Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"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...

"There are people who complain that if you’re really serious about the practice you lose your spontaneity. Well, spontaneity may have its good side but it has its bad side as well. You want to be really careful, you have to be heedful, your actions do have consequences, you can’t pretend that they don’t. As for the pleasure in the practice, the Buddha says it’s loaded there in the practice of right concentration. If you want to find joy and spontaneity, look there. As for your other actions, you have to be very careful to be restrained. Otherwise, you end up doing and saying and thinking things that you later regret. And that regret is very hard to get rid of. Especially as life goes on and you don’t see any progress coming in your practice, you begin to wonder, “What’s this all about? What have I been doing?” Don’t be the sort of person who realizes that a lot of time was wasted, a lot of time was thrown away. After all, we don’t have an infinite amount of time. Th...

"There are people who complain that if you’re really serious about the practice you lose your spontaneity. Well, spontaneity may have its good side but it has its bad side as well. You want to be really careful, you have to be heedful, your actions do have consequences, you can’t pretend that they don’t. As for the pleasure in the practice, the Buddha says it’s loaded there in the practice of right concentration. If you want to find joy and spontaneity, look there. As for your other actions, you have to be very careful to be restrained. Otherwise, you end up doing and saying and thinking things that you later regret. And that regret is very hard to get rid of. Especially as life goes on and you don’t see any progress coming in your practice, you begin to wonder, “What’s this all about? What have I been doing?” Don’t be the sort of person who realizes that a lot of time was wasted, a lot of time was thrown away. After all, we don’t have an infinite amount of time. The conditions h...

"It’s good to think every day about the huge length of time that we’ve been around. That helps put things into perspective. As the Buddha said, the amount of tears you’ve shed is greater than the water in the oceans. The amount of blood you’ve shed, having had your head cut off — for having been a thief, for having been a highway robber, for having been an adulterer — in each case, is more than the water in the oceans. It’s good to think about that vast stretch of time, to give rise to a sense of samvega as motivation to want to get out. Because as the Buddha saw, we can go to many different kinds of rebirth, up and down, and there’s no place where you can stay and say, “Okay, that’s it.” You rise and then you fall. You fall and then you rise. Ajaan Maha Boowa once made a comment that people who like to plan their next life really don’t believe in rebirth. They say, “Okay, I’ll make merit here, and that’ll take care of everything next time around.” I saw this in Thai...