Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"There’s the equanimity that’s part of the four brahmavihāras. This is the kind of equanimity that functions well together with goodwill [mettā] and compassion. You might call it the equanimity of a good doctor. Every good doctor has goodwill and compassion for the patient and wants the patient to be cured, but may find that there are some symptoms he cannot cure. But he doesn’t give up totally on the patient. He develops equanimity toward the symptoms he can’t cure so that he can focus on those he can — or at least on ways in which he can alleviate the patient’s pain and suffering. Instead of trying to force things in areas where he cannot make a difference, he channels his goodwill and compassion for the patient in other ways that are more fruitful and productive. In this way, he doesn’t waste his time and energy on areas where he cannot give help so that he will have the time and energy to focus on areas where he can be of help." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Go...

"In the guilt cultures that we have, especially in monotheism, there’s the sense that justice has to be done one way or another. Whereas Buddhism doesn’t talk about justice at all — it talks about being skillful in your behavior. Now, sometimes skillfulness does involve punishing people who are wrong, but you’re not necessarily trying to get justice done. Think of the case of Aṅgulimāla: all those people he’d killed, and yet the Buddha saw that he had a potential. So he taught him. Aṅgulimāla was able to give up his murderous ways and become an arahant. The karmic consequence of all the killing he’d done was simply that, as he was on his alms rounds, there were people who were probably upset that he’d literally gotten away with murder and they would throw things at him: sometimes tearing his robes, sometimes bashing his bowl, sometimes bashing his head. But as the Buddha said, that was a lot less than the consequences would have been if he hadn’t gained that attainment. So the who...

"Although the Jains, like the Buddhists, teach a doctrine of the moral consequences of actions, the teachings of the two traditions differ in many important details. This discourse points out two of the major points where the Buddhist teaching is distinctive: its understanding of the complexity of the kammic process, and its application of that understanding to the psychology of teaching. The Buddha shows that a simplistic, fatalistic view of the kammic process is logically inconsistent, and also leads to unfortunate results for any person who, with a background of bad kamma, believes in it. The actual complexity of kamma, however, allows for a way in which past evil deeds can be overcome: through refraining from evil now and into the future, and through developing expansive mind-states of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, & equanimity. In such an expansive mind state, the unavoidable consequences of past evil actions count for next to nothing. The Buddha als...

"Goodwill [mettā] and compassion, all the brahmavihāras, are another set of the guardian meditations. 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. 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 suf...

"A proper understanding of karma also helps to correct the false idea that if people are suffering they deserve to suffer, so you might as well just leave them alone. When you catch yourself thinking in those terms, you have to keep four principles in mind. First, remember that when you look at people, you can’t see all the karmic seeds from their past actions. They may be experiencing the results of past bad actions, but you don’t know when those seeds will stop sprouting. Also, you have no idea what other seeds, whatever wonderful latent potentials, will sprout in their place. There’s a saying in some Buddhist circles that if you want to see a person’s past actions, you look at his present condition; if you want to see his future condition, you look at his present actions. This principle, however, is based on a basic misperception: that we each have a single karmic account, and what we see in the present is the current running balance in each person’s account. Actually, no one’s...

"Learn how to be a good storyteller, telling yourself the right stories, stories that will bring you into the present with a sense of confidence in your own abilities, with a sense of well-being, a sense of the importance of stilling the mind. No matter what the stories are — no matter what other people have done, no matter what you’ve done — there’s a way of looking at them that can put the mind at rest. To try to find that way: This is what all the teachings on kamma, all the teachings on the sublime attitudes, are about. You weave new stories in the mind, stories in which you have a change of heart, new stories that come together right here, enabling you to stay right here with a sense of well-being, clarity, concentration, mindfulness, and discernment. Without anything tugging you back into the past, pulling you into the future, you’re able to just be right here, right now, aware right here, right now, healing the mind right here, right now. That’s how you use the mind’s story...

" The mundane level of right view teaches the principle of kamma: that we experience happiness and sorrow due to a combination of our past and present intentions. If we act with unskillful intentions — based on ill will, cruelty, resentment, or passion, either for ourselves or for others — we’re going to suffer. If we act with skillful intentions, we’ll experience happiness. The fact that happiness and sorrow are dependent on present, and not just past, intentions is what allows the brahmavihāras to be effective in the first place. If everything depended on our past actions, we — and all other beings — would simply be passive victims or beneficiaries of forces over which we had no present control. But because our present intentions play a crucial role in determining whether we are to experience mental pleasure or pain now and into the future, the attitudes that influence our present intentions in a skillful direction can have a real effect in leading to happiness. The extent to w...

