Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"The general Western resistance to the concept of defilement is a serious obstacle to reaching the end of suffering and stress and to reaping the benefits of the practice along the way. In light of the first two facts — that defilement is a quality of actions measured by the extent to which they cause affliction — an unwillingness to accept the idea of defilement translates into an unwillingness to examine your own actions to see if they cause harm. This is a form of narcissism that makes it impossible to see the connection between the second and first noble truths. If you refuse to accept the idea that your thoughts, words, and deeds cause suffering, you won’t be able to see the sources of suffering coming from within the mind. In light of the third fact — that the brightness of the mind is its ability to recognize defilement and do something about it — an unwillingness to accept the idea of defilement translates into a willed ignorance around one’s own actions and their effects....

"Dangers in your own mind: Ultimately, those are the ones that are really dangerous. Other people can hurt you, they can even kill you, but the results go only as far as this lifetime. But through your actions — your thoughts, your words, and your deeds — you can do yourself a lot of damage that goes beyond just this lifetime, so you need a source of safety that’s nearby." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Near to the Buddha"

"Was it Sartre that said hell is other people? No, hell is your own mind! The dangers that other people can pose to you are nothing compared to the dangers you pose to yourself. But the dangers you pose to yourself are things you can learn how to control. Other people are hard to control, but you can control your thoughts, your words, your deeds, and these are the true measure of where you’re going to go, how well you’re going to fare." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Calm & at Ease"

"We saw all that insanity after 9/11, where people were willing to throw morality out the window because they were so scared. There was even that Buddhist teacher who said, “This principle that hatred is never appeased by hatred, that it’s only appeased by non-hatred [i.e. goodwill,]” was totally useless. Didn’t have any practical application when things were so uncertain. Actually, though, that principle was designed for times when people really are seething with hatred, when they have to be reminded that you can’t put aside your principles in a situation like that. When life is in danger, your first impulse may be not your best impulse at all. You need clear-cut precepts to keep reminding you that under no circumstances would you kill, steal, have illicit sex, lie, or take intoxicants. That’s why the precepts are so simple, to be easy to remember in difficult situations." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Ennobling Path"

"Start with this simple intention, “May all beings be happy.” Now, you’re not expecting that all beings will be happy, but you want to make sure that at least from your quarter there’s no danger for any beings at all. You’re setting your intentions straight. And that’s really all you can be responsible for." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Right Attitudes"

"[The Buddha] recommends having a sense of love for yourself, in the sense that you don’t want to act in any way that would cause you harm down the line. And if you really care about yourself, you’re also not going to cause harm to any other people at all, because if you can harm them, then there’s going to be trouble coming back. If your happiness depends on their misery, they’re not going to stand for it. Even if they can’t get you, your kamma will, at least to some extent." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "See Yourself as Active Verbs" (Meditations10)

"So the fearlessness the Buddha teaches is not the kind of fearlessness that tries to pretend there’s nothing wrong with death or that death is not a danger. It really is. Because when you go, it’s like a trap door opening under you. And if you have good kamma, okay, there will be something to support you, to catch you. If you don’t, who knows how far you’ll fall. Instead, the Buddha’s fearlessness is the fearlessness that can see death and danger, but can see past them." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Fear & Uncertainty"

"In terms of distress with reference to the world, the number one issue that’s hardest to put down is the sense that you’ve been wronged. There’s a very strong sense of self that grows around that and a very strong sense that if you don’t keep that in mind, you’re going to miss out on some justice, so you’re the one who has to keep the issue alive. You have to realize that whether the wrong was deserved or not, it’s an issue that you have to chalk up to karma. You may have done something like that a long time ago. It’s so long ago that you’ve forgotten and it doesn’t seem right that something you’ve forgotten so long ago should come back and hit you, but that’s how karma works. Sometimes things take many lifetimes before they show up. So it’s not a case of whether you deserved it or didn’t deserve it. It’s simply that there was a cause and this was the result. And there’s no need to feel that you have to keep it in mind in order to have justice done, because again, karma will work...

"Realize that a lot of good can be done each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out. Look for those opportunities. That’s also what it means to be heedful. You’re not just looking for dangers. You’re looking for opportunities. Sometimes the opportunities are really challenging, but you want to be up for the challenge. That’s the positive side of heedfulness." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Positive Side of Heedfulness" (Meditations8)

"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 "...

"It’s the same with worry and anxiety, or restlessness. These things that you’re worried about: If they really happened, what would be the best way to prepare for them? Not by spending the whole night worrying and wearing yourself out! You’re going to need mindfulness; you’re going to need alertness. You’re going to need an inner sense of strength that you can draw on, and this is what the meditation is for. It strengthens these good qualities that you can use in any situation if you’re willing to use them. So the best way to prepare for future contingencies is to strengthen the mind as much as you can. Gain practice in being as mindful as possible, as alert as possible, open to new ways of thinking. And also, try to get that perspective on future dangers. There’s that great passage where the monk is going to a dangerous part of India. He takes leave of the Buddha, and the Buddha says, “You know, the people there are reputed to be pretty savage. What if they curse you?” And the m...

