Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"When the Buddha analyzed the causes for stress, there’s no place where he says someone does something . Simply he says, “There is this action, and then from that there is that action. When there’s this action, then there’s that action…” If the actions are done in ignorance, there’s going to be stress and suffering; if they’re done with knowledge, they can become part of the path away  from suffering. So you want to focus on the actions of the mind — this is why we get the mind really  quiet: not to find out who we are, but to see exactly what actions are happening in the mind, which ones are causing stress, and which ones are helping put an end to it. When we focus on the actions, we’re not saying there’s nobody there, we’re just saying that that issue is irrelevant right now. It’s like when you talk to a physicist, and the physicist describes the atoms in a rock. He doesn’t say whether the rock is sandstone or granite or limestone. He’s more interested in the electrons and ...

"We often think of mindfulness simply as being fully aware of the present moment but it actually means the ability to keep something in mind. As the Buddha defined it, it’s the ability to remember things that were said or done long ago — and in particular, things that you  said and did long ago. This is so that when the results come, you can recognize, “Oh, this is connected to that. This happened because of this action I took. I said that, now my mind is a mess. I said that a couple of hours ago but my mind is a mess now.” Or, “I did that a while back and now my mind’s in good shape.” If you can’t see these connections, you don’t really have true insight. The insight lies in seeing cause and effect. After all, when the Buddha summarized the insight of his awakening, he boiled it down to a causal principle, the ability to see the connections: When one thing arises it causes something else to arise, either right now or down the line. When it passes away it causes the other thing t...

"This is another reason why the Buddha taught rebirth: as one of our motivations for practicing and for being really strict with ourselves as we practice. After all, some cravings and clingings in the mind appear at first glance to be no problem at all. They don’t seem to be affecting anybody else. We’re okay with them. But if you think about the fact that these cravings are creating not only your identity now, but also the world into which you’re going to be reborn, you realize that they’re dangerous. It’s like tuning your radio: It’ll connect with whatever’s on that particular frequency: hard rock or Beethoven or the ravings of some lunatic. Are your cravings on the frequency of the kind of world you’d really want to create and inhabit long-term? Sensual passion is the worse offender, because all of the worlds of intense suffering and conflict are on the frequency of sensual passion. Are those worlds you’d want to inhabit long-term?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "...

Question: Can you form the hope to be welcomed at the moment of death, the grand passage, with “people” you’ve loved or the “people” for whom you may have some devotion or teachers who have put us on the path of the Dhamma? I have lots of gratitude for these “persons.” Thanissaro Bhikkhu: There’s no need to put the word “person” or “people” in quotation marks. There is the belief sometimes that the Buddha teaches that there are no persons, but actually, he teaches that there are persons as long as there’s the process of becoming. We keep on taking on the identity of people, of persons, through our attachments and clingings as we go from life to life to life. It’s only when you reach nibbāna that you go beyond being a person. Now, the question concerns the hope for being welcomed by the people you love or to whom you’re devoted: You have to be careful, because sometimes the people you have loved are not in really good destinations. They may have gone to a lower destination. If you tel...

"It’s not that life is suffering. It’s that we create suffering in our clinging. The source of the suffering is not outside. It’s what we do as we approach experience, as we create our experience out of the raw materials that come from our past kamma and then cling to it. This applies to experience both in meditation and out, so, as you’re getting to know the mind in meditation, you’re also getting to know the mind in everyday life." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Dead Snake Around Your Neck" (Meditations10)

"One of the really fine things about Buddhism is that it was founded by someone who knows what it’s like to make a mistake. Even in his last lifetime, the Buddha made a huge mistake — six years of tormenting himself. And all those previous lifetimes! You look in the Jātaka stories and it’s not as if the Buddha was always perfect. He was making mistakes and having to learn from them. So unlike a religion that’s supposedly founded by a God who’s never been a human being, who’s never had to admit a mistake, the Buddha knows what it’s like to make a mistake and to have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on. Those instructions he gave to Rāhula are really useful in this regard. He said that if you see you’ve made a mistake, admit the mistake, talk it over with someone else, and then simply resolve not to repeat that mistake. You don’t have to carry the guilt around with you, just the memory that that was a mistake. Then you move on. The Buddha gave similar instructions to...

