Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"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)

"We do have the potential to be cruel. Our tongues are like knives, our arms and our hands are like guns: We can do all kinds of good or harm with these things. So this is why heedfulness lies at the base of goodwill [mettā] . It’s a question of getting your motivation straight." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill & Heedfulness"

"Sometimes the Pali word for stress, dukkha is translated as unsatisfactoriness. There’s a way in which that’s right, but a huge way in which it’s wrong. Dukkha means pain, stress, suffering. It’s unsatisfactory because there is something better, but taken on its own, when you say that something is unsatisfactory, it sounds as if you could simply change your standards and learn how to be satisfied with things, and then you’d be okay. And that’s a lot of what modern Dhamma teaches: Accept the fact that things change. Don’t want them to be any way different, and you’ll be okay. Learn some equanimity. That is not  the escape from suffering. That’s not the escape from unsatisfactoriness. The escape is realizing that you’re implicit in making these things happen. When the Buddha says that the objects of the senses and the senses themselves are fabricated, it’s not simply that they depend on conditions, but that you play a role in getting engaged with them, shaping them. And it’s becau...

"If it strings you out to focus on the stress [dukkha], then focus on the question, “Where are the good things right now? What can you rely on as your path?” If there’s a little bit of mindfulness, hold onto it. Right speech, right action, all the “rights” of the noble path: Hold onto what you’ve got." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "When Things Aren’t Going Well" (Meditations5)

"This is one of the purposes of doing meditation to begin with — to see how much of our experience we’re fabricating. We’re fabricating a lot more than we think. “Fabricating” here doesn’t mean that you’re lying, it simply means that you’re creating things, jerry-rigging things together, to make some sense out of your experience, or to get something out of your experience. But the way you jerry-rig can carry lots of problem with it. A lot of things that bother us in life are not simply “givens.” We’ve taken some raw material from our past karma and have shaped it into something oppressive. That’s the kind of pain that the Buddha is focusing on — the pain that comes from craving." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Fabrication of Pain"

"I think a large part of the problem is that many people come to Buddhism having had their first spiritual experience with drugs. The nature of a drugged spiritual experience is pretty passive. It’s all about acceptance. Just let go, and everything’s really already wonderful. That may be good when you’re on drugs, but we can’t live that way. We can’t function that way. We’re acting in the world. We have to realize that the mind is not passive. When you start being passive like that, you can do it only for a little bit of time. Then you’ve got to get active again. Look what happens to people who are hooked on drugs. Anything! They’ll do anything in order to get that drugged experience again. This is where the ugly side of the eating nature of the mind shows itself, when you look for your happiness based on something that’s impermanent like that. You have to realize that the Buddha’s vision begins with something utterly different: realizing the importance of your actions. We’re all ...

"You realize that if your peace is going to last, if your happiness is going to last, it has to depend on not causing any harm to anybody else. Otherwise they’ll try to destroy it. So you have to take their desire for peace, their desire for happiness into consideration. There’s a passage where the Buddha tells King Pasenadi that you can search the whole world over, and you’ll find no one who doesn’t have fierce love for themselves. You have fierce love for yourself. Everyone else has the same fierce love for themselves. So if your happiness gets in the way of their fierce love of themselves, they’re not going to stand for it. There’d be no peace." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No Happiness Other than Peace"

"The general Western resistance to the concept of defilement is a serious obstacle to reaching the end of suffering and stress and to reaping the benefits of the practice along the way. In light of the first two facts — that defilement is a quality of actions measured by the extent to which they cause affliction — an unwillingness to accept the idea of defilement translates into an unwillingness to examine your own actions to see if they cause harm. This is a form of narcissism that makes it impossible to see the connection between the second and first noble truths. If you refuse to accept the idea that your thoughts, words, and deeds cause suffering, you won’t be able to see the sources of suffering coming from within the mind. In light of the third fact — that the brightness of the mind is its ability to recognize defilement and do something about it — an unwillingness to accept the idea of defilement translates into a willed ignorance around one’s own actions and their effects....