"The problem is that sometimes, when we’re practicing the Dhamma, we lack common sense. We hear about the Dhamma protecting us or we hear about our good intentions protecting us, and we think that we don’t have to be wary about the world around us. Our good intentions will protect us. But the Buddha never said that. The protection you get from the Dhamma is that you’re not creating any new bad kamma right now, but it doesn’t protect you from your old bad kamma. So you still have to watch out. I noticed that Ajaan Fuang was a very wary person — wary of dealing with other people. He wouldn’t trust people right away. He would watch them for a while first. When I lived with him, it was two or three years before I was even allowed in his room. I eventually became his attendant, and then it became my duty. I had to clean up his room and arrange everything. But he wouldn’t allow me in there until he felt that he could really trust me. And when different issues came up in the monastery — ...

"You hear the planes going overhead. There are people up there saying to themselves that they’ve got to stay ready for a war. That’s their way of being heedful. The Buddha’s way of being heedful, though, is to say that whether there’s war or no war, there’s always a danger in being unskillful. When that sense of danger stays alive, your sense of heedfulness will help keep you on the path and get you to a point where there is no danger." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Karma & Rebirth: A Handful of Leaves"

"[Conviction in the principle of karma and rebirth] can make you brave in doing good. If you’re convinced that the results of skillful intentions will have to return to you even if death intervenes, you can more easily make the sacrifices demanded by long-term endeavors for your own good and that of others. Whether of not you live to see the results in this lifetime, you’re convinced that the good you do is never lost. In this way, you develop the courage needed to build a store of skillful actions — generous and virtuous — that forms your first line of defense against dangers and fear." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Freedom from Fear"

"It’s so easy to break a precept, especially when you feel that you’re put at a disadvantage by the precept. We saw all that insanity after 9/11, where people were willing to throw morality out the window because they were so scared. There was even that Buddhist teacher who said, “This principle that hatred is never appeased by hatred, that it’s only appeased by non-hatred [i.e. goodwill,]” was totally useless. Didn’t have any practical application when things were so uncertain. Actually, though, that principle was designed for times when people really are seething with hatred, when they have to be reminded that you can’t put aside your principles in a situation like that. When life is in danger, your first impulse may be not your best impulse at all. You need clear-cut precepts to keep reminding you that under no circumstances would you kill, steal, have illicit sex, lie, or take intoxicants. That’s why the precepts are so simple, to be easy to remember in difficult ...

"This same principle [of karmic cause and effect] can make you brave in doing good. If you’re convinced that the results of skillful intentions will have to return to you even if death intervenes, you can more easily make the sacrifices demanded by long-term endeavors for your own good and that of others. Whether or not you live to see the results in this lifetime, you’re convinced that the good you do is never lost. In this way, you develop the courage needed to build a store of skillful actions — generous and virtuous — that forms your first line of defense against dangers and fear." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Freedom from Fear"

"Start with this simple intention, “May all beings be happy.” Now, you’re not expecting that all beings will be happy, but you want to make sure that at least from your quarter there’s no danger for any beings at all. You’re setting your intentions straight. And that’s really all you can be responsible for." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Right Attitudes"

"Just look at your body. Every part of the body has at least one disease to go with it, sometimes more than one. It’s ready to fall apart, even though we do our best to keep it going. And the mind is even more changeable than that. So it’s no wonder that these are the things that grab our attention right away. But, the Buddha says, those aren’t the things to be afraid of. The real thing to be afraid of is that you’re going to do something unskillful — particularly in trying to protect this identity you’ve taken on, to ward off whatever you think is going to be the next big danger to threaten it. There are a lot of really horrible things that people do out of fear. And it turns out the horrible things are the things they really should be fearing more than the other fears they have. This is why a large part of our training as meditators is to learn to see how our ordinary old fears are not nearly as scary as we think. Of course, the dangers are there — there’s instability, there are...

  Autonomous Good Karma , short morning talk November 16, 2015. Okay, focus on your breath. You might say there are lots of other things in the world that need attention right now, but the primary thing for each of us is to attend to our own minds: make sure our minds are in good shape, so that as we engage in the world, we’re not going to be adding more danger to the world, not be adding more of a mess to the world. After all, our actions are what shape the world, and where do our actions come from? They come from inside. Other people’s actions come from their minds. Try as we may to have a good influence on them, it doesn’t always work. But we can influence our own minds, so focus there first. Get your own mind in shape, and then from there if you come out into the world and see something you can do, something you can help with, you’re coming from a much better place. All too often, people who meditate are accused of being irresponsible in the face of all the troubl...

"What kind of kamma do you want to create? If the answer is “skillful kamma,” then one of the things you’ve got to learn how to do is not to get focused on how you’ve been wronged by other people. You don’t want to go around getting revenge because that just keeps the bad kammic cycle going on and on and on. This is what forgiveness means in the context of mundane right view: You decide that you’re not going to hold any danger to that person. You’re not going to try to get back at the other person. You’ll let the issue go. Whatever unskillfulness has been going on between the two of you, you want it to stop — and it has to stop with you. And that’s it. It doesn’t mean you have to love the person or go and kiss and make up or anything, because there are some cases where the way you’ve been wronged is so heavy that it’s really hard even to be around the other person, much less to interact. You’re not called on to love the person and there’s no forcing of the issue that...