Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"There’s another thing that [the Buddha] recommends that you not think about in his discussion on appropriate attention in Majjhima 2. He talks about questions that are not worth following, not worth paying attention to. And some of them are, “What was I in the past? Was I in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? How will I be in the future? What will I be in the future?” Some people say, “Well, didn’t the Buddha ask these questions of himself when he first gained awakening?” The answer is that perhaps that was his first motivation to gain those first two knowledges. But then those are precisely the questions he dropped, because he realized that the question of who he was, was not a useful question — because, after all, the whole process was driven by action. He asked himself: Why not look directly at actions? Actions that are skillful, actions that are unskillful — in ways that you can get past those categories of skillful and unskillful — in other words, to ...

"As the Buddha pointed out in Majjhima 2, there are lots of questions that you could ask that are inappropriate and they’re not even worth your attention. When you look at the list, you can see that many of them are the kinds of questions you would be tempted to ask if you had knowledge of this sort: “What was I in the past? What will I be in the future? What am I now?” Instead of focusing on the actions, you start focusing on your identity — who you are as a being . But apparently the Buddha reasoned that the real factor determining things was not who you are, or what you are, or whether you exist or don’t exist. The real issue is action and its results. So he didn’t let himself get waylaid by thoughts of what we would call metaphysics — the existence of beings and things. He focused solely on actions. As a result, was able to see the patterns by which these actions played themselves out, and also the possibility of going beyond them. It’s because he looked carefully that he saw...

"Actions [kamma] are an interesting kind of possession: You do them and you don’t have to hold on to them. Even after the action is done, its results are going to be there. You don’t have to carry them around. So you just keep focusing on holding on to the mindfulness that reminds you to act skillfully and the conviction that this really does make a difference." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Ready to Evacuate"

"We want to be able to see why the actions we do for the sake of happiness end up leading to stress and how we can change those ways, so that we can actually act in a way that leads to true happiness. We break things down into very simple components so that we can manage them. We realize that this is a problem we can manage. That’s the good news of the Buddha’s teachings: that even though we may be causing ourselves stress and suffering, we can put an end to it. If our suffering really were caused by things outside that were beyond our power, then there’d be no hope. Or if it were caused by things we were doing that we couldn’t change, there’d be no hope, either. But here we’re making choices. We’re probably not making them all that wisely, but we do have some wisdom. We do have some discernment. It’s just a matter of applying it, giving it a foundation here in the present moment, and then really using it to look carefully to see: Where are we creating unnecessary stress and suff...

"Without all the Buddha’s efforts, where would we be? Those six years of austerities and the many years of teaching difficult people, just so that the Dhamma and Vinaya could be established. And here it is, it’s free. We should be overwhelmed with gratitude and practice accordingly." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Buddha's Compassion"

"Equanimity is sometimes taught with a defeatist attitude. A defeatist attitude says, basically, that there’s no lasting happiness to be found in the world, so you might as well give up trying to find it. Just learn to accept things as they are and don’t hope for them to be better than what they are. When you give up on your search for happiness, you can be equanimous and content with what you’ve got. That, as I said, is a defeatist attitude. It’s equanimity tinged with regret, disappointment, and a sense of powerlessness. It’s heavy and narrow, a contentment found by lowering your standards for satisfaction. We bow down to the Buddha, though, because he actually has us raise our standards for satisfaction, to accept nothing less than the ultimate happiness. There’s nothing defeatist in his attitude at all. In fact, he called the noble eightfold path the path to victory: You can find a happiness that’s not subject to aging, illness, and death, that’s totally free of s...

"The first level of right view is conviction in the principle of kamma: that there are good and bad actions that lead to good and bad results, which are determined by the quality of intention behind the action. A lot of us resist the teaching on kamma because we tend to run into it mostly when we find ourselves facing a bad situation, and kamma seems to say, “Well, you’re guilty, or you deserve this bad situation,” which is not what it really teaches at all. But because we think that, we tend to have a negative impression of the teaching. Actually, when the Buddha introduced kamma, he introduced it to show that it affirms two very important values in life: generosity and gratitude...." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Need for Right View"

"In our society of entitlement, a lot of people feel they can just take it easy and things should come their way. Then when things don’t come their way, they start complaining. But that’s not Dhamma practice. Dhamma practice is the realization that you’ve got to prove yourself. You’ve still got a lot of work to do with your mind, still a lot of areas where you could be kind to yourself and to other people, provide more happiness for yourself and for other people, but you’ve got to give up some of the things you have. And what have you got here? You’ve got your body. You’ve got your speech. You’ve got your mind. So give your body and mind to the practice. Sit and meditate longer than you might want to. See what that does for you. Walk in meditation longer than you might want to. Be more careful about your speech than you ordinarily might be. Learn how to ride herd on your mind, how to observe when to encourage it, when to rein it in. In other words, give yourself fully to the pract...

