Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Sometimes the Pali word for stress, dukkha is translated as unsatisfactoriness. There’s a way in which that’s right, but a huge way in which it’s wrong. Dukkha means pain, stress, suffering. It’s unsatisfactory because there is something better, but taken on its own, when you say that something is unsatisfactory, it sounds as if you could simply change your standards and learn how to be satisfied with things, and then you’d be okay. And that’s a lot of what modern Dhamma teaches: Accept the fact that things change. Don’t want them to be any way different, and you’ll be okay. Learn some equanimity. That is not  the escape from suffering. That’s not the escape from unsatisfactoriness. The escape is realizing that you’re implicit in making these things happen. When the Buddha says that the objects of the senses and the senses themselves are fabricated, it’s not simply that they depend on conditions, but that you play a role in getting engaged with them, shaping them. And it’s becau...

"Here we’re meditating on what the mind is doing, because what the mind is doing is going to make all the difference between suffering and not. What you’re doing right now is shaping your experience right now, and if you’re not satisfied with what you’re experiencing right now, then, as they say, “If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” If you don’t like your experience now, you can change what you’re doing to shape it. Try to detect what you’re doing to shape your experience and change it for the better. This is why we meditate, because the source of all our actions, the source of all our experience, is the mind. So you’ve got to look at your mind. The best way to look at it is to get it into the present moment where it’s fabricating things. We use the breath as our topic because it’s right next to the mind and it’s our anchor in the present." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Dispassion Isn’t Depression" (Meditations10)

"Make the negative energy the ab normal energy, the things that you rarely put out, and make sure the quiet energy is what’s the dominant and the more normal way that your mind thinks. This way, you begin to see the power of your mind to change the world around you. If you want the world to change to be a better place, you’ve got to start making the mind a better place, so that it sends out a better form of energy." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Energy You Put Out"

"As for what other people are thinking or saying or doing, just remember: They can never take you to hell. If you’re going to go to hell, it’s through your own doing. They can’t take you to heaven, either. If you are going to heaven, it’s through your own doing. And you don’t have to worry about heaven and hell in the afterlife. Right here and now, you can see it. Other people can do horrible things, but it’s only when you let what they’re doing get into your mind, and then you start doing horrible things along with them: That’s when it really gets bad. At the same time, no matter how good other people may be, you can always be worried about how much longer that goodness is going to last. Sometimes, the better the person is, the more you’re worried: “It can’t last. So I’m just going to have to hold on to them.” The issue isn’t what other people are doing, it’s how you’re managing your own mind. This is why you have to give importance, give weight to this ability to st...

"Figure out what your actions are and what the results are, how they’re connected, and which actions give rise to better results than others. This is why we meditate — to develop those powers. So it’s not a matter of you versus the system outside, where you are trustworthy and the system outside is not. Rather, it’s learning how to sort out inside you which perceptions and which thought constructs are actually more trustworthy than others." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Trust in Heedfulness"

"Equanimity is sometimes taught with a defeatist attitude. A defeatist attitude says, basically, that there’s no lasting happiness to be found in the world, so you might as well give up trying to find it. Just learn to accept things as they are and don’t hope for them to be better than what they are. When you give up on your search for happiness, you can be equanimous and content with what you’ve got. That, as I said, is a defeatist attitude. It’s equanimity tinged with regret, disappointment, and a sense of powerlessness. It’s heavy and narrow, a contentment found by lowering your standards for satisfaction. We bow down to the Buddha, though, because he actually has us raise our standards for satisfaction, to accept nothing less than the ultimate happiness. There’s nothing defeatist in his attitude at all. In fact, he called the noble eightfold path the path to victory: You can find a happiness that’s not subject to aging, illness, and death, that’s totally free of s...

"Think about how you’d like a happiness that doesn’t harm anybody, partly because you feel empathy with other beings and partly because you realize that if your happiness depended on other people’s suffering, it wouldn’t last. They would do what they could to destroy it. So you want a happiness that doesn’t impose on people. And because this is a happiness that depends on your own inner resources, you find that your true happiness doesn’t conflict with anyone else’s true happiness. So you wish them goodwill [mettā] . May they be happy too. May they understand the causes for true happiness. Now, as you do this, you may find that part of your mind says, “Well, there are certain people I would rather see suffer first for one reason or another.” So again, think of it as a committee meeting. You’re sitting down and you say, “Okay, exactly why? What would you gain from that person’s suffering?” As we all know, most people do evil because they’re feeling threatened, they’re feeling mis...

"We try to develop thoughts of goodwill [mettā], and all the things that are associated with merit: thoughts of generosity, thoughts of gratitude, thoughts of virtue, thoughts of harmlessness. When you’re sending out that kind of energy, that’s a lot of what gets reflected back. It creates a better atmosphere, a better environment in which to allow the mind to settle down and really get still inside, so that you can send out even better energy. Of course, you’re not the only one picking up on that energy. People around you pick up on it as well. So both for your own sake and for the sake of the people around you, you want to be really careful about what kind of energy you’re broadcasting. The more stillness, the more peace in the energy that the mind is creating, the more you’ll experience that stillness, experience that peace, even coming in from outside." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Energy You Broadcast"

"Even though you may not reach awakening any time soon, if you keep this understanding of kamma and mindfulness in mind and apply it to your actions, your life becomes a progressively better life. You learn to delight in abandoning unskillful qualities and to delight in developing skillful qualities. Right there you possess what the Buddha called one of the values of the noble ones. You become less harmful to yourself and others. This teaching is also empowering: You realize you have the power to make skillful changes in your life, and the ability to suffer less and less from what you cannot change. The sense of self that you develop around doing this becomes a healthy sense of self: one that develops around the willingness always to learn. As long as you need a sense of self, this is a good one to have. In following these teachings, you also develop what the Buddha called the seven noble treasures [conviction, virtue, conscience, concern, learning, generosity, discernment]. These...

"Get your own mind in shape, and then from there if you come out into the world and see something you can do, something you can help with, you’re coming from a much better place. All too often, people who meditate are accused of being irresponsible in the face of all the troubles of the world. Well, the world’s going to have troubles on and on and on, there’s no end to that. But you can put an end to your own contribution to the troubles." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Autonomous Good Karma"

"The outside world is not a set factor. A lot of your experience of the outside world depends on how you interact with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. That’s the world you experience. And so much of it comes from your intentions in the present moment. So if you can work on the mind to get its intentions right and skillful, as much as possible, then you find that you have a better world to live in, a better space to meditate in. So remember this: You’re not a passive victim of outside circumstances. You’re part of the shaper of those outside circumstances. When you realize your responsibility for the world you experience, then you can do something about it. When you see what’s under your control, what’s not under your control, and are very clear about that distinction, it clears up a lot of issues in life — and a lot of issues in your meditation. You may not have full control over the outside results of your actions, but you do have control over your intentions ...

"Realize that you don't have to straighten out the world before you're going to be able to gain Awakening or before you're going to be able to sit down and meditate. The principle of karma is at work here. Often, when people have made up their minds to straighten out the world, the things they do to straighten out the world tend to get very unskillful and they end up making things worse. They don't like other people's greed, anger, and delusion, yet in the course of trying to straighten them out, they inflict them with their own greed, anger, and delusion. They simply compound the problem. So your only responsibility to the world is to focus on doing what's skillful. That's all you have to take care of. As for the working out of everybody else’s karma, that will work out on its own without your having to get involved. Just make sure that your own present karma is skillful. One thing you can do that’s skillful right now is to allow the mind to settle dow...

"The fact that we’re meditating is directly related to the teaching on kamma, too. Where does kamma come from? It comes from our intentions. And where do our intentions come from? They come from the state of the mind. So we work on the state of the mind to improve our intentions — to make them not just good, but skillful. “Good” is well-meaning. “Skillful” is not only well-meaning, but also involves checking up to see, when you do a well-meaning action, do the results actually come out well? If something you thought was good turns out to get bad results, you go back and you recalibrate. It’s the act of reading the results and then going back and using your experience to inform your intention: That’s what turns good intentions into skillful ones. So, when we think about kamma, the kamma of meditation, remember we’re focusing on the good side — the fact that we can make a change for the better, particularly in our own minds." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Worlds to Watch Out For...

"[The Buddha] doesn’t give a complete theory about how everything happens in the world and can be traced back to particular actions. He teaches karma to the extent that it’s useful in getting the mind to be trained so that it can put an end to suffering. That’s as far as his teaching goes, but that’s pretty far. It’s much better than having a map to everything but still suffering. So use these teachings to take you where you want to go because they can take you farther than you can imagine." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Meditation Karma Checklist"

"When looking at people around you, it’s important that you get away from your sense of competitiveness, of this person versus that person. You look, not at them, but at their activities. Otherwise you start comparing yourself to the other person: “This person’s better than I am. That person’s worse than I am.” And that brings in questions of conceit, resentment, and competition, which are not really helpful because we’re not here to compete with each other. We’re here to work on ourselves. So again, look at other people simply in terms of their thoughts, their words, their actions. And see what’s an admirable action, what are admirable words, what are admirable ideas, ones you can emulate, ones you can pick up. In this way the fact that we’re living together becomes a help to the practice rather than a hindrance. The same is true when you notice people around you doing things that are not so admirable. Instead of judging the other person, simply judge the actions by...

"[The Buddha] explicitly warns against taking on too many questions, particularly those that lead nowhere and tie us up in knots: “Who am I? Am I basically a good person? An unworthy person?” Instead, he tells us to focus on our intentions so that we can see how they shape our life, and to master the processes of cause and effect so that they can shape our life in increasingly better ways. This is the way every great artist or craftsman develops mastery and skill." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Road to Nirvāṇa Is Paved with Skillful Intentions"

"We live in a world where there are lots of influences around us: people, places. Of course, we were the ones who wanted to come here. I think I’ve told you the story about the nurse who was a victim of a lot of gossip in her workplace. One day when she was feeling especially oppressed by all this, she came to meditate with Ajaan Fuang. She had a vision in her meditation of being in a hall of mirrors: looking in one direction and seeing herself reflected back, back, back, back, back; looking in the other direction and seeing herself reflected back, back, back, back. The vision hinted that she’d probably been the victim of this sort of suffering many, many lifetimes. It made her feel even more oppressed. So she left meditation and talked to Ajaan Fuang about this, hoping that she’d get some comfort from him. Instead, he said, “Well, you were the one who wanted to be born as a human being in the first place.” It was like a slap in the face. But that’s the case. Each of us wanted to...

"One of the major things [the Buddha] woke to was the principle of action, kamma: that our lives are shaped by our actions. Our happiness, our pains, are shaped by our actions, the intentions on which we act. Having conviction in that fact is a very strengthening thing. On the one hand, it empowers you. You see that you really can shape your life. There may be obstacles that you have to overcome, but if you stick with this path long enough — the path of skillful action — you will find good results coming. This is encouraging. It helps overcome apathy. It helps to overcome hopelessness. And it focuses your attention on the right place: that regardless of the conditions of your life, if you focus on acting skillfully, things are going to improve." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Beyond Inter-eating"

"Even as the world seems to be closing in, there’s a way out. The Buddha found that way, not by sitting around and simply accepting things as they are, but by figuring out what he was doing that was giving bad results, and how he could change his actions to get better results." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Breath Meditation When It’s Hard to Breathe"

"You’re shaping the present moment out of the raw materials that come from your past actions. But your shaping of these materials actually comes prior to receiving the materials. You already have the skills or lack of skills that are going to determine, when you get the raw materials, what you’re going to do with them and how much suffering or lack of suffering you’ll experience. So here, as part of the path, we’re developing better skills." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Dispassion Isn't Depression" (Meditations10)