Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Once you learn how to deal with the sleepiness and the pain and the distraction, you’re beginning to master the skills for understanding the mind, mastering the skills for finding happiness inside. Underlying all this is a willingness to learn, to notice your actions, to connect cause and effect, and to figure out which kinds of causes are good causes and which ones are not. When you have that attitude — that you’re here to learn — then no matter what comes up in the meditation, it becomes grist for the mill. If you simply have it in mind that you want this or that to happen in the meditation and it doesn’t happen and you get frustrated, that’s not how you’re going to find true happiness inside. It has to come from a willingness to learn, a willingness to observe, and particularly a willingness to being alert to your own actions. So it’s not just a matter of sitting there and watching whatever comes up. You’ve got to realize that you’re playing a role in fashioning what comes up....

"[The Buddha] has an interesting analysis of attention. He’s not talking about bare attention — just sitting there, passively watching things arise and pass away, as if you’re in a drugged state. To pay attention to life means to ask questions. Appropriate attention is when you start asking the right questions. And this is a good one to begin with: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” “Long-term” here is important. You want long-term rather than short-term happiness. That’s part of the wisdom. The other part is that happiness depends on your actions — what you do, what you say, what you think. From that principle, you can derive a lot of the Buddha’s teachings." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Living Honorably" (Meditations8)

"So have faith in what you’re doing and in the skills you’re developing here, because they can see you through, even when everything else starts collapsing and the mountains come moving in. And remember: The mind is not crushed by mountains. Your goodness is crushed only by your own discouragement, by your own lack of faith, your lack of conviction, lack of persistence. Those are the things that crush you, and yet those are also things you can do something about. The mountains keep moving in, moving in. The world is swept away. It’s the nature of the world. If the north mountain doesn’t get you, the south mountain will. But they get just your body. So focus on your mind: That’s your important refuge. All the skills you develop as you practice: Those are your refuge. Those don’t get swept away. Remember where the escape is. The escape is inside. You can’t escape the world, as the Buddha said, by going to the edge of the cosmos. He had that image of the skywalker — an interesting te...

"One of the distinctive teachings of the Forest tradition is its emphasis on how proactive the mind is in its engagement with the senses and with the world. We’re not just on the receiving end of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations coming in. We don’t simply respond to the stimulus of other people’s actions. We’re proactive. We go out looking for things. This is in line with the Buddha’s teachings on intention. Our experience of the present moment is made up of the results of past actions, but also our current intentions and the results of our current intentions. When you look at the way the Buddha lines things up in dependent co-arising, our intentions actually come before our engagement with the senses. We intend to engage the senses, and that’s how we meet up with the sensory material that’s coming in. What this means is that our intentions don’t have to be shaped by what’s coming in. They don’t have to be pushed around by what’s coming in. We can be more skillf...

"Conviction in the principle of kamma: That’s a strength because it emphasizes how important each decision is. Sometimes there will be a member of the committee that says, “Okay, you can make a skillful choice right now, but in another five minutes you’re going to go back to the old ways, so why bother right now?” Don’t listen to that voice. It’s destructive. Just say to yourself: “Well, I don’t care about five minutes from now. Right now, I’m going to do the skillful thing. When five minutes is up, we can deal with what to do then. But right now, I’m going to make the best choice because it’s important.” You could sit around and think about how the Sun is going to go nova sometime, and everything in the world is going to burn to a crisp, and that would make your actions and choices seem really minuscule. Well, don’t think in those ways. It’s your life that you’re shaping. It’s your experience of pleasure or pain, and the pleasure and pain of the people immediately ...

