Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"So how do you use appropriate attention [yoniso manasikāra] to apply the four noble truths? You look at things in terms of what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing. If the results are leading to stress, okay, you’re doing something unskillful. You might want to look into what you’re doing and see if you can change it. There’s going to be desire on both sides: the desires that lead to suffering and the desires that help get the path together. So you can’t just say, “Well, I give up desires.” You have to figure out: What kind of desire is it? Is it a desire that should be encouraged? Or is it a desire that should be discouraged? To see that, you’ve got to get the mind really quiet." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Appropriate Attention (2015)"

"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)"

"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...

"The first lesson of skillfulness is that the essence of an action [kamma] lies in the intention motivating it: an act motivated by the intention for greater skillfulness will give results different from those of an act motivated by greed, aversion, or delusion. Intention, in turn, is influenced by the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the act of attention to one’s circumstances. The less an act of attention is clouded by delusion, the more clearly it will see things in appropriate terms. The combination of attention and intention in turn determines the quality of the feeling and the physical events (“form”) that result from the act. The more skilled the action, the more refined these results will be." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Refuge in Skillful Action"

"So for this question the mind always has — “What should I do now?” — [the Buddha] provides an answer for it. This is why the Dhamma is so good for the mind, so right for the mind, because it answers your burning question: You’ve got these responsibilities. How do you handle them, for the sake of a happiness that’s worth the effort that goes into it? The Buddha doesn’t waste his time talking about totally irrelevant things. After all, he said he learned a lot of things in the course of his awakening that he didn’t talk about. Why? Because it wouldn’t help with the solution to this problem: Why are we suffering? What are we doing that’s creating the suffering and what can we do to stop? He was very critical of teachers who would engage in what he called “bombast”: flowery words, beautiful sentiments that don’t offer any guidance that could be applied to that question, “What should I do next? What is the wisest thing to do next?” So we should take his teachings and app...

"[The Buddha] has an interesting analysis of attention. He’s not talking about bare attention — just sitting there, passively watching things arise and pass away, as if you’re in a drugged state. To pay attention to life means to ask questions. Appropriate attention is when you start asking the right questions. And this is a good one to begin with: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” “Long-term” here is important. You want long-term rather than short-term happiness. That’s part of the wisdom. The other part is that happiness depends on your actions — what you do, what you say, what you think. From that principle, you can derive a lot of the Buddha’s teachings." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Living Honorably" (Meditations8)

"So for this question the mind always has — “What should I do now?” — [the Buddha] provides an answer for it. This is why the Dhamma is so good for the mind, so right for the mind, because it answers your burning question: You’ve got these responsibilities. How do you handle them, for the sake of a happiness that’s worth the effort that goes into it? The Buddha doesn’t waste his time talking about totally irrelevant things. After all, he said he learned a lot of things in the course of his awakening that he didn’t talk about. Why? Because it wouldn’t help with the solution to this problem: Why are we suffering? What are we doing that’s creating the suffering and what can we do to stop? He was very critical of teachers who would engage in what he called “bombast”: flowery words, beautiful sentiments that don’t offer any guidance that could be applied to that question, “What should I do next? What is the wisest thing to do next?” So we should take his teachings and apply them right...

"As a meditator, you have to be constantly self-reflective — and that’s what appropriate attention [yoniso-manasikāra] is. It keeps focusing you back on your actions and the results you’re getting from them. This is what the four noble truths are all about. You’re suffering? You can’t blame it on the weather. You can’t blame it on the economy. You can’t blame it on the political structure. Those things may be miserable, but you don’t have to be miserable because of them. It’s what you’re doing right now. Now, this is not blaming the victim. It’s giving you the power to change the fact that you may be suffering right now and reminds you that you don’t have to be anybody’s victim, that the important element — i.e., the extent to which you’re suffering over things: That’s under your control. Or you can bring it under your control. This is why this self-reflective ability is so important. It’s what makes or breaks a meditator." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Gift of Discernment...