"With goodwill [mettā], there’s no poison in goodwill at all. It teaches you to overcome your likes and dislikes, and to wish for the well-being of all, regardless of whether you like the person or not, regardless of that person’s past. Think of the case of Angulimala. He had killed hundreds of people, yet the Buddha saw that he had potential. Rather than just leaving him to his fate, the Buddha was able to teach the Dhamma in such a way that Angulimala wasn’t going to have to suffer in the lower realms. A lot of people were unhappy with that because, literally, he was getting away with murder. But then you take their desire to see him punished, and you compare that with the Buddha’s goodwill to see him escape, regardless of what his past was: That’s what goodwill means. A lot of harm is done in the world by people who want to see justice done through punishment. But if you can find a way that people can learn how to behave skillfully and stop doing unskillful things, that’s much ...

"You should start every day with thoughts of goodwill [mettā] and end the day with thoughts of goodwill, to keep your intentions in line. Because the major motivation for our practice is that we want a happiness, a sense of well-being that doesn’t harm anybody. We have to follow a path of practice that doesn’t harm anybody. But it’s so easy to think thoughts of harm. So we have to consciously train the mind not to think those thoughts. You have to reason with it. You can’t browbeat it into submission by just saying, “May all beings be happy, be happy, be happy.” That doesn’t do it. You have to think about what that means, and particularly what it means in terms of your own actions. On the one hand, you realize other beings are not going to be happy unless they actually put together the causes for happiness, genuine happiness. Think about that for a bit and you realize that’s a thought you can think about anybody without any kind of hypocrisy, even people who’ve been really miser...

"A lot of people like the brahma-vihāras. It feels good to be sitting here thinking, “May all beings be happy” or to think of anyone who’s suffering and send compassion: “May that person be free from suffering.” You see people who are happy or doing things that are good, you’re happy for them. Those are pleasant things to think about, and you feel good about yourself thinking them. But you have to realize the brahma-vihāras are not entirely pleasant, especially the first three, because after all they’re involved in wishes. May all beings be happy. May all those who are suffering be free from their suffering. May all those who are happy or doing good things, may they continue to be happy. May, may, may. But you look at the world. Not everybody is happy. A lot of people are suffering or doing things that are going to cause suffering both for other people now and for themselves on into the future. And there are some people who are happy and yet are abusing their happiness. So the b...

"You sometimes hear that everyone deserves your compassion because they all have Buddha-nature. But this ignores the primary reason for developing compassion as a brahmavihāra in the first place: You need to make your compassion universal so that you can trust your intentions. If you regard your compassion as so precious that only Buddhas deserve it, you won’t be able to trust yourself when encountering people whose actions are consistently evil. At the same time, you have to remember that no human being has a totally pure karmic past, so you can’t make a person’s purity the basis for your compassion. Some people resist the idea that, say, children born into a warzone, suffering from brutality and starvation, are there for a karmic reason. It seems heartless, they say, to attribute these sufferings to karma from past lives. The only heartlessness here, though, is the insistence that people are worthy of compassion only if they are innocent of any wrongdoing. Remember that you don’...

"We tend to think the Buddha encouraged people to be frugal – and he did – but he didn’t encourage stinginess, the kind of miserly attitude where all you can think of doing with wealth is squirreling it away. He said that one of the benefits of wealth is that you get to enjoy it. He actually criticized people who don’t know how to enjoy their wealth. It’s because basically you feel bad about enjoying things, and if you feel bad about enjoying things yourself, then how are you going to feel good about other people enjoying things? How are you going to want to make other people have joy? The mind just shrivels up, the heart shrivels up, with an attitude like that. So to nourish the heart, it’s good to learn how to take some joy in the wealth that you’ve got, the goodness and good fortune you’ve got — and that you take joy in the goodness and good fortune of other people. That nourishes the heart. Remind yourself that happiness is a good thing. After all, the practice of Dhamma is a ...