"When you’re playing tennis, the first lesson is keep your eye on the ball. You never forget that. Even when you become a great pro, you still have to keep your eye on the ball. In the same way, when you practice, keep your eye on your actions, because that’s where everything will become clear." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Reflections on Kamma"

"The Buddha says that you don’t go to heaven or to hell because of other people’s actions. Yet all too often we find ourselves in our own mental heaven or hell because of what someone else did. Actually, though, we’re the ones who create that heaven and hell. It’s through our own actions that we take what they did, what they said, or even what we think they thought, and turn it into our own private heaven or our own private hell." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Other People"

"A second question concerned praying for others, asking, “If you pray for others, does it have an impact on them, and if so, how does this fit in with the doctrine of kamma?” In Buddhism, we don’t talk about praying, but we do send thoughts of goodwill [mettā], which is basically having a good wish for that other person. When the mind has a thought, it’s actually sending out currents of energy, and sometimes a current of energy can have an impact on other people, especially if you have kamma with that person and if that person’s kamma is such that, at that moment, he or she can receive a good influence from outside. As for your kamma: It’s like having a radio station. The more concentrated your mind, the stronger the signal you’re sending out. And as for the people receiving it, if their radio is turned off, they can’t receive anything. If it’s turned on but tuned to another station, then they’re not going to get it, either. But if your kamma is in alignment so that actually you’...

"[The Buddha] didn’t ask that his listeners all commit themselves to an unquestioning belief in the possibility that their actions might lead to rebirth, but he wasn’t interested in teaching anyone who rejected that possibility outright. As we’ve already noted, he saw that heedfulness lay at the root of all skillful qualities. If a listener couldn’t be persuaded to develop an appropriate level of heedfulness around the risks of action, any further teaching would be a waste of time." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Truth of Rebirth and Why It Matters for Buddhist Practice"

"You can really trust the practice to see you through. Often our desire to cover all the bases is a fear that if one thing doesn’t work out, something else will. And we hesitate to commit ourselves to a particular path of action for fear that it may not see us all the way through. We hedge our bets. Yet instead of providing us real protection, this attitude ends up giving us a life of nothing but bits and pieces: a little bit of this, fragments of that, a little bit of peace, a little bit of wealth, a little bit of health, nothing in any really solid measure. But by taking refuge in the Dhamma we’re taking refuge in the conviction that developing the mind will cover all contingencies. And because the practice of virtue, concentration, and discernment — all the seeds for happiness — lie right here, that simplifies matters. It also allows us to give our full energy to the things that matter most." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Simplify" (Meditations2)

"I remember when I was becoming a Buddhist one of the main breakthroughs or milestones, I guess you would say, was when I realized that I really had to depend on my own karma. Prior to that I’d been raised a Christian, and even as I was beginning to have lots of doubts about those teachings, there was still a strong sense that there was somebody up there who was looking after us. Suddenly I realized that if I wanted to be a true Buddhist, I’d have to drop that. That was a real milestone in my mind. It threw me back on my own actions. I really had to be more honest with myself, I really had to be more careful about what I did." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Being a Buddhist"

"Even when people behave unjustly, you have to learn how to set aside thoughts of revenge, because they accomplish nothing good. Remind yourself that what other people do is their kamma; what you do is your kamma. You can’t ultimately be responsible for their kamma; however, you can be responsible for your own actions. So, you spread thoughts of goodwill [mettā]: thoughts that they may be happy, and especially that they may understand the causes for true happiness and then really act on them. That’s a thought you can extend even to people who are really cruel. In fact, you especially want to extend that to cruel people so that instead of focusing on getting revenge or retribution, you open your mind to the question of what you might do or say that would actually get them to change their ways. That way your intentions become more skillful." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Wisdom of Wising Up" (Meditations6)

Question: Is it possible to send thoughts of goodwill [mettā] to dead people? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Please do. After all, they’ve been reborn — either that or they’re looking for a place to be reborn — and either way, they can benefit from your kind thoughts of goodwill for them. ~ "Facing Aging, Illness, & Death: The Central Teaching of the Buddha"

