Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"The distinction between skillful and unskillful provides an insightful explanation for the causes for good and evil behavior. This distinction is not limited to the values of any particular society, and it avoids the issue of whether beings are inherently good or bad. When people act in evil ways, it is because they lack skill in the way they think; when they think in skillful ways, they naturally will do good. Because skill is something that can be acquired, the way to goodness is open for all people who want to be good, no matter how badly they have behaved in the past. The Canon tells of people who had committed misdeeds and, upon realizing their mistakes, confessed them to the Buddha. The most striking instance was King Ajatasattu [DN 2], who had killed his father in order to secure his position on the throne. In spite of the gross nature of the deed, the Buddha approved of the king’s confession, and — instead of playing on any feelings of guilt the king might have had — enco...

"We often think of mindfulness simply as being fully aware of the present moment but it actually means the ability to keep something in mind. As the Buddha defined it, it’s the ability to remember things that were said or done long ago — and in particular, things that you  said and did long ago. This is so that when the results come, you can recognize, “Oh, this is connected to that. This happened because of this action I took. I said that, now my mind is a mess. I said that a couple of hours ago but my mind is a mess now.” Or, “I did that a while back and now my mind’s in good shape.” If you can’t see these connections, you don’t really have true insight. The insight lies in seeing cause and effect. After all, when the Buddha summarized the insight of his awakening, he boiled it down to a causal principle, the ability to see the connections: When one thing arises it causes something else to arise, either right now or down the line. When it passes away it causes the other thing t...

"In his effort to master kamma in such a way as to bring kamma to an end, the Buddha discovered that he had to abandon the contexts of personal narrative and cosmology in which the issue of kamma first presented itself. Both these forms of understanding deal in categories of being and non-being, self and others, but the Buddha found that it was impossible to bring kamma to an end if one thought in such terms. For example, narrative and cosmological modes of thinking would lead one to ask whether the agent who performed an act of kamma was the same as the person experiencing the result, someone else, both, or neither. If one answered that it was the same person, then the person experiencing the result would have to identify not only with the actor, but also with the mode of action, and thus would not be able to gain release from it. If one answered that it was another person, both oneself and another, or neither, then the person experiencing the result would see no nee...

" “I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, whatever I do for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.” So we do have the power of our actions. This was so important in the Buddha’s teachings that even though he wasn’t the sort of person who would go out and start arguments with people, there were times when he would go to argue with people who were teaching that what you’re doing right now didn’t have an impact right now. Three different groups of people stand out: 1) those who taught that whatever you experience right now is the result of past actions; it’s your vipāka, so you’ve got to put up with it; 2) those who taught that whatever you experience right now is the result of some creator god having created the world, so you’ve got to put up with it; and 3) those who taught that whatever you experience right now is totally random, there’s no pattern of cause and effect that you can understand or master to make a change in things. So put up with it. As ...

"In examining our actions in terms of cause and effect, skillful and unskillful, we are already beginning to look at experience in line with the two sets of variables that make up the four noble truths: the origination of stress (unskillful cause), the path to the cessation of stress (skillful cause), stress (unskillful effect), and the cessation of stress (skillful effect). The way the Buddha recommended that Rāhula judge the results of his actions — both while doing them and after they are done — echoes the insight that formed the heart of his awakening: that intentions have results both in the immediate present and over time. When we look at the present moment from this perspective, we find that our experience of the present doesn’t “just happen.” Instead, it’s a product of our involvement — in terms of present intentions, the results of present intentions, and the results of past intentions — in which present intentions are the most important factor. The more we focus on that ...

" “I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, whatever I do for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.” So we do have the power of our actions. This was so important in the Buddha’s teachings that even though he wasn’t the sort of person who would go out and start arguments with people, there were times when he would go to argue with people who were teaching that what you’re doing right now didn’t have an impact right now. Three different groups of people stand out: 1) those who taught that whatever you experience right now is the result of past actions; it’s your vipāka, so you’ve got to put up with it; 2) those who taught that whatever you experience right now is the result of some creator god having created the world, so you’ve got to put up with it; and 3) those who taught that whatever you experience right now is totally random, there’s no pattern of cause and effect that you can understand or master to make a change in things. So put up with it. As the Buddha ...

"In his effort to master kamma in such a way as to bring kamma to an end, the Buddha discovered that he had to abandon the contexts of personal narrative and cosmology in which the issue of kamma first presented itself. Both these forms of understanding deal in categories of being and non-being, self and others, but the Buddha found that it was impossible to bring kamma to an end if one thought in such terms. For example, narrative and cosmological modes of thinking would lead one to ask whether the agent who performed an act of kamma was the same as the person experiencing the result, someone else, both, or neither. If one answered that it was the same person, then the person experiencing the result would have to identify not only with the actor, but also with the mode of action, and thus would not be able to gain release from it. If one answered that it was another person, both oneself and another, or neither, then the person experiencing the result would see no need to heighten...

"If you just looked at the world from the point of view of an observer, everything would be pretty pointless. We get born, we grow up, we struggle to survive, and then we die. That’s pretty much it. What’s the point of all that? Many times you look back on your life and you think of all the things that you fought over, all the things that you worked hard to get, and even if you got them, they just slipped through your fingers. You wonder: What was that all about? Many people look back on their whole lives and that’s all they see. “What was that all about? Why all that suffering?” So if you want to have a point to your life, you have to will it into being. Many of the Buddha’s teachings explain why this is so. Your experience of the present moment comes from what? The results of past actions, your current intentions, and the results of your current intentions. That’s an interaction between truths of the will and truths of the observer. i.e., you willed things in the past, and the...

" Manopubbaṅgamā manoseṭṭhā manomayā: Phenomena are preceded by the mind, excelled by the mind, made by the mind. The people who put that statement first in the Dhammapada knew what they were doing, because it expresses a principle that holds all the way through the practice: The mind comes first; the heart comes first. We live in a world where we have to put a lot of energy in. It’s through the energy the mind puts in that we reap the results, good or bad, depending on the energy. To begin with, this is a refutation of the principle of materialism, which is that the mind is just an epiphenomenon of material processes — or, in other words, that it’s the result, it’s on the far end of the causal spectrum, whereas the real causes are material. Somehow matter happens to be aware, but the matter is doing all the acting, not the awareness. The awareness is just coming along for the ride. That’s the material hypothesis. The Buddha’s saying the opposite. The mind is what’s doing the act...

"People have noted how ironic it is that in a teaching that emphasizes not-self we have some of the earliest spiritual autobiographies of the world. The Buddha, when talking about his quest for awakening spoke very much in terms of: This is what I did, and looking at what I had done and seeing that it hadn’t given the results I wanted, I tried something else. That’s the pattern. When you think of the issue in other terms, though, this way of speaking is not ironic at all because the Buddha’s main teaching was kamma: We suffer because of our actions, but we can find the end of suffering by understanding our actions — the actions that lead to suffering, and then the actions of the path to the end of suffering. That understanding is what opens the way. The Buddha’s autobiography shows the lessons he learned about action in the course of his awakening, and he tells his story to show how we can follow his example and learn from our actions, too. Now, in doing an action and learning fr...