"Although the Jains, like the Buddhists, teach a doctrine of the moral consequences of actions, the teachings of the two traditions differ in many important details. This discourse points out two of the major points where the Buddhist teaching is distinctive: its understanding of the complexity of the kammic process, and its application of that understanding to the psychology of teaching. The Buddha shows that a simplistic, fatalistic view of the kammic process is logically inconsistent, and also leads to unfortunate results for any person who, with a background of bad kamma, believes in it. The actual complexity of kamma, however, allows for a way in which past evil deeds can be overcome: through refraining from evil now and into the future, and through developing expansive mind-states of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, & equanimity. In such an expansive mind state, the unavoidable consequences of past evil actions count for next to nothing. The Buddha also shows how hi...

"The Buddha’s cousin, Mahānāma asks the Buddha for instructions on how to advise a wise person who is about to die. The Buddha replies that if the dying person is plagued by worries about his family, he should be reminded that his worries at this point cannot help his family, so he should let those worries go. If he is fixated on human sensual pleasures, he should be told that human sensual pleasures are no match for the pleasures of the sensual heavens, so he should focus his mind on those heavens instead. If he’s fixated on the pleasures of the sensual heavens, he should be told that even those are inferior to the pleasures of the Brahmā world, and he should instead focus his thoughts there. If the dying person is fixated on the Brahmā world, he should be told that even the Brahmā world is “inconstant, impermanent, and included in self-identification.” In other worlds, the Brahmā worlds are unstable...." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sublime Attitudes: A Study Guide on th...

"When, while you’re trying to develop compassion and empathetic joy, you run across cases where you can’t help the other person, either to become happy or to maintain happiness, that’s when you have to develop equanimity. This is the equanimity of a good doctor who realizes that he can’t solve all the cases in the world. But if he lets his heart get broken over all the cases he can’t solve, he won’t have the energy to help the cases he might have been able to solve. So for the people who come to him and have the karma that allows him to help — and he himself has the karma that allows him to help them — he should think of that as a precious opportunity. It’s not always there. Make the most of it and don’t let yourself get distracted by things you can’t control or where you can’t be of help. Because, as I said, karma is complex. The combination of the patient’s karma to be in a position where he or she can be cured, and the doctor’s karmic connection with that patient: ...

"You feed the mind with these thoughts of goodwill [mettā], thoughts of the sublime attitudes and you exercise its mindfulness and alertness. Try to develop its concentration in that way, to develop its discernment into what’s going on in the mind: what you choose to do, what you choose not to do. And you gain insight also into this whole question of what does it mean to intend, what is an intention, what is this karma we are doing all the time? Once you see that clearly, then you are in a much better position to act on that basic motivation for goodwill. You can get the mind to do what you want it to do, and it’s strong enough to do what you want it to do. You’ve got that desire for true happiness. For true happiness you need a well-trained mind, a mind that’s not afraid to comprehend suffering, let go of its cause, develop the factors of the path, so it can realize the end of suffering. Otherwise even though we all desire happiness, we just keep creating more and more suffering,...

"Goodwill [mettā] and compassion, all the brahmavihāras, are another set of the guardian meditations. 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. 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 the Buddha said, when you see people who have no good habits at all — the things they say, the things they do, the things they think are all corrupt — the attitude you should develop toward those people is the same as when you’re going across the desert and you see somebody lying on the roadside, sick, without any help. At the very least, you would want somebody to come and find that person and help them, even if you can’t do it yourself. That’s the attitude you should have. Because when you’re wishing for other people’s happiness, one, you want it to be true happiness. And two, you realize that happiness, especially true happiness, has to come from understanding. People, to be happy, have to understand the causes of true happiness and be able to act on those causes. You’re not saying, “Well, may this person who’s killing and stealing, etc., be happy killing and stealing.” You’re saying to yourself, “May they see the light, realize that the killing and stealing doesn’t lead t...

"When, while you’re trying to develop compassion and empathetic joy, you run across cases where you can’t help the other person, either to become happy or to maintain happiness, that’s when you have to develop equanimity. This is the equanimity of a good doctor who realizes that he can’t solve all the cases in the world. But if he lets his heart get broken over all the cases he can’t solve, he won’t have the energy to help the cases he might have been able to solve. So for the people who come to him and have the karma that allows him to help — and he himself has the karma that allows him to help them — he should think of that as a precious opportunity. It’s not always there. Make the most of it and don’t let yourself get distracted by things you can’t control or where you can’t be of help. Because, as I said, karma is complex. The combination of the patient’s karma to be in a position where he or she can be cured, and the doctor’s karmic connection with that patient: It doesn’t al...