Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"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....

"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"

"One of the lessons of right view is that the important issue in life is not the pleasure that you’re sucking out of life, but the things you’re doing and the consequences they’re going to have down the line. You have to take those things very seriously. Because, as Ajaan Suwat liked to say, “Those sensual pleasures you had last week: Where are they now?” They’re totally gone; but you are left with the kamma. If you don’t believe in kamma, just look at the habits you’ve developed. You get into these old ruts: these old ways of thinking, these old ways of behaving. The more you indulge them, the harder they are to get out of. That’s what you’re left with: the habit, which is accompanied by a large sense of lack. You’re left with the action. So you have to see this very clearly, and realize that it’s causing a lot of suffering." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Clinging, Addictions, Obsessions" (Meditations8)

"If you can avoid unskillful actions, it’s like a hand that has no wound. You can pick up poison, and the poison doesn’t seep into the blood. If there is a wound, you’re not safe. So as you hold by the five precepts, you can rejoice in the fact that you’re behaving in a safe way, and this is part of the protection that the Buddha provides: not only telling you that there is such a thing as skillful and unskillful action, but also telling you which actions are skillful, which actions are not." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Safety All Around"

"If you develop a mind state where you realize you have no ill will for anyone, it gives you a sense of strength and nourishment, and as the Buddha says, it provides protection for you in all directions, into the past and into the future. What this requires, though, is that when you’re developing goodwill [mettā], you don’t simply think over and over again, “May so-and-so be happy, may they be happy, may they be happy.” You also have to think, “Is there anyone out there for whom I cannot have genuine goodwill? Why can I not feel goodwill for this person?” If they’re misbehaving, genuine goodwill means that you’re wishing that they will have a change of heart: that they’ll change their ways and behave more skillfully. Now, is there anyone out there who you would like to see suffer before they change their ways? If there is, ask yourself, “Okay, why? What are you feeding on?” It’s usually a sense of revenge. And even though they say revenge is sweet, it’s miserable food. It woul...

"If people misbehave toward you, you want to overwhelm them with goodwill [mettā] . After all, just look at this world: People are so poor in goodwill. With the least little bit of disagreement, people draw lines and get all upset and want to attack the other side. For what? We keep battling, battling, battling, then we die. We have nothing to show for it except a lot of bad kamma. But goodwill raises the level of the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Metta Math" (Meditations12)

"Goodwill [mettā] is a wish for happiness — true happiness — which means it’s happiness that comes from within. As we know from the Buddha’s teachings on karma, people are going to be happy, not because you simply wish them to be happy, but because they create the causes for happiness in the skillfulness of their thoughts, their words, their deeds. Which means that when you’re extending goodwill to yourself, extending goodwill to others, there’s no question of whether you or they deserve goodwill, whether you or they deserve happiness. When the Buddha was teaching the end of suffering to people, he didn’t ask them first, “Do you deserve to suffer?” Everybody he met had karma that could induce them to suffer, but they didn’t have to suffer from it. That’s what the teaching was all about. You don’t have to suffer. And again, he didn’t hold people’s past against them. This is the way out. That should be the attitude you have to others as well. There are a lot of people out there wh...

"So goodwill [mettā] for yourself means not harming others. And then you start thinking about them. They want happiness too, just like you. It’s just that we live in this world where people have lots of different levels of understanding and levels of behavior, and you have to be forgiving. So when anger comes up, you’ve got a tool to deal with it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Guardian Meditations"

"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...

"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"

"A lot of people don’t like looking at their actions because, after all, they’ve done a lot of unskillful things. Well, just remind yourself, all human beings have been doing unskillful things. If we had no unskillful behavior in our background, we wouldn’t be here, we’d be someplace else. So we all have habits that we have to learn how to undo, and new habits that we have to learn how to develop. But it’s in exploring the potential we have for choosing freely between different courses of action that we find a different kind of freedom ultimately. It’s a freedom that’s not conditioned. Now, looking at our past actions and looking even at our present actions is often like looking at a bramble patch. That’s where we want to say, “Forget about that, let’s just go for the larger Oneness.” But it turns out that you have to go through the brambles to get to the nice part inside the bramble patch — those brambles are protecting something. It’s not brambles all the way. But you explore y...

"Modern sociologists have identified five basic strategies that people use to avoid accepting blame when they’ve caused harm, and it’s noteworthy that the early Buddhist teaching on moral responsibility serves to undercut all five. The strategies are: to deny responsibility, to deny that harm was actually done, to deny the worth of the victim, to attack the accuser, and to claim that they were acting in the service of a higher cause. The Pali responses to these strategies are: (1) We are always responsible for our conscious choices. (2) We should always put ourselves in the other person’s place. (3) All beings are worthy of respect. (4) We should regard those who point out our faults as if they were pointing out treasure. (Monks, in fact, are required not to show disrespect to people who criticize them, even if they don’t plan to abide by the criticism.) (5) There are no — repeat, no — higher purposes that excuse breaking the basic precepts of ethical behavior." ~ Thanissaro ...