"[The Buddha] listed four inconceivables — topics that lay beyond the range of an ordinary person even to speculate about in a healthy way. In the words of the passage, these topics “would bring madness & vexation to anyone who conjectured about them.” They are: the Buddha-range of the Buddhas the jhāna-range of a person in jhāna the results of kamma conjecture about the cosmos. The inclusion of the first two items in the list serves notice that the Buddha was not putting himself in the position of an ordinary person speculating about these matters. There was much that he knew through direct knowledge — through mastering jhāna and becoming a Buddha — that he did not have to speculate about. Thus, although the entire list lies beyond the range of healthy speculation, it tells us that we cannot know the range of the Buddha’s own knowledge of these things. The inclusion of the third item in the list, the results of kamma, may come as a surprise, given the care with which the Budd...

"The Buddha recommends viewing the world as nothing more than the six senses — the five physical senses plus the mind — and the activities based on them. Then he has you see the six senses and their objects as old kamma, and everything you do based on them as new kamma ( SN 35:145 ). This is where the focus shifts to habits and practices. To develop dispassion for both types of kamma, he recommends observing the world so-defined as simply originating and passing away. When you focus on these things originating from moment to moment, the concept of “non-existence” with regard to the world doesn’t occur to you. When you focus on their passing away, the concept of “existence” with regard to the world doesn’t occur to you. This means that there’s nothing left to cling to in terms of the world ( SN 12:15 )." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Clinging & the End of Clinging"

"When the Buddha talked about rebirth, what distinguished his teaching from everybody else in his time was that he never tried to define what it was that took rebirth. That was how people at the time decided whether rebirth happened or not: They said you are x, and either x was something that was going to die with the body or else it might not die with the body. So they reasoned things out. But the Buddha never tried to define what you are. After all, it’d be something for which you were not responsible — if this were what you already were made of and you willy-nilly would or would not get reborn. Instead, he taught that rebirth is a choice that you make, and it’s a process, a series of processes shaped by your choices. The big processes are craving and clinging. If you can’t get any control over your craving and clinging, then rebirth is going to be very difficult. It could lead you in all kinds of directions. Because at the moment of death — when the body is weak, the mind is fr...

"So remember, your actions are important, and you can make skillful choices now. Now, as you live in this human life, we can’t guarantee that once you’ve started on the path everything will be a path of roses. We all have our past kamma, the things that come at us in life from our past actions. But again, it’s what you’re doing right now that’s going to make all the difference, so you want to focus on: What are your capabilities right now? Where are you holding onto things that are making you suffer? That was the Buddha’s definition of suffering. It’s not something that’s happening to us. It’s something we're doing." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Encouragement"

"This is another reason why the Buddha taught rebirth: as one of our motivations for practicing and for being really strict with ourselves as we practice. After all, some cravings and clingings in the mind appear at first glance to be no problem at all. They don’t seem to be affecting anybody else. We’re okay with them. But if you think about the fact that these cravings are creating not only your identity now, but also the world into which you’re going to be reborn, you realize that they’re dangerous. It’s like tuning your radio: It’ll connect with whatever’s on that particular frequency: hard rock or Beethoven or the ravings of some lunatic. Are your cravings on the frequency of the kind of world you’d really want to create and inhabit long-term? Sensual passion is the worse offender, because all of the worlds of intense suffering and conflict are on the frequency of sensual passion. Are those worlds you’d want to inhabit long-term?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Rebirth is Re...

"The workings of kamma are complex — more complex, in fact, than is indicated in [MN 136]. Their complexities would have posed a challenge for the Buddha if he had wanted to construct an explanation of stress and its end based on first principles, for a theory of kamma would have been a logical place to start. Thus he would have been required to give a full explanation of how and why kamma is complex. But because his teaching was teleological, aimed at actually putting an end to stress, he needed to explain only what was necessary toward that end: the ways in which past and present kamma shape experience. Although past kamma can influence the conditions on one’s sensory experience, the actual stress or lack of stress experienced by the mind is the direct result of present kamma — the act of following or abandoning clinging and craving. For the purpose of putting an end to stress, all that needs to be known is how to create skillful kamma and then — once that skill is...