"Our actions really do make a difference, the difference between causing and not causing suffering really does matter, and the principles of skillful and unskillful action are patterned enough that we really can learn useful lessons from our mistakes." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Practice in a Word"

"When the Buddha analyzed the causes for stress, there’s no place where he says someone does something . Simply he says, “There is this action, and then from that there is that action. When there’s this action, then there’s that action…” If the actions are done in ignorance, there’s going to be stress and suffering; if they’re done with knowledge, they can become part of the path away  from suffering. So you want to focus on the actions of the mind — this is why we get the mind really  quiet: not to find out who we are, but to see exactly what actions are happening in the mind, which ones are causing stress, and which ones are helping put an end to it. When we focus on the actions, we’re not saying there’s nobody there, we’re just saying that that issue is irrelevant right now. It’s like when you talk to a physicist, and the physicist describes the atoms in a rock. He doesn’t say whether the rock is sandstone or granite or limestone. He’s more interested in the electrons and ...

"It’s easy not to believe that the quality of your intention is going to determine the results of your actions, because you see a lot of people acting out of greed, hatred, and delusion, and yet they seem to be pretty happy, in the short term at least. So it is a matter of belief. And the Buddha’s proof simply is a pragmatic one: If you believe in your actions, you’ll act more skillfully. He adds that if you really want to put an end to suffering through your own efforts, this is what you have to believe. You have to take this as your working hypothesis." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Believe in Your Actions"

Question: The precept against killing is often translated into adopting a vegetarian diet. Is this necessary? Aren’t you also killing these poor vegetables, stripping their skin off while they’re still alive and boiling them? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: For the monks, our rule is that we’re not allowed to eat meat if we either know or suspect that it was killed for the purpose of feeding us. The precept against killing is specifically against either killing something on your own or telling someone else to kill. Now, if you want to take the precept further and adopt a vegetarian diet, that’s perfectly fine. But the precept doesn’t require it. Just make sure that when you go to a seafood restaurant and they have a fish tank with live fish, don’t choose any of the live fish. As for vegetables, they don’t come under the concept of sentient being — they don’t feel pain — so the precept doesn’t cover them. We’ve received several questions on the issue of the relationship between the ...

"You look in the newspapers and it seems like everything in the world is falling apart. And it is. So, what is there to accomplish? We train our minds. We’re good to one another, because that kind of goodness isn’t erased by death." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Living Honorably (2015)" (Meditations8)

"When we say that people suffer because of their actions, past and present, it means that there’s no one in the human world who’s really innocent. Even if someone has behaved perfectly in this lifetime, there may be some bad seeds in his or her kamma field from past lifetimes that are now sprouting. Now, this doesn’t mean that that person deserves to suffer. And it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t feel compassion for that person. If your compassion is so picky that it can go only to innocent people, you won’t find anyone to give it to. Accept the fact that the human realm is one where we all have a mixture of past bad kamma and past good kamma. We’re all in this together, so we should all have compassion for one another. And remember that the Buddha never talked about people deserving to suffer. He offered his teachings on how to stop suffering to all beings, no matter what their past kamma was." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Sublime Determinations: a Retreat on the Brahmavihāras...

"Now, there are some people, of course, whose behavior is such that you may not want to be connected with them. But at least have sympathy: To whatever extent they’re doing unskillful things, they’re suffering. In some cases, the best course of action is to wish them well but to realize that you’re going to have to go separate ways." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Faith in Goodness"

"Here we’re meditating on what the mind is doing, because what the mind is doing is going to make all the difference between suffering and not. What you’re doing right now is shaping your experience right now, and if you’re not satisfied with what you’re experiencing right now, then, as they say, “If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” If you don’t like your experience now, you can change what you’re doing to shape it. Try to detect what you’re doing to shape your experience and change it for the better. This is why we meditate, because the source of all our actions, the source of all our experience, is the mind. So you’ve got to look at your mind. The best way to look at it is to get it into the present moment where it’s fabricating things. We use the breath as our topic because it’s right next to the mind and it’s our anchor in the present." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Dispassion Isn’t Depression" (Meditations10)

"You want to look at the attitudes you’re fostering in your mind and make sure they’re skillful ones — because the whole issue of kamma boils down to this: What you do right now is important. What was done in the past may have some influence on what you can do right now, but what you do right now is what’s really important. And the possibility of doing something skillful right now is always present." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Story-telling Mind" (Meditations1)

"Everything talked about in the Dhamma relates to actions. When people talk about interconnectedness: We’re connected through our actions. We’re not connected through anything else. What kind of connections do we have? It’s not something we are born with, aside from the results of past actions. These connections are created right now as we’re acting. Then act well so that the connections are good, as long as you need connections. But ultimately you find the mind is a lot better off without connections to anything at all." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "It's All about Action"

"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'"