Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

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 ...

"Don’t steal other people’s bad qualities to think about. You never asked their permission to take their bad qualities and to brood over them. If you’re going to steal their qualities, take their good ones and think about those instead. Ajaan Lee also says that if you take the bad words of other people and brood over them, it’s like taking something they’ve spit out and then eating it yourself. And then when you get sick, who are you going to blame?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"You have to learn how to judge your actions and not come down on yourself for being really bad when you see that you’re making poor judgments or you’ve done something unskillful. You’ve got to develop the attitude of a craftsperson. You’re sitting at your bench, working on building a piece of furniture, and you just realized that you planed the wood a little bit too deeply. So what do you do? Do you throw the wood away? That would be a waste. Do you start yelling at yourself? That wouldn’t accomplish anything. You figure out how to correct for the mistake. And then you move on. Perhaps it’s because we have so few manual skills nowadays that we haven’t developed this faculty of judging a work in progress. But here’s your opportunity to develop it. Remember the basic principles. You’re judging the actions, not yourself as a good or bad person. And the purpose of the judgment is so that you can apply what you’ve learned the next time around. If you’re going to be noticing how other ...

"When the Buddha teaches us right view, he’s advising us to think about the long term. As Ajaan Lee would say, anybody can find pleasure in one way or another. Even common animals have their ways of finding pleasure. But it takes discernment to realize that there are long-term consequences to your actions. You have to take into consideration that your actions depend on your motivation. And your actions can have consequences that last for a long, long time, which means you have to check your motivation for why you’re acting and try to motivate yourself to act in a way that will lead to long-term well-being. This is what makes human beings different from animals. We can take a longer view. Yet there are a lot of people who refuse to take that longer view. That’s precisely why the Buddha made the topic of rebirth part of mundane right view. You’ve got to take this into consideration. Your actions really do have consequences, even beyond this life. There’s a continuation beyond death,...

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...

"It’s amazing how many habits carry over from life to life to life. I think I’ve told you that story of King Asoka. There’s a belief that Ajaan Lee was King Asoka reborn. When I learned that, I got a biography of King Asoka that included some translations of the King Asoka edicts in the back. So I translated some of them into Thai for Ajaan Fuang to listen to. There was one where Asoka says to his government workers, “If you want to satisfy me that you’re quick enough in responding to my desires, you have to know what I want before I do.” Ajaan Fuang laughed at that and said, “Two thousand years. He didn’t change.” If you look at your actions now, you’ll probably see a lot of patterns that are responsible for the way you are now, even though the actual action that got you here — in this particular set of circumstances — may have been an action from the distant past. But the patterns carry over. Think in terms of the seven treasures, of the noble treasures the Buddha set out. Whic...

"There’s a story Ajaan Lee tells of a woman who came to a monastery and saw that one of the walking meditation paths was dirty. So she swept it and set out some water. She felt really good about what she had done. It so happened on her return home she had a heart attack and died, reborn as a deva. She asked herself, “Gee, what did I do to deserve this?” The memory came to her that she had swept the path. So she thought, “Suppose I had done more than that? I’d have an even nicer palace and even nicer setup here.” So she went back down and found a meditating monk out in a forest and just stood there staring at him to see what she could do for him. It turned out he had psychic powers. He could see her, and so he chased her away: “Stop trying to butt in on human beings’ merit. You had all that opportunity when you were alive. Stop being so greedy. Let human beings have a chance to make some merit.” So she fled back to her palace." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "You're Already D...

"There are things we may want out of other people that they don’t want to give, like respect, acknowledgment of our existence, or acknowledgment of our worth as a person. Then you have to ask yourself, “Is it really worth fighting for? What does the fighting accomplish? Is it going to gain any respect? And even if it does, how much is that respect worth?” There are so many battles in the world that just lead to bad kamma even when you win, sometimes especially when you win. Look at the history of the world when nations that won battles ended up being transformed into the enemy, taking on the enemy’s characteristics. Is this what you want? At the same time, when you win a battle, you gain the animosity of those who lost. This is why the Buddha said that it’s better to focus on the battles inside, battles over your own defilements, greed, aversion, and delusion. Those are the battles that can be won, and when you win, you don’t create any bad kamma. As for whether the people outsid...

"There’s goodness in the world — Ajaan Lee talked about this quite a lot — there’s goodness in the world that has nothing to do specifically with the Buddha. In many cases, he simply pointed out things that everybody had known before: that killing is bad, stealing is bad, illicit sex, false dealings, intoxication are bad. A lot of people had already seen that. Many of us have learned these things from our parents. Even if we didn’t, we can repay our parents by setting a good example for them in avoiding these unskillful forms of behavior." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Repaying Our Parents"

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 ...

"Don’t steal other people’s bad qualities to think about. You never asked their permission to take their bad qualities and to brood over them. If you’re going to steal their qualities, take their good ones and think about those instead. Ajaan Lee also says that if you take the bad words of other people and brood over them, it’s like taking something they’ve spit out and then eating it yourself. And then when you get sick, who are you going to blame?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

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 ...

"There’s a slogan that sometimes you hear floating around Buddhist circles: that if you want to see a person’s past actions, you look at their current condition; if you want to see their future condition, you look at their current actions. But that’s not true. There’s a lot more to a person than you can see in the present moment. That slogan seems to think that we have a single karma account and what you see right now is the running balance. But in the Buddha’s image, karma’s more like a field full of seeds. What you see right now are the seeds that are sprouting. But there can be lots of other seeds in the field that you don’t see at all. They’re ready to sprout or they’re just lying dormant. Which means that when you see somebody suffering, or see somebody doing something that could lead to suffering, you don’t just say, “Well, that’s their past karma,” and leave it at that. The same when you look at yourself: You don’t say, “All I’ve got is the karma I see right no...

"Don’t steal other people’s bad qualities to think about. You never asked their permission to take their bad qualities and to brood over them. If you’re going to steal their qualities, take their good ones and think about those instead. Ajaan Lee also says that if you take the bad words of other people and brood over them, it’s like taking something they’ve spit out and then eating it yourself. And then when you get sick, who are you going to blame?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

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 first precept ...