"To get our heads around the teaching on kamma, it also helps to get our heart around it. Have some positive feelings toward this teaching on kamma. It’s not there just to punish you. It’s there to offer you opportunities. It’s there to remind you that your actions are important. And even though you’ve done unskillful things in the past, you’ve got a new opportunity right now to do something skillful. And then again right now. Each right now." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Good Side of Kamma"

"Never underestimate the power of the good example you create. This is how goodness gets spread around in the world: not by people talking, not by books, as much as by examples. When you see someone who’s done something really unselfish, it’s very inspiring. You realize, okay, the world is a place with good people, people who are able to overcome their defilements or their narrowness or whatever. The things that keep them bound up in the cycle of suffering and then revenge for suffering and then more suffering and then more revenge for suffering: That goes nowhere. We’ve seen way too much of that. But the people who stand up and say, “No, I’m not going to continue that way”: Those are the ones who make the human world a good world to be in, and they inspire us all. So you want your examples — the examples you set by your thoughts, words and deeds — to be good ones. That’s one of the ways in which you’re acting for the benefit of others." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu ...

"Another complaint people have about karma is the idea that if somebody is suffering, they deserve to suffer so you’re going to leave them that way — which is not the case. Again, nobody deserves to suffer; actions just have results. But the state of mind with which the action is done and the state of mind with which you receive the results can make a huge difference. If it seems hard-hearted to say that other people are suffering because of their karma, you have to ask yourself: Is your compassion so pure that you can only give it to pure people? We’re all in this together; our compassion has to spread to everybody — good and bad, those who have good things, those who have done bad things to us. We’ve all done both good and bad things. Karma’s a great equalizer, in the sense that the basic principle underlying it applies equally to everyone. At the moment, there are inequalities. Some people are very happy. Some people are very fortunate, others are not at all. But w...

Question: When you are in mindfulness, are you remembering and by this act soliciting the past, or are you firmly in the present? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: With mindfulness, you are trying to bring only what you need to know from the past. Through the quality of alertness, you focus on the present. Try to bring the two of them together, so that you remember what you need to know from the past so as to shape the present moment well. Remember, too, that the present is not just given to you. It’s also something that you’re shaping in the present moment as well. Past kamma gives you the potentials for the present moment, but your present kamma is actually what shapes your experience from those potentials. ~ "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"The real basis for a sense of connectedness comes through kamma. When you interact with another person, a connection is made. Now, it can be a positive or a negative connection, depending on the intention. With generosity you create a positive connection, a helpful connection, a connection where you’re glad that the boundary is down, a connection where good things can flow back and forth. If it’s unskillful kamma, you’re creating a connection, you’re creating an opening that sooner or later you’re going to regret. There’s a saying in the Dhammapada that a hand without a wound can hold poison and not be harmed. In other words, if you don’t have any bad kamma, the results of bad kamma won’t come to you. But if you have a wound on your hand, then if you hold poison it will seep through the wound and kill you. Unskillful kamma is just that, a wound. It’s an opening for poisonous things to come in. The opposite principle also works. If there’s a connection of skillful behavior, a good...

"Everything the Buddha teaches gets analyzed down into actions, intentions and their results. The intention you can gauge as to whether it’s skillful or not, the results you can gauge as to whether they are skillful or not. What kind of person you are, how good or bad you are, that’s not anything you can gauge at all. If you try to do it, it really gets in the way. So your duty here is to look at your intentions, and then to see how well those intentions play out when you act on them. And learn how to judge the results. Look at things simply in terms of cause and effect, and measure the effects in terms of whether they’re harmful or not, whether they lead to happiness or whether they lead to stress and suffering." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Thoughts with Fangs"

"The Buddha placed great emphasis on this virtue of truthfulness. It’s one of the reasons why he said that people who feel no shame in telling a lie are capable of any kind of evil. This doesn’t mean that everybody who lies is capable of all kinds of evil. There are people who will feel ashamed about the lies they tell, which shows that they know some boundaries, that they have a sense of right and wrong. The people who feel no shame at all are the ones you have to watch out for. It’s especially troubling when you hear somebody say, “There are circumstances where a lie is perfectly acceptable.” They’ll give extreme examples where if you don’t tell a lie, somebody might die. Then they turn it into a principle that lies can be okay in circumstances that are far less drastic. But even in the drastic cases, can you be sure that telling a lie will save the person’s life? Some people are very poor liars. More importantly, what kind of person feels no shame in justifying the telling of ...

