Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"This is one of the purposes of doing meditation to begin with — to see how much of our experience we’re fabricating. We’re fabricating a lot more than we think. “Fabricating” here doesn’t mean that you’re lying, it simply means that you’re creating things, jerry-rigging things together, to make some sense out of your experience, or to get something out of your experience. But the way you jerry-rig can carry lots of problem with it. A lot of things that bother us in life are not simply “givens.” We’ve taken some raw material from our past karma and have shaped it into something oppressive. That’s the kind of pain that the Buddha is focusing on — the pain that comes from craving." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Fabrication of Pain"

"Everything talked about in the Dhamma relates to actions. When people talk about interconnectedness: We’re connected through our actions. We’re not connected through anything else. What kind of connections do we have? It’s not something we are born with, aside from the results of past actions. These connections are created right now as we’re acting. Then act well so that the connections are good, as long as you need connections. But ultimately you find the mind is a lot better off without connections to anything at all." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "It's All about Action"

"Virtue, in Buddhism, is expressed in the five precepts. Of the five, truthfulness is said to be the highest virtue because it’s only through truthfulness that you’re in a position to admit your mistakes and to learn from them. There are passages in the Canon called the Jātaka tales, which tell the stories of the Buddha in previous lifetimes. And it’s obvious from some of the stories that he’s still learning the ropes, because sometimes he breaks the precepts: Sometimes he kills, sometimes he steals, sometimes he has illicit sex, sometimes he takes alcohol. But he never lies. Ever. For him, that’s the most important precept. Because after all, if you lie to someone, the misunderstanding you create can have a bad effect not only in this lifetime but also into future lifetimes. And as the Buddha says, if you feel no shame at telling a deliberate lie, there’s no evil you’re incapable of doing." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Five Faculties: Putting Wisdom in Charge o...

"If you really want other people to be happy, you don’t just treat them nicely. You also want them to learn how to create the causes for happiness. The best way to do this is to show them through the example of your own behavior. If possible, you can also encourage them to follow your example. At the very least, you don’t thwart their attempts to act skillfully." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sublime Attitudes: A Study Guide on the Brahmavihāras"

Question: Kamma and Rebirth, second try. How does individual kamma migrate from this life to the next one? Is this a relevant question? If no, how can our next life be better if we don’t have the benefit of a kind of karmic legacy? Thank you, Ajaan, for clarifying this “critical” question. Thanissaro Bhikkhu: It’s not a matter of migrating. Our kamma is actually what creates our experience of the next life — or rather, it supplies the raw material for our experience of the next life. When we leave this life and go to the next one, it doesn’t feel like we’re going someplace else. Just as we have a sense of our present life as “right here,” the next life will also have a sense of being “right here,” right at our consciousness. It’s like going from one dream to another. Even though the appearance of the location in the second dream is different from the location in the first, it still has a sense of happening “right here” just as the first one did. To give another examp...

"Oftentimes we see ourselves as the passive recipients of experiences: things come in the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body; thoughts come into the mind. And we tend to miss how much we’re doing right now to turn those experiences into suffering. The early Buddhists said that this point was the one where the Buddha’s teaching differed most radically from everything else that was available at the time: pointing to what you’re doing right now and the effects that it has right now. And also to the possibility for change. You don’t have to create that suffering for yourself. But first you have to see yourself doing it. Otherwise, it simply seems to be a part of what you’re receiving. Actually, a lot of what we experience in the present moment is what we’re doing right now. And yet we see it as something happening to us. As a result, we don’t see the opportunity for change. So when you look at experience, try to see that element of what you’re doing. Of course, to see yourself doing it, y...

"When people who are enjoying good fortune abuse that good fortune — say, using their power to create war and mayhem in the world — you can’t wish for them to lose their good fortune. A more skillful attitude would be to wish that they would see the error of their ways and then use their good fortune for greater good." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Sublime Determinations: a Retreat on the Brahmavihāras with the Sociedade Vipassana de Meditação BrasÍlia"

"There’s a passage in the Dhammapada when the Buddha says that you don’t go to heaven or to hell because of other people’s actions. Yet all too often we find ourselves in our own mental heaven or hell because of what someone else did. Actually, though, we’re the ones who create that heaven and hell. It’s through our own actions that we take what they did, what they said, or even what we think they thought, and turn it into our own private heaven or our own private hell." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Other People"

"The Buddha says that if you think there is a creator god who is responsible for the pleasure and pain you experience, you can’t really practice the Dhamma. You have to realize that the important issues are the things that you create. When you solve the issue of your own creations, then you’re done with the problem." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"It’s so easy to get caught up in the narratives that you spin about, “Well, how about if this happened?” Or, “How about if that happened?” Or, “I wished that had happened. I wish this had happened.” That’s the mind just creating worlds for itself right here and now. Again, the Buddha reminds you, no matter how wonderful the world, it all comes down to this: aging, illness, death, and separation. Then there’s the whole issue of karma: What did you do in order to maintain those things before they left you? That’s what you’ll be left with: the results of your actions, the imprint that they leave on the mind and the worlds they create for you." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Worldly Narratives"

