Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"We’re saying, “May all beings understand the causes of true happiness and act on them.” It’s not the fact that our thought of goodwill [mettā] is like a magic wand that’s going to spread happiness and light in whichever direction we point it. What we’re doing is getting our intentions straight: that we don’t want to cause anybody any harm and we’re happy to help other people as they work on their own quest for happiness." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Reflection on Kamma"

"I know some people who say that when you’re working with kamma, you’ve got to realize that your intentions are simply the result of causes and conditions. They don’t have anything to do with you. But that doesn’t give you any motivation to try to make skillful choices. Those people say you have to let go of every sense of “I” because it causes you trouble. Well, it’s actually necessary for certain skillful decisions." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters" (Meditations11)

"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 talked about different ways you deal with the causes of suffering. Some causes of suffering go away when you just look at them; others require that you engage in what the Buddha calls, “exerting a fabrication” [MN 101]. And when the Buddha’s talking about fabrication in this context, he’s talking about these three kinds of fabrication. For example, suppose that you’re feeling a strong sense of anger and you want to get over it. The first thing you do is to look at your breath. Usually when you’re angry, your breath is disturbed, which aggravates the anger. So, remember what you’ve learned to do with the breath in meditation: calm the breath down, breathe through any tightness you may feel in your chest or your abdomen, and in this way you begin to reclaim your body from the anger, which has hijacked it. You make the breath your own again. That’s bodily fabrication. When the body feels calmer, it’s easier to think clearly about the situation. This is where you apply directed th...

"There are some cases where illness comes from purely mental causes, in which case meditation can cure it, but there are also cases where it comes from physical causes, and no amount of meditation can make it go away. If you believe in karma, there are some diseases that come from present karma — your state of mind right now — and others that come from past karma. If it's a present-karma disease, meditation might be able to make it go away. If it's a past-karma disease, the most you can hope from meditation is that it can help you live with the illness and pain without suffering from it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Using Meditation to Deal with Pain, Illness & Death"

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 Ajaan Suwat used to say, each of us has one person. You’re responsible for yourself. You can’t be responsible for other people, but you can provide a good example. This is what the Buddha did. He showed that a human being can, through his or her own efforts, find freedom from suffering. He didn’t go out and release people from their suffering, but he did show them that there’s a way. And that was enough. That opened people’s minds to new possibilities. That in and of itself is quite a gift. Otherwise, we go through life thinking, “Well, this is as good as it gets. We might as well learn to content ourselves with fighting over what’s out there.” The image the Buddha gave is of a pond that’s gradually growing drier and drier, becoming just a puddle. The fish in the pond are fighting over what little water that’s left. As long as you think that the only happiness in life lies getting that water, you’re going to resign yourself to fighting for it. But if you realize that if you de...

"When the Buddha tells you to look inside for the causes of your suffering, it’s not a case of blaming the victim. He’s trying to remind you of what does lie in your power to change. There may be a lot of things outside that contribute to you suffering, but you can’t change them. Or you could change them if you spent a lot of time. But there’s no certainty as to how permanent that change would be. So as meditators, we’re not here trying to settle old scores or to create justice in the world. We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing that’s contributing to our own suffering. After all, we go to all the effort of thinking and acting and speaking with the purpose of causing happiness, and yet the results don’t always come out that way. In fact, most of the time they come out the other way. We end up causing suffering for ourselves. That’s the big paradox in life. Fortunately, the way we act and speak and think depending on our intentions is something we can change. We...

"The causes will take care of the results. It’s not the case that by imagining results you’re going to get the causes to go in that direction. If that were the case, Right Imagination would be one of the steps on the path. But it’s not. What you want to do is develop the path, develop Right View. So concentration, mindfulness — all the elements of the Eightfold Path — are things to be developed. And where do you find the things to be developed? They’re right here, right in front of your nose. That’s where the work is to be done — not in your anticipation of where you’re going to go, but in paying really close attention to the breath right here and now. This is your path." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Laying the Infrastructure"

"We can’t wait until the world gets straightened out before we straighten out our own minds, because the cause is in the mind. The world out there is the realm of effects. The realm of causes is in here: That’s one of the basic lessons of dependent co-arising. All the causes of suffering come prior to your engagement with the world. If you want other people to change their behavior, you’ve got to straighten out your behavior. You have to walk your talk, so that your talk is compelling. You can’t force other people to follow your example, but at least you establish that example here in the world. It’s good to have these examples in the world. Otherwise the world would be a totally depressing place." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "True Protection for the World"