"The Buddha never claimed to offer proof for either the efficacy of action or for rebirth, for he knew that the evidence for these teachings lay beyond the ken of most of his listeners. Concerning the efficacy of action, the best he could do was to point out that those who denied that present action had a role in shaping present experience — because they attributed all experience to past action, to the act of a creator god, or to total randomness (AN 3:62) — were undercutting any rationale they might claim for teaching others or for following a path of practice. In other words, if present experience is not at least partly due to present actions, there is no way that a path of practice could have any effect. Teaching a path of practice would be a futile activity. The Buddha’s argument here was no proof that skillful and unskillful actions actually have consequences both in the present and on into the future. It simply pointed out the contradiction in teaching otherwise." ~ Tha...

"You notice as you read through the teachings of the ajaans, a huge percentage of the Dhamma talks are pep talks. Encouragement. It’s all too easy when you’re under difficult circumstances to think about how much better you’d like it to be this way or that way. But the ajaans are there to remind you to think about the good things you do have, not so much in terms of the material things, but in terms of good opportunities to practice. These opportunities don’t come if you’re spending all your time trying to become as wealthy as possible, or as famous as possible, or as powerful as possible. The good things of the mind come when you pare down your concern for material things, you pare down your concern for the world outside and your position in the world outside, and you focus more on what good qualities you can develop. Sometimes you develop these qualities in the context of society at large, and sometimes you develop them when you’re out in seclusion. But they are the real food fo...

"Meditation is a gift. You’re taking care of the area where you really are responsible. That’s another one of the Buddha’s basic definitions of wisdom: that you take care of the area that you really are responsible for and you don’t drop that to go meddling into other people’s affairs or into things where you’re not really responsible. The fact that we have the ability to create either suffering or happiness inside, and the fact that we use this ability to create so much suffering: That’s our problem. That’s something that we have to work on. Once you solve that problem, you solve all the other problems you’re responsible for. Then you have energy left over to help other people — to be, at the very least, a good example for them, or to give them advice so they can work on their inner responsibilities, too." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Training Your Minds"

"How do you keep patience going? How do you keep persistence going? By having a good sense of humor about what’s happening to you in the path and having an infinite good humor that can keep you going. This is the attitude that allows you to say, “Whoops, another mistake! – Well, try again! Another mistake? Try again!” It’s that ability to step back from yourself a bit to see what you’re doing and not to be so in to a particular state of mind or in to a particular identity that you can’t let it go." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Infinite Good Humor"

"In his effort to master kamma in such a way as to bring kamma to an end, the Buddha discovered that he had to abandon the contexts of personal narrative and cosmology in which the issue of kamma first presented itself. Both these forms of understanding deal in categories of being and non-being, self and others, but the Buddha found that it was impossible to bring kamma to an end if one thought in such terms. For example, narrative and cosmological modes of thinking would lead one to ask whether the agent who performed an act of kamma was the same as the person experiencing the result, someone else, both, or neither. If one answered that it was the same person, then the person experiencing the result would have to identify not only with the actor, but also with the mode of action, and thus would not be able to gain release from it. If one answered that it was another person, both oneself and another, or neither, then the person experiencing the result would see no nee...