"The principle of kamma should make you happy, because it opens possibilities, good possibilities. Of course, it also means that you have to learn how to take the results of past bad actions with good grace, realizing that they don’t justify anybody who mistreats you, but they do mean that you learn to take things in stride and do your best with the good kamma that comes your way." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Happy about Kamma"

"If a monk commits an offense and refuses to undergo the penalty, the Community may decide how seriously they take the matter. Since there is no monks’ police beyond the individual’s conscience, it may often happen that no one else knows of the offense to begin with, and nothing is done. If however it becomes common knowledge, and the Community regards it as a serious matter, they should talk privately with the monk to help him see the error of his ways. If he is recalcitrant, they may strip him temporarily of his status, either by censuring him, stripping him of his seniority, driving him from the Community, or suspending him from the Order of monks as a whole. If the offender sees the error of his ways and reforms his behavior accordingly, the Community may return him to his former status. Now of course there may be some hardened souls among the monks who are unfazed by punishments of this sort, but we should note that the Buddha saw no use for physical coercion in enforcing his...

"When the Buddha discusses how people arrive at reconciliation, it’s when someone in the relationship has done something wrong, admits  that they did something wrong, and they’re willing to try not to repeat that mistake: That’s how you can have a reconciliation. And in this way, we’re reconciling ourselves — with our own behavior — all the time, if we have that attitude. It’s one of the reasons why the Buddha said it wasn’t that he was arguing with the world, it was the world that argued with him. He was constantly reconciling himself to what he’d done wrong so that he’d be in a position to learn. So if you can reconcile yourself with your mistakes, it shows that you’re open to reconciliation with the rest of the world. Now, whether they want reconciliation or not is their issue. But you can do your part all the time." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Admit Your Stupidity"

"The Buddha did have clear standards for right and wrong, of skillful and unskillful ways of engaging with the world, but he hardly ever spoke of justice at all. Instead, he spoke of actions that would lead to harmony and true happiness in the world. And instead of explaining his ideas for harmony in the context of pursuing a just world, he presented them in the context of merit: actions that pursue a happiness blameless both in itself and in the way it’s pursued. ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Wisdom over Justice"

" “We’re related through our actions” The connections we have in life with different people are created by our actions: things that we’ve done together with other people or to other people or for other people. These create the connections that we have with the people around us. Interconnectedness is a very popular teaching in Buddhism, especially nowadays, but it’s funny that people like to talk about interconnectedness without the teaching on karma. They turn to dependent co-arising as a model for interconnectedness, this web of connections where one factor can’t exist without a whole lot of other factors, but they neglect to realize that dependent co-arising is a teaching on how ignorance is connected with suffering, how craving is connected with suffering. It’s the kind of connectedness you want to cut, not the kind you want to celebrate. Connectedness through karma can go either way — the connections can be good, or they can be bad. So you want to foster the good ...

"Ajaan Suwat used to like to say that with all the people in the world, you have only one person — yourself — for which you’re responsible. You may have members of the family, other people you have connections with, but you can’t really be responsible for their actions. Our problem is that many of us are not even responsible for our own actions. We let our behavior depend on other people. If they treat us nicely, we treat them nicely. If they don’t treat us nicely, we’re going to get back at them. That’s placing all the blame on them and denying our agency. But we’re not here for a blame game. We’re here to figure out why we’re suffering — and it comes from our actions. Other people can do really bad things, but the fact that we’re suffering from their bad things comes from our own lack of skill. This is why, when we meditate, we close our eyes. We’re not out there looking at the world. We’re looking into the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Just One Person"

Question: What relationship exists between the kamma of parents and those who are their children? Is it an illusion to want to repair or ameliorate the unskillful behavior of our parents? And do our children carry with them part of our own kamma in them? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: The fact that you were born to your parents means that you have some kind of kamma in common. Either you did this kamma together or you did it separately in separate places, but it’s still similar kamma. That’s why we have the phrase in the chant “kamma-bandhū”: We’re related through our kamma. But each of us has our own individual kamma. Your parents do not infect you with their kamma, and your children don’t carry on part of your own kamma. However, if you’re the child and you want to improve your parents’ kamma, it is possible. You set a good example. But you know how difficult it is for children to teach their parents, so you have to be very diplomatic. The best way to teach is through example....

"Many of the issues that clutter up the mind have to do with thinking way off into the future: what’s going to happen then, what’s going to happen after that? But the future is very uncertain, so uncertain that a lot of your plans for the future are going to be totally useless. You do know, though, that the best way to prepare for the future is the way you prepared for the present moment: by doing good things. That’s what the principle of karma is all about." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Self Rightly Directed"