"In the West, these teachings [on kamma] are often misunderstood and, as a result, disliked. Part of the problem is that people, believing that these teachings to be deterministic, dismiss them as psychologically unhealthy. The complaint is that the teaching on kamma makes people fatalistic about their own suffering, complacent about their pleasure, and callous and indifferent to the sufferings of others. But this complaint is based on a misunderstanding of the Buddha’s actual teachings on kamma. In fact, the Buddha taught kamma in a way that is psychologically very healthy: neither fatalistic, complacent, nor callous." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Buddha Teaches His Son: An Essay on Majjhima Nikāya 61"

"We’re not here to connect with everybody. That’s an idea that has its roots back in European Romanticism: the idea we’re suffering because we don’t connect with all our fellow humanity. Well, there are some people you don’t want to connect with because they’ll have a bad influence on you. It’s not that you’re passing judgment on them forever, but you use your judgment, you use your circumspection to see which friendships are actually having a good impact on you, and which ones are not." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Circumspection"

"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...

"In the Buddha’s teachings, character is an important part of the practice. We tend to miss that as we come into contact with Buddhism here in the West, because we meet it either through an Internet chatroom, or in an academic setting when we’re taking a class in school, or through a meditation retreat center where we’re taught a technique. We may be taught a bit about loving-kindness [mettā], which comes across as a kind of a general niceness. But in none of these contexts is anything much taught about character, the principle that you have to be truthful and harmless in your search for happiness." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Peace Requires Character"

"In terms of distress with reference to the world, the number one issue that’s hardest to put down is the sense that you’ve been wronged. There’s a very strong sense of self that grows around that and a very strong sense that if you don’t keep that in mind, you’re going to miss out on some justice, so you’re the one who has to keep the issue alive. You have to realize that whether the wrong was deserved or not, it’s an issue that you have to chalk up to karma. You may have done something like that a long time ago. It’s so long ago that you’ve forgotten and it doesn’t seem right that something you’ve forgotten so long ago should come back and hit you, but that’s how karma works. Sometimes things take many lifetimes before they show up. So it’s not a case of whether you deserved it or didn’t deserve it. It’s simply that there was a cause and this was the result. And there’s no need to feel that you have to keep it in mind in order to have justice done, because again, karma will work...

"There’s also fear of death. What with the war and with the pandemic, that’s a lot on people’s minds. But the Buddha said that wars and pandemics can harm you only up to the end of this life. The things you really have to be afraid of are your own unskillful actions, because they can harm you beyond that. No one else can send you to hell. But you can send yourself to hell if you’re not careful." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Skillful Fear (2022)"

"When the Buddha discusses how people arrive at reconciliation, it’s when someone in the relationship has done something wrong, admits  that they did something wrong, and they’re willing to try not to repeat that mistake: That’s how you can have a reconciliation. And in this way, we’re reconciling ourselves — with our own behavior — all the time, if we have that attitude. It’s one of the reasons why the Buddha said it wasn’t that he was arguing with the world, it was the world that argued with him. He was constantly reconciling himself to what he’d done wrong so that he’d be in a position to learn. So if you can reconcile yourself with your mistakes, it shows that you’re open to reconciliation with the rest of the world. Now, whether they want reconciliation or not is their issue. But you can do your part all the time." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Admit Your Stupidity"

"The Buddha did have clear standards for right and wrong, of skillful and unskillful ways of engaging with the world, but he hardly ever spoke of justice at all. Instead, he spoke of actions that would lead to harmony and true happiness in the world. And instead of explaining his ideas for harmony in the context of pursuing a just world, he presented them in the context of merit: actions that pursue a happiness blameless both in itself and in the way it’s pursued. ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Wisdom over Justice"

"So as you’re looking for significance, this is where it lies: in training the mind so that it can be harmless. There’s not much news out there about harmless people, and yet they’re the really important people in the world: the ones who know that the search for happiness has to be responsible. You can’t just take your pleasures where you find them, or where you want to find them. You have to think about the consequences. Few people do that." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Significance"

"Traditionally, we talk about taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. In the Buddha’s time, it seems to have been a common pattern: People who knew nothing about the Buddha’s teachings would come and listen to him once, and their first reaction was to want to take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. This may be related to a statement the Buddha made about a teacher’s duties to his or her students, one of which is to provide protection in all directions. If we were talking about a theistic system, that would mean asking the god to provide the protection. But in the Buddha’s system, it means teaching you how to be your own protection. The protection provided by the Triple Gem — the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha — comes in taking them as examples for how we should provide protection for ourselves." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Refuge in Quiescence"

"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"

"Think of the ajaans going into the forest. Before, when they were lay people, they would take their weapons with them. But then as monks they were going totally unarmed, and their protection was taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha: in other words, trying to develop the qualities of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, in their hearts, in their activities. And they learned over time that that really was a much more solid protection: the protection of being inoffensive, the protection of being unburdensome, the protection of having goodwill [mettā] for all." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Free Like a Wild Deer"

Question 1. What is kamma? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: The word “kamma” has two meanings, depending on context. Primarily, it means intentional actions in thought, word, and deed [AN 6:63]; secondarily, the results of intentional actions — past or present — which are shaped by the quality of the intention behind those actions [SN 35:145]. ~ "Karma Q & A, a Study Guide"

"The cause of suffering lies inside. You suffer, not from what comes into the mind, but from what comes out of it. Things outside — society, the climate — might be atrocious, but they’re not the real cause of your suffering. If they were, then in the quest to put an end to suffering, you’d have to make the world a perfect place. But the world resists being made perfect." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Four Noble Truths"