"Our problem is that we tend to be conspiracy theorists. We want to know: What’s happening behind the scenes? Who’s operating the lasers that shot lightning over northern California last year? We have a sense of “our self” and we have a sense of the world in which “our self” operates, but those ideas are behind-the-scenes ideas. The Buddha tries to reduce them to what’s on the surface. The world, he says, is simply events of the six sense spheres, and the feelings that arise from contact, all of which are happening right here. The same with your sense of self: It’s just the aggregates. What are they? They’re events. They’re actions that are happening right here on this level. The more you try to elaborate a theory that gets behind, behind, behind the scenes, the further you’re getting away from what the Buddha wants you to look at: What are the patterns right on the surface?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "On the Surface of Things"

Question: I’ve come to meditation to help me bear the atrocities of the world. What is awakening? Is it a moment of conscience when one embraces all the sorrows of the world, and in that case means hello to all sorrows or is it on the contrary a state of total forgetfulness and egotism, in that case it would be hello to guilt? So, which is it? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Neither. Remember the image of feeding. Ordinarily, we feed on the world, both physically and mentally, in order to gain happiness and maintain our identity as beings. But when you gain full awakening, the mind no longer needs to feed because it already has enough in terms of its own happiness. When you’ve reached that state, you can engage in the world without having to feed on it. You can help those whom you can help, and you don’t have to suffer in cases where you can’t help. In this way, you’re neither embracing the sorrows of the world nor are you running away from them. Instead you have a different relati...

"The word “deserve” never appears in the Buddha’s teachings except for one thing — arahants deserve our respect and our generosity — but there’s nothing about people deserving to suffer. After all, when the Buddha taught how to put an end to suffering, he didn’t first ask people, “What karma did you do in the past that’s making you suffer right now? I’ll teach you only if you don’t have any bad karma.” If he had said that, he wouldn’t have had anybody to teach. He taught an end to suffering for all cases of suffering, whether it was “deserved” or not. So learn how to maintain a sense of well-being, and don’t listen to the thoughts that say you don’t deserve it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Breath Teaches the Brahmaviharas"

"Concentration teaches you how to be with pleasure and not be overcome by it. It’s in this way that you have a refuge from your past karma, a refuge from your urges to create unskillful karma in the present moment. But even then, as the Buddha said, you’re still in a world that goes up and down, and you’re still subject to the fact that your mind could change. This is why you need something more solid. This is what the noble eightfold path provides. It’s the karma that leads to the end of karma. It takes the mind to a place that really is secure, where you step outside of time, step outside of space, and nothing is being done in that dimension. No old karma can reach you in there, no new karma is being created — and that’s the ultimate happiness. It’s the ultimate security, the ultimate safety, the ultimate refuge. It’s a refuge that lies beyond not only unskillful karma, past and present, but also skillful karma. That’s where you’re really safe." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A...

" “We’re related through our actions” The connections we have in life with different people are created by our actions: things that we’ve done together with other people or to other people or for other people. These create the connections that we have with the people around us. Interconnectedness is a very popular teaching in Buddhism, especially nowadays, but it’s funny that people like to talk about interconnectedness without the teaching on karma. They turn to dependent co-arising as a model for interconnectedness, this web of connections where one factor can’t exist without a whole lot of other factors, but they neglect to realize that dependent co-arising is a teaching on how ignorance is connected with suffering, how craving is connected with suffering. It’s the kind of connectedness you want to cut, not the kind you want to celebrate. Connectedness through karma can go either way — the connections can be good, or they can be bad. So you want to foster the good ...

"You have to be clear about your intentions, mature about admitting when you have some unskillful intentions in the mind, and honest about the results that come when you act on unskillful intentions. Only by observing that, again and again, can you finally get tired of those intentions. When you really see that there’s a connection between unskillful intentions and needless suffering, you become genuinely motivated to find the escape from that suffering. This is the only way you can do it. Basically, you have to learn to judge what’s worth observing and what’s not. And again the Buddha points you to what’s worth observing. The issue of needless stress that comes from unskillful states of mind: That’s where he points you – “Look here, look here, look here.” Then it’s up to you to see and — when you’ve seen — to take that knowledge and put it to use. This requires that you be responsible." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Adult Dhamma" (Meditations5)