"There’s a story where Somdet Toh was approached by a young monk complaining about another monk who had hit him. And Somdet Toh told him, “Well, you hit him before that.” The young monk replied, “No I didn’t. He just came up and hit me out of nowhere.” And Somdet Toh kept saying, “No, you hit him first.” So the young monk went to complain to the abbot of another monastery. The other monastery’s abbot came over and asked Somdet Toh what he was talking about. Somdet Toh said, “Well, obviously, he hit the other monk sometime in a previous lifetime.” In other words, if you try to trace things back to where a problem started, you go crazy. Because it just goes back and back and back, and there’s no sense of who was the original instigator. Which means that when you’re thinking about issues in the past, you just have to let them go. Just say, “Whatever it was, it was a karmic back and forth. Do you want to still continue it?” There’s another story — it’s in the Commentary — o...

"So focus on right now, and what can be done right now . And if it so happens that you’re still going to live for a much longer time, well, you keep creating good right nows all along. And it’s all to the good. The effort that goes into training the mind, the effort that goes into trying to be as skillful as possible in what you do and say and think is never wasted. It’s your wealth. It’s your investment in the future." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An Auspicious Day"

"Remind yourself that your life isn’t already written in stone, that you’re not a slave to fate or a little nameless cog in the big machine. You’re actually a doer, a mover, a shaper. You can shape your life in the direction you want it to go." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Impossible Things" (Meditations1)

 "A proper understanding of kamma helps to correct the false idea that if people are suffering they deserve to suffer, so you might as well be equanimous and just leave them alone. When you catch yourself thinking in those terms, try 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, what 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 ...

"So the general interconnectedness out there is not always a good thing. In fact, Interbeing is Inter-eating. We feed on one another. The types of connections that can be helpful, though, are the ones that we connect through our karma. In that chant we have about our actions: kammabandhu,  we are related through our actions. It’s through our choices that we’re connected with different people in different ways — which is one of the reasons why you want to be very careful about how you relate to others, how your actions have an impact on others. Try to create connections that are good. This is what generosity is for; it’s what virtue is for Meditation helps in this way as well. The stronger we are inside, the less we have to lean on others. The more clarity we bring to our own actions, the less we’re likely to harm others. And the greater sense of strength we have inside, the less we’re likely to do unskillful things. Because it’s usually through a sense of weakness or being threate...

"If each person in this world would mind his or her own business, clean up his or her own house, there wouldn’t be any trouble or conflicts in the world. Our problem is that we leave our own immediate responsibilities and start worrying about other people: what they’re doing, what messes they’re creating for us, or what messes they’re creating for other people. That can be appropriate only after we’ve really taken care of our own business. Otherwise, we leave huge blind spots in our mind about what we’re doing and saying and thinking. We become oblivious to our impact on the world where we really are responsible." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Minding Your Own Business"

"Your mind needs training. You’re going to be better off with a trained mind. After all, as the Buddha said, a trained mind is what brings happiness. You can have everything else in the world going really well for you, but if your mind is a mess, you can create all sorts of suffering. In fact, people with untrained minds who gain wealth and power are the ones who create all the big problems in the world. So remind yourself of how important it is to meditate, and how much you’ll benefit from your meditation." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Home Schooling Your Inner Children"

" “We’re related through our actions” The connections we have in life with different people are created by our actions: things that we’ve done together with other people or to other people or for other people. These create the connections that we have with the people around us. Interconnectedness is a very popular teaching in Buddhism, especially nowadays, but it’s funny that people like to talk about interconnectedness without the teaching on karma. They turn to dependent co-arising as a model for interconnectedness, this web of connections where one factor can’t exist without a whole lot of other factors, but they neglect to realize that dependent co-arising is a teaching on how ignorance is connected with suffering, how craving is connected with suffering. It’s the kind of connectedness you want to cut, not the kind you want to celebrate. Connectedness through karma can go either way — the connections can be good, or they can be bad. So you want to foster the good ...

"So be serious about being happy. Be willing to do whatever is needed. Be willing to sacrifice whatever has to be sacrificed, and you’ll find that that kind of survival really is worth struggling for, because you’re not involved in struggling against other people, you’re struggling against your own defilements. And victory over the defilements is the best kind of victory there is. You’re not creating bad kamma with other people. In fact, your inner victory is going to be good for other people outside as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "For the Survival of True Happiness"

"So for this question the mind always has — “What should I do now?” — [the Buddha] provides an answer for it. This is why the Dhamma is so good for the mind, so right for the mind, because it answers your burning question: You’ve got these responsibilities. How do you handle them, for the sake of a happiness that’s worth the effort that goes into it? The Buddha doesn’t waste his time talking about totally irrelevant things. After all, he said he learned a lot of things in the course of his awakening that he didn’t talk about. Why? Because it wouldn’t help with the solution to this problem: Why are we suffering? What are we doing that’s creating the suffering and what can we do to stop? He was very critical of teachers who would engage in what he called “bombast”: flowery words, beautiful sentiments that don’t offer any guidance that could be applied to that question, “What should I do next? What is the wisest thing to do next?” So we should take his teachings and app...