"It’s in the actions themselves: Whether they’re skillful or unskillful is what makes us happy or unhappy. We tend to think of happiness as a product of an action, something we receive. The same with pain: We think it’s the product of the action. But there’s a passage where the Buddha indicates that the action itself is either the happiness or the pain. In the case of acts of merit, he says that the phrase, act of merit, is another name for happiness. The happiness is there in the action. Similarly with suffering: Suffering is the clinging. Clinging is an activity; it’s something you do. So when people are misbehaving, treating other people wrongly, they’re already suffering. They may not admit it, but that’s because their faculties are impaired. When you see that in someone else, you have to turn and look at yourself. Your desire to see them punished is a sign that your faculties are impaired, too. It’s your desire that’s creating suffering right there ." ~ Tha...

"If you can’t get any control over your craving and clinging, then rebirth is going to be very difficult. It could lead you in all kinds of directions. Because at the moment of death — when the body is weak, the mind is frustrated, the mind is distraught — cravings and clingings can bubble up inside. We latch on and we go . When the mind is distraught like that, it tends not to be very choosy. It just takes whatever comes. And who knows what’s going to come up bubbling up out of your karmic past. So we meditate to get some control over our cravings and clingings. Every time the thought comes up that you could go away from the breath, you’ve got to realize, “Okay, this is exactly how rebirth happens. If I’m not good at sticking with what I know is right, then who knows what side paths the mind will take.” So try to be really on top of yourself, watching yourself carefully. One of the strange tendencies in modern Dhamma is to tell people, “Don’t try too hard, don’t place too many d...

"We know that people who simply follow their whims are psychologically not very happy. The people who can channel their desires in a direction that they find worthwhile: those are the ones who are really happy. And the teaching on kamma encourages that. You focus on the practice. You may not be able to get all the way to nibbana in this lifetime, but your efforts are not wasted. You can pick up in the practice again; you can create the conditions for being able to pick it up again after you die. So there are lots of ways you can learn how to get a better emotional relationship to the teaching on kamma, a relationship that will really sustain you. Ajaan Suwat would comment on how people who follow a life of sensual pleasures, when the time comes when they’re about to leave this life of sensual pleasures, look back and all they can have is regret and fear and grasping, because there’s nothing of any substance there in the memories of past pleasures. And of course, you know what happ...

"The workings of kamma are complex — more complex, in fact, than is indicated in [MN 136]. Their complexities would have posed a challenge for the Buddha if he had wanted to construct an explanation of stress and its end based on first principles, for a theory of kamma would have been a logical place to start. Thus he would have been required to give a full explanation of how and why kamma is complex. But because his teaching was teleological, aimed at actually putting an end to stress, he needed to explain only what was necessary toward that end: the ways in which past and present kamma shape experience. Although past kamma can influence the conditions on one’s sensory experience, the actual stress or lack of stress experienced by the mind is the direct result of present kamma — the act of following or abandoning clinging and craving. For the purpose of putting an end to stress, all that needs to be known is how to create skillful kamma and then — once that skill is mastered — ho...

"It’s in the actions themselves: Whether they’re skillful or unskillful is what makes us happy or unhappy. We tend to think of happiness as a product of an action, something we receive. The same with pain: We think it’s the product of the action. But there’s a passage where the Buddha indicates that the action itself is either the happiness or the pain. In the case of acts of merit, he says that the phrase, act of merit, is another name for happiness. The happiness is there in the action. Similarly with suffering: Suffering is the clinging. Clinging is an activity; it’s something you do. So when people are misbehaving, treating other people wrongly, they’re already suffering. They may not admit it, but that’s because their faculties are impaired. When you see that in someone else, you have to turn and look at yourself. Your desire to see them punished is a sign that your faculties are impaired, too. It’s your desire that’s creating suffering right there ." ~ Thanissaro Bhik...