"So try to sensitize yourself throughout your life to the choices you’re making. And realize that your happiness depends on making skillful choices, a process that you can learn. If your life has been unskillful up to this point, and you’ve got lots of burdens and issues in your life, you can make choices to deal with those burdens skillfully. You can make a choice, change your habits. That’s the good part of this process of fabrication: Nothing is ever permanently engraved in stone. After all, even stone washes away and disintegrates. But in the meantime, because there is this constant process of fabrication, you can focus on the present moment. You don’t have to worry about first causes or what happened way back in the past. Just notice what you’re doing right now, how you’re reacting to and shaping the raw material of life right now. Learn to do it more and more skillfully. And you find that it can take you a lot further than you might imagine." ~ Thanissaro B...

" 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...

"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...

"When the Buddha talks about the causes of suffering, he doesn’t trace it back to what you are. He doesn’t say you suffer because you’re basically bad, or because you’re basically good but somehow have been socially conditioned to forget your true inner goodness. He comes back instead to what you do. That right there is a radical statement, and it opens huge possibilities. It’s hard to change what you are, but you can change your actions simply through knowledge, through understanding which things you do are going to cause suffering, which states of mind lead to suffering. You can look for those and you can change them." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Not What You Are, What You Do" (Meditations4)

"When the Buddha tells you to look inside for the causes of your suffering, it’s not a case of blaming the victim. He’s trying to remind you of what does lie in your power to change. There may be a lot of things outside that contribute to you suffering, but you can’t change them. Or you could change them if you spent a lot of time. But there’s no certainty as to how permanent that change would be. So as meditators, we’re not here trying to settle old scores or to create justice in the world. We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing that’s contributing to our own suffering. After all, we go to all the effort of thinking and acting and speaking with the purpose of causing happiness, and yet the results don’t always come out that way. In fact, most of the time they come out the other way. We end up causing suffering for ourselves. That’s the big paradox in life. Fortunately, the way we act and speak and think depending on our intentions is something we can change. We can learn fro...

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...

"You watch yourself in action. And this, of course, starts with the Buddha’s instructions to Rahula. I know a lot of people who’ve commented they really wished that their parents had been like the Buddha, teaching them the way the Buddha taught Rahula. He’s basically saying to try to avoid mistakes, but if you find that you’ve made a mistake, this is what you do so you don’t have to make it again — probably some of the most valuable advice you can get. If you’re planning to do something, ask yourself, “What have been the results of my doing this in the past?” If doing it led to harm, you say, “Nah, I don’t want to do that again.” That’s a skillful decision. The Buddha here is teaching compassion. But he’s also teaching you to remember your actions. It’s a training in mindfulness and the ability to see connections: “I did x, and y happened as a result.” We don’t always see those connections, either because we don’t want to see, or because the cause and the effect were separated ...

"We can’t wait until the world gets straightened out before we straighten out our own minds, because the cause is in the mind. The world out there is the realm of effects. The realm of causes is in here: That’s one of the basic lessons of dependent co-arising. All the causes of suffering come prior to your engagement with the world. If you want other people to change their behavior, you’ve got to straighten out your behavior. You have to walk your talk, so that your talk is compelling. You can’t force other people to follow your example, but at least you establish that example here in the world. It’s good to have these examples in the world. Otherwise the world would be a totally depressing place." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "True Protection for the World"

"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...

"So try to sensitize yourself throughout your life to the choices you’re making. And realize that your happiness depends on making skillful choices, a process that you can learn. If your life has been unskillful up to this point, and you’ve got lots of burdens and issues in your life, you can make choices to deal with those burdens skillfully. You can make a choice, change your habits. That’s the good part of this process of fabrication: Nothing is ever permanently engraved in stone. After all, even stone washes away and disintegrates. But in the meantime, because there is this constant process of fabrication, you can focus on the present moment. You don’t have to worry about first causes or what happened way back in the past. Just notice what you’re doing right now, how you’re reacting to and shaping the raw material of life right now. Learn to do it more and more skillfully. And you find that it can take you a lot further than you might imagine." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "...