Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"A lot of people don’t like looking at their actions because, after all, they’ve done a lot of unskillful things. Well, just remind yourself, all human beings have been doing unskillful things. If we had no unskillful behavior in our background, we wouldn’t be here, we’d be someplace else. So we all have habits that we have to learn how to undo, and new habits that we have to learn how to develop. But it’s in exploring the potential we have for choosing freely between different courses of action that we find a different kind of freedom ultimately. It’s a freedom that’s not conditioned. Now, looking at our past actions and looking even at our present actions is often like looking at a bramble patch. That’s where we want to say, “Forget about that, let’s just go for the larger Oneness.” But it turns out that you have to go through the brambles to get to the nice part inside the bramble patch — those brambles are protecting something. It’s not brambles all the way. But you explore y...

"We repeat so often, “There is no one in charge.” There’s no one to tell us that we have to sacrifice our happiness or our well-being for some larger purpose. But even though there’s no person in charge, still karma’s in charge . What you do to pursue your happiness is going to determine whether your happiness is long-term or short-term. If you’re wise, you’ll go for the long-term." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Happiness – Yours & Others’"

"Our actions are the important things in the world. What we’re doing right here, right now: That’s the most important thing — which is very different from the message that we get from everybody else. The news presented by the media is about what somebody else is doing someplace else: They tell us that that’s more important and that you’re just a loser sitting here watching TV or listening to the radio or on the web, absorbing what the real actors in the world are doing. Then you get sucked into the illusion that, “Well, maybe if I send out a message, I’ll become an important actor, too.” But, actually, the really important things in your life are things that nobody else can know: what you’re doing in your mind. This is important because what you do in the mind then becomes the basis for what you say, what you do, what you think. So that’s one way to tune into the Dhamma. When you see or hear anything that helps to support that, you know you’re seeing and listening to ...

"Modern sociologists have identified five basic strategies that people use to avoid accepting blame when they’ve caused harm, and it’s noteworthy that the early Buddhist teaching on moral responsibility serves to undercut all five. The strategies are: to deny responsibility, to deny that harm was actually done, to deny the worth of the victim, to attack the accuser, and to claim that they were acting in the service of a higher cause. The Pali responses to these strategies are: (1) We are always responsible for our conscious choices. (2) We should always put ourselves in the other person’s place. (3) All beings are worthy of respect. (4) We should regard those who point out our faults as if they were pointing out treasure. (Monks, in fact, are required not to show disrespect to people who criticize them, even if they don’t plan to abide by the criticism.) (5) There are no — repeat, no — higher purposes that excuse breaking the basic precepts of ethical behavior." ~ Thanissaro ...

"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)

"If you’re going to ponder kamma, this is what you ponder: what you’re doing right now, and the results of what you’re doing right now. The skills you’re going to develop in order to do this well will send their results back to protect you from the past and forward to protect you in the future. So these are skills that will protect you all around." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Honest & Observant"

"Conceit is one of the last fetters to be let go. Only arahants are freed from those last five fetters. But still even though they’re the last to be let go, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work at them now. The Buddha talks about conceit in two places. In one, he lays out nine kinds of conceit, basically where you compare yourself with other people. In the first set of three, you actually are better than the other person and you think you’re better or you think you’re worse or you think you’re equal. In the next set, you’re actually equal to the other person and you think you’re better or you think you’re worse or you think you’re equal. In other words, even when you’re right about the relative level, it’s still conceit. In the last three, you’re actually worse than the other person and you think you’re better or you think you’re worse or you think you’re equal. Here again, even when your comparison is correct, it’s still conceit. Ajaan Maha Boowa calls these forms of conceit the fan...

"We often hear that the Buddha taught that past karma totally shapes the present moment. You hear it again and again: what you’re experiencing now is the result of past karma, what you’re doing now will shape things in the future. But the Buddha actually attacked that view. He said instead that what you do right now can shape right now. He said that if you don’t believe that, you’re left unprotected. In other words, whatever comes up, you just have to accept. You have to just sit with it. And it sometimes can be pretty bad. He’s basically teaching you that you can change things: Change your attitude to what you’re doing, change the way you breathe, change the way you talk to yourself, and it’ll change what you’re experiencing. You can change it so well that you can end up not suffering at all, even from really bad things coming from the past. That was the good news of the Buddha’s awakening." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Acceptance"

"Desire for wealth, desire for power: These things can bring a lot of suffering and harm in their wake. And here the Buddha is offering you a totally harmless kind of food, a totally harmless kind of pleasure. Do you really love yourself? If you do, you’d go for the harmless. You’d avoid any kind of harm. As for lack of confidence in yourself, ask yourself, “Can I be with this breath?” Well, yes. “How about this breath?” Yes. In the beginning, content yourself with small victories. As the Buddha said, even just a finger-snap of the desire to be skillful is, in and of itself, meritorious. Sometimes we’re even afraid to want the path, because we’re afraid that we’d be committed to more than we can handle, and the part of the mind that’s not ready to be committed keeps pulling you back. But you can keep reminding yourself, “I’m not totally committed yet. I just want to think this thought: that it would be really good to find a path that puts an end to suffering, to find a path tha...

