Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

Question 15. Is it possible to burn off old kamma — say, by simply putting up with pain? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: No. In the Buddha’s time, an ascetic group called the Nigaṇṭhas believed that they could burn off old kamma by not reacting to the pain of their austerities, and the Buddha reserved some of his sharpest ridicule for that belief. As he said, the Nigaṇṭhas should have noticed that the pain they experienced during their austerities ended when they stopped the austerities, which meant that the pain was the result not of old kamma being burned off, but of their present kamma in undertaking the austerities [MN 101]. Still, it is possible to weaken the results of bad past kamma. The Buddha compared past bad kamma to a big lump of salt. If you put the salt into a small glass of water, you can’t drink the water because it’s too salty. But if you toss it into a large, clean river, it doesn’t make the water of the river too salty to drink. The river here stands for a mind t...

"As we sit here meditating, we’re engaged in a type of kamma. It’s called the kamma that puts an end to kamma. But this doesn’t mean that it burns away old kamma. Old kamma doesn’t burn. One of the great ironies in the history of Buddhism is that some of the teachings the Buddha explicitly attacked are nowadays attributed to the Buddha himself. One of these is the idea that simply by learning how not to react to anything in the present moment, you’re not just refraining from creating any new sankharas, you’re also burning away old sankharas, old kamma. But there’s a passage where the Buddha actually attacks the idea that you can burn off old kamma. In fact he gets quite satirical about it. He goes to see some Jains who believed that they could burn off old kamma by submitting themselves to different kinds of austerities, that the pain in the austerity was the burning of old kamma. He said, “Can you measure how much kamma you burned today? How much kamma you burned yesterday? Do yo...

Question 15. Is it possible to burn off old kamma — say, by simply putting up with pain? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: No. In the Buddha’s time, an ascetic group called the Nigaṇṭhas believed that they could burn off old kamma by not reacting to the pain of their austerities, and the Buddha reserved some of his sharpest ridicule for that belief. As he said, the Nigaṇṭhas should have noticed that the pain they experienced during their austerities ended when they stopped the austerities, which meant that the pain was the result not of old kamma being burned off, but of their present kamma in undertaking the austerities [MN 101]. Still, it is possible to weaken the results of bad past kamma. The Buddha compared past bad kamma to a big lump of salt. If you put the salt into a small glass of water, you can’t drink the water because it’s too salty. But if you toss it into a large, clean river, it doesn’t make the water of the river too salty to drink. The river here stands for a mind that has develo...

"Some people feel they don’t deserve happiness. Well, the issue of deserving and not deserving happiness never comes up in the Buddha’s teachings. There’s simply the issue of cause and effect. A good action, an action motivated by a skillful intention, leads to good results. It’s impersonal. Unskillful actions motivated by unskillful motivations lead to pain. Each of us has a lot of actions in the past, so there’s bound to be good mixed with bad. You don’t have to wear off the bad kamma before you can enjoy the good. You simply learn to make the best use of both pleasure and pain when they come along. The Buddha never talks about having to wear off your old kamma before you can gain awakening. The idea that meditation is a purification that burns away your old kamma is actually a Jain teaching that he ridiculed. And you wonder what he would have said about a passage I read the other day in a Buddhist magazine — that if you can maintain equanimity during sex, that can...

"Some people feel they don’t deserve happiness. Well, the issue of deserving and not deserving happiness never comes up in the Buddha’s teachings. There’s simply the issue of cause and effect. A good action, an action motivated by a skillful intention, leads to good results. It’s impersonal. Unskillful actions motivated by unskillful motivations lead to pain. Each of us has a lot of actions in the past, so there’s bound to be good mixed with bad. You don’t have to wear off the bad kamma before you can enjoy the good. You simply learn to make the best use of both pleasure and pain when they come along. The Buddha never talks about having to wear off your old kamma before you can gain awakening. The idea that meditation is a purification that burns away your old kamma is actually a Jain teaching that he ridiculed. And you wonder what he would have said about a passage I read the other day in a Buddhist magazine — that if you can maintain equanimity during sex, that can also be a for...