Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"The second precept [for the mind] is against stealing: This refers to stealing other people’s bad qualities and thinking about them all the time, without asking their permission to take their bad qualities to think about. You just take them. And that’s a kind of stealing. What happens is that you clutter up your mind with all kinds of garbage. As long as you’re going to steal other people’s habits or behavior, steal their good ones. See what other people are doing that sets a good example. Take that as a lesson for yourself. If you’re going to look at their mistakes or their bad habits, reflect back on yourself. You see their bad habits. This is what those habits look like from the outside. If you have the same habits, that’s what they look like. Use their bad habits as a mirror. Check and see if you have any of those yourself. But if you don’t have those habits, you don’t have to take them from them. You’d just be cluttering up your mind with garbage." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu ...

"It’s a matter of priorities: Where are you going to focus your energies to get the best results? The reflection connecting the principle of karma with equanimity is meant to clear the decks so that you can focus right there, on your present actions. That’s where the true issue is. That’s what underlies the basic structure of reality. When you can focus here, you don’t get all caught up in all the “what ifs” about the past: “What if I had done this? What if I hadn’t done that?” All those “what ifs” about the past are a massive waste of time. The important “what if” is: “What if I act skillfully now?” Try that out." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Intelligent Equanimity" (Meditations3)

"Think of the case of Angulimala. He had killed hundreds of people, yet the Buddha saw that he had potential. Rather than just leaving him to his fate, the Buddha was able to teach the Dhamma in such a way that Angulimala wasn’t going to have to suffer in the lower realms. A lot of people were unhappy with that because, literally, he was getting away with murder. But then you take their desire to see him punished, and you compare that with the Buddha’s goodwill to see him escape, regardless of what his past was: That’s what goodwill [mettā] means. A lot of harm is done in the world by people who want to see justice done through punishment. But if you can find a way that people can learn how to behave skillfully and stop doing unskillful things, that’s much better than just punishing people, because punishment doesn’t go very far. Some people learn their lesson from punishment, but a lot of people don’t." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Light of the World"

"[Conviction in the principle of karma and rebirth] 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 of 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"

"The same goes for our actions: We’re not really paying attention to what we’re doing because we’re often thinking about what we’re going to do next. Or we think about what we want to get out of the action and we’re not really looking at what we’re doing. As for the results, again, sometimes we don’t like the results of our actions, so we close our eyes. This is why there’s so much delusion in our lives. When you first look at these three stages of action, it’s pretty disconcerting. You see all the different things in your mind that you really don’t like — all the unskillful voices, all the unskillful motives. This is why you want to get the breath as comfortable as possible so that you can put yourself in a good mood, feeling settled, at ease, so that you can see the mind’s negative states without getting sucked into them, without getting depressed by them, without getting upset: simply, “Oh, yes, there’s that, too.” " ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Dealing with Confusion"

"These are important skills: learning how to recognize how you fabricate an emotion and how you do it unskillfully; and how you can deconstruct it and construct something more skillful in its place. It may sound artificial, but the whole process of constructing an emotion is artificial in the first place. It’s something fabricated. There’s an element of intention and, in many cases, the intentions have become so habitual that they seem automatic, because of the strength of the perceptions and the strength of the breath or that particular way of breathing around greed or aversion or delusion. You tend to think, “Well, this is what I really feel.” But it’s just a habit, and as with any habit, if you see that it’s harmful to you, harmful to the people around you, you want to learn how to undo it; replace it with other habits." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Deconstruct Your Emotions"

"Don’t latch on to the results of your actions; latch on to the fact that you’re making the decisions right now, all the time. Once a decision has been made, it’s been put into a larger circle of cause and effect beyond your control; but you do have a chance to make a decision again the next moment, and the next moment, and then the next. Focus on that. Don’t get caught up in the results of past actions. Focus on what you can do now to make the present actions skillful. That’s the focus of the teaching, “We’re the owners of our actions.” " ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sublime Attitudes" (Meditations2)

"As the Buddha said, “You don’t go to heaven or hell because of other people’s actions. You go because of your own actions.” Those can take you to heaven; they can take you to hell. So why are you taking yourself to hell? And why are you upset with what other people are doing, which really has nothing to do, really, with you? It’s your actions that make all the difference." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Look at Yourself"

"As the Buddha said, discernment begins when you ask the question of someone who seems reliable: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” Now you can interpret that on an external level, but you can also interpret it on an internal level. The external level is the practice of merit. Generosity leads to long-term welfare and happiness. Virtue leads to long-term welfare and happiness. Developing attitudes of universal goodwill [mettā] in the mind leads to long-term welfare and happiness. Those are attitudes and actions you want to develop because they help you see more clearly how your actions have an impact on your life. As you act in more skillful ways, life becomes a lot lighter. You feel a lot better about yourself. There are a lot of people out there who, when they’re feeling bad about themselves, go see a therapist. And what the therapist should tell them is, “Go out and do something good. Go out and help somebody. Try to be more principled in y...

"Learn how to speak to yourself in a way that shows compassion, that shows goodwill [mettā], really does wish for your true happiness. A part of the mind has a tendency to believe in the negative things more than in the positive, so it feels fake to remind yourself of how much you really do want true happiness. But don’t you want true happiness? Can’t you allow yourself to think that thought? Part of the mind will say, “But look at all these horrible people and what they’re doing.” Well, that’s their business. That’s their kamma. You don’t have to go around collecting other people’s bad kamma and weighing yourself down. Take a couple of good, long, deep breaths again. Air things out. Think about how petty a lot of the issues are that you get worked up about — the things that people say and do. You know that ten years from now you’re going to totally forget them. Or you’ll look back on today and say, “How could I let myself get so worked up about those things? Why did I waste my ...

"So when we talk about acceptance as a part of the path, we have to be very careful about what it means and what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that you just accept everything as wonderful, learning to be accepting of all things and equanimous around all things. Sometimes equanimity is useful; sometimes it’s not. You accept the fact that your actions do shape your experience, and you accept the fact that there’re going to be a lot of unpleasant things in life because you’ve been unskillful in the past, but you don’t just sit there. You try to figure out what you can do now to act as skillfully as possible, speak as skillfully as possible, think as skillfully as possible, listen as skillfully as possible, respond to pain and pleasure as skillfully as possible. So make use of the insight that our lives are shaped by our actions. The question is not so much what we are, the question is what are we doing? Actually, what we are is the result of actions, both past and present, so ev...