"Learn to look at what other people say as the result of your past actions; what other people do is the result of your past actions. In other words, the karma you’ve done in the past is coming back at you. It’s a sobering thought to think: Your past actions were done with the desire for happiness, and now you’re experiencing the skillfulness or lack of skillfulness in your past actions, in your past desires for happiness, your past efforts to bring about happiness. When you have that attitude, it’s a lot easier to live with other people. If they do something outrageous, you realize that you probably were a real character sometime in the past. And let it go at that. Your focus right now should be on what you’re doing and saying and thinking in the present moment." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Your Own Karma"

"You might hear people say that we don’t practice for the sake of the future, that we don’t want to have any goals. But actually, everything you do has to have a goal. If you deny a goal, then you’re putting yourself in denial, and that doesn’t help. The teachings on kamma will tell you, “What you do now is going to have an impact in the present and in the future.” Remember that, too, so you can be clear about what really needs to be done right now. That’s how this becomes an auspicious day." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An Auspicious Day (2015)"

"So focus on right now, and what can be done right now . And if it so happens that you’re still going to live for a much longer time, well, you keep creating good right nows all along. And it’s all to the good. The effort that goes into training the mind, the effort that goes into trying to be as skillful as possible in what you do and say and think is never wasted. It’s your wealth. It’s your investment in the future." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An Auspicious Day"

"You will make mistakes, but learn how to learn from them, and the best way to be willing and able to learn is to make sure that you start out with the intention not to harm. Then you can check to see: If you’re harming anybody, harming yourself, you stop. If you don’t see any harm, you continue. Then, after the action is done, you look at the long-term results. If it turns out you did do harm, you go talk it over with somebody who has experience on the path. Don’t be ashamed. Don’t be embarrassed. We’re here to learn. Talk it over with somebody you trust, and then learn that lesson for the next time around. It’s this way that your good intentions become skillful, and even when you do make a mistake, the fact that you were operating on good intentions to begin with makes it a lot easier to live with the fact that you made a mistake. It’s in this way that your practice stays protected — you’re protected and you’re protecting others through your actions." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu ...

"Admirable friends can’t do the work for you. As [the Buddha] says, no one can purify you; you can’t purify anybody else. You don’t go to heaven because of other people’s good actions; you don’t go to hell because of other people’s bad actions. It’s your actions that determine that. So there is that sense in which you’re separate. And of course you’re the one who chooses your friends to begin with. So in that way, the separateness of our selves comes first." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Separate Self"

"There was a debate recently over the question of whether there are times when it’s justified to go out and kill people if they’re really evil. Well, that’s making your goodness depend on their goodness or badness. It’s not an independent value; it’s not an independent principle. But as the Buddha pointed out, your goodness has to be generated from within. It comes from your wisdom, seeing that regardless of how bad other people are, you’re not going to behave in that way. And that gives rise to a sense of self-esteem." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Loving Yourself Wisely"

"Remind yourself that your life isn’t already written in stone, that you’re not a slave to fate or a little nameless cog in the big machine. You’re actually a doer, a mover, a shaper. You can shape your life in the direction you want it to go." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Impossible Things" (Meditations1)

"You’re chipping in the right direction as you’re focused on the appropriate line of questioning: “What am I doing right now? Is it skillful or unskillful? What can I do to make it more skillful?” That quality that the Buddha said lay at the heart of his awakening, which was not resting content with skillful qualities: If you see there’s room for improvement, you’re happy to improve, happy to try to figure out how to do it. If you haven’t figured it out yet, keep your eye out in that direction." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Abandoning the Effluents (1)"

"As Ajaan Suwat once pointed out, there is an important riddle to contemplate in the practice. On the one hand, the Buddha said that all phenomena are not self, and seeing things in that way is part of the path. On the other hand, there is that point we’re supposed to contemplate everyday: “I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, whatever I do for good or for evil to that will I fall heir.” There is very definitely an “I am” there. So it’s good to think about that riddle."   ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu  "The Riddle of 'I Am'"

"We do have the power to exert control over our intentions right now. And our intentions do shape our experience of the world around us, the world inside us, at least to some extent: enough to make the difference between suffering and not suffering. What we’re experiencing right now is the result of past intentions, plus our current intentions, plus the results of our current intentions. Even though we may not have absolute control over things, and will ultimately have to let them all go, we do have some control over our actions now. And you want to make the most of that fact." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Limits of Control"

"[The Buddha] doesn’t give a complete theory about how everything happens in the world and can be traced back to particular actions. He teaches karma to the extent that it’s useful in getting the mind to be trained so that it can put an end to suffering. That’s as far as his teaching goes, but that’s pretty far. It’s much better than having a map to everything but still suffering. So use these teachings to take you where you want to go because they can take you farther than you can imagine." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Meditation Karma Checklist"