The Buddha introduced the topic of kamma not with all the bad things we did and said but with generosity and gratitude.

"Basically, [the Buddha] starts out with what’s called mundane right view, which essentially is belief in the principle of kamma, your actions: that your actions really do make a difference, that the quality of your intentions really does determine the quality of the results. There are good and bad actions leading to good and bad results. A lot of us resist this teaching because as soon as we think about our past actions having results, we think about all the bad things we did and say, “Oops, they’re going to come and get me.”

But that’s not how the Buddha introduced the topic of kamma. When he was talking about mundane right view or the principle of kamma, he’d start out with generosity and gratitude. The phrasing is, “There is what is given, there is what is sacrificed, there is what is offered.” It sounds strange, but he’s basically pointing out that giving does constitute a meritorious act, and for two reasons. One, you do have choices — and this is probably the essential part of the Buddha’s teachings on kamma, on action: that you have choices, that things are not determined totally by the past. The results of past actions are going to crop up, but given the range of things that can crop up, you have choices in any one moment as to whether you’re going to shape those experiences in a skillful or unskillful way. So when you give something, it’s because you’ve made a choice. You weren’t forced to give.

The second reason for why giving is meritorious is because the action of giving does have results. It does lead to positive states of mind, positive conditions that have real value because people have value. People have value because they can make choices.

As for gratitude, the Buddha starts out by saying, “There is mother and father.” This was in opposition to a belief that you didn’t have any real debt to your parents because, in giving birth to you and raising you, they just were acting under totally predetermined forces, so they had no choice in the matter. You came out, and that’s it. It was just a mechanical or a biological process.

But once you realize that your parents had choices — they had the choice to give birth to you, they had the choice to let you live, and in many cases they taught you how to speak, how to walk, raised you — you have a huge debt to them. Even if they didn’t raise you, even if they abandoned you at birth to be adopted by somebody else, at least they gave you the body you have. They didn’t abort the pregnancy. So there’s a debt to them, a debt of gratitude — gratitude here meaning an appreciation of the goodness that other people have done for you, the fact that the happiness you have depends on the skillful choices that other people have made.

There’s a debt that goes along with that. And there’s a lesson as well: that we depend on the goodness of others and the hard choices that some people have to make. If we want goodness to continue in the world, we’re going to have to learn to make hard choices as well. We can’t just assume that whatever comes easy is okay. Sometimes you have to make the hard choice to go out of your way to do something you know is really good, really helpful, even though it requires sacrifices.

So that’s how the Buddha introduced his teaching on kamma, on action: There is goodness in the world because people can choose."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Truth of Transcendence" (Meditations6)

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