself. And this is your way out: through training the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Outside of the Box"

"The outside world is not a set factor. A lot of your experience of the outside world depends on how you interact with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. That’s the world you experience. And so much of it comes from your intentions in the present moment. So if you can work on the mind to get its intentions right and skillful, as much as possible, then you find that you have a better world to live in, a better space to meditate in. So remember this: You’re not a passive victim of outside circumstances. You’re part of the shaper of those outside circumstances. When you realize your responsibility for the world you experience, then you can do something about it. When you see what’s under your control, what’s not under your control, and are very clear about that distinction, it clears up a lot of issues in life — and a lot of issues in your meditation. You may not have full control over the outside results of your actions, but you do have control over your intentions ...

"As the Buddha pointed out, a teacher’s duty is to offer protection, and the primary protection he offered was to show us that we do have freedom of choice. The few times he would go out and argue with other teachers were when they denied freedom of choice because, as he said, that leaves you unprotected. You don’t feel you can do anything at all. You’re trapped. Whatever suffering comes up, you’re stuck with it. So his first gift is to remind us we do have freedom of choice, and the choices can take us very far. That’s his protection. There’s another connection in Pali. The word saranam can mean both a refuge and something you keep in mind. So here again you keep in mind what the Buddha taught. You have gratitude for what he taught, and it will provide you with protection — the protection that comes when you know that you’re free to choose. You’re ultimately going to be free to choose not to suffer at all. Always keep that in mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Mindful & ...

"Other helpful attitudes toward the past include gratitude and forgiveness: the ability to appreciate the good things that other people have done for you, and to forgive them for the bad." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Happiness: A Buddhist Monk Looks at Positive Psychology"

Question: Can you form the hope to be welcomed at the moment of death, the grand passage, with “people” you’ve loved or the “people” for whom you may have some devotion or teachers who have put us on the path of the Dhamma? I have lots of gratitude for these “persons.” Thanissaro Bhikkhu: There’s no need to put the word “person” or “people” in quotation marks. There is the belief sometimes that the Buddha teaches that there are no persons, but actually, he teaches that there are persons as long as there’s the process of becoming. We keep on taking on the identity of people, of persons, through our attachments and clingings as we go from life to life to life. It’s only when you reach nibbāna that you go beyond being a person. Now, the question concerns the hope for being welcomed by the people you love or to whom you’re devoted: You have to be careful, because sometimes the people you have loved are not in really good destinations. They may have gone to a lower destination. If you tel...