Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

Question: The precept against killing is often translated into adopting a vegetarian diet. Is this necessary? Aren’t you also killing these poor vegetables, stripping their skin off while they’re still alive and boiling them? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: For the monks, our rule is that we’re not allowed to eat meat if we either know or suspect that it was killed for the purpose of feeding us. The precept against killing is specifically against either killing something on your own or telling someone else to kill. Now, if you want to take the precept further and adopt a vegetarian diet, that’s perfectly fine. But the precept doesn’t require it. Just make sure that when you go to a seafood restaurant and they have a fish tank with live fish, don’t choose any of the live fish. As for vegetables, they don’t come under the concept of sentient being — they don’t feel pain — so the precept doesn’t cover them. We’ve received several questions on the issue of the relationship between the ...

"You look in the newspapers and it seems like everything in the world is falling apart. And it is. So, what is there to accomplish? We train our minds. We’re good to one another, because that kind of goodness isn’t erased by death." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Living Honorably (2015)" (Meditations8)

"So even though the mountains of aging, illness, and death may be moving in, we can still train the mind. Because as the Buddha pointed out, death is not the end. It’s one incident in a very long story. Poverty is not the end. Famine, the four horsemen [death, famine, war & pestilence], are not really the end. The four horsemen have been stampeding all over the world for who knows how long. But we can still do good." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "In Charge of Your World"

"We all know that life is going to end at some spot and the question is, what comes next? So you want to develop the qualities of mind that will help ensure that, whatever comes next, it’s something not to be afraid of, but something actually to look forward to. Not in the sense that you want to die, but at least you feel secure about where you’re going after death." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Try This at Home"

"Admirable friends can’t do the work for you. As [the Buddha] says, no one can purify you; you can’t purify anybody else. You don’t go to heaven because of other people’s good actions; you don’t go to hell because of other people’s bad actions. It’s your actions that determine that. So there is that sense in which you’re separate. And of course you’re the one who chooses your friends to begin with. So in that way, the separateness of our selves comes first." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Separate Self"

"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"

"Before the Buddha left home, he had a vision. The world was like a dwindling stream. The water was drying up, drying up. There were fish stranded in the stream, and they were fighting one another over the water. Of course, some of them won out. But even those who won out were still going to die anyhow. That, the Buddha said, was the world. And in the battles that the fish had among one another, a lot of bad karma was made for no purpose at all. You look at the world around us right now. You can see it really is a fish-eat-fish world, where the big fish are trying to take everything they can for themselves and leave everybody else out. But then it’s not really theirs; they’ll have to leave it. So as the Buddha said, victory over others is nothing compared to victory over yourself — in other words, victory over your greed, your aversion, delusion. That victory, he said, once it’s attained, doesn’t leave you." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Fish-Eat-Fish World"

"Your actions will have consequences even as everything is winding down in your life. That doesn’t mean things are going to come to an end. It’s just the end of a chapter, and then there’s another chapter, and another chapter. You want to make sure that those following chapters are headed in the right direction, so you avoid unskillful qualities and develop skillful ones." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Conviction & Focus"

"If people misbehave toward you, you want to overwhelm them with goodwill [mettā] . After all, just look at this world: People are so poor in goodwill. With the least little bit of disagreement, people draw lines and get all upset and want to attack the other side. For what? We keep battling, battling, battling, then we die. We have nothing to show for it except a lot of bad kamma. But goodwill raises the level of the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Metta Math" (Meditations12)

"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"

"There’s also fear of death. What with the war and with the pandemic, that’s a lot on people’s minds. But the Buddha said that wars and pandemics can harm you only up to the end of this life. The things you really have to be afraid of are your own unskillful actions, because they can harm you beyond that. No one else can send you to hell. But you can send yourself to hell if you’re not careful." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Skillful Fear (2022)"

"Admirable friends can’t do the work for you. As [the Buddha] says, no one can purify you; you can’t purify anybody else. You don’t go to heaven because of other people’s good actions; you don’t go to hell because of other people’s bad actions. It’s your actions that determine that. So there is that sense in which you’re separate. And of course you’re the one who chooses your friends to begin with. So in that way, the separateness of our selves comes first." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Separate Self"

"Equanimity is sometimes taught with a defeatist attitude. A defeatist attitude says, basically, that there’s no lasting happiness to be found in the world, so you might as well give up trying to find it. Just learn to accept things as they are and don’t hope for them to be better than what they are. When you give up on your search for happiness, you can be equanimous and content with what you’ve got. That, as I said, is a defeatist attitude. It’s equanimity tinged with regret, disappointment, and a sense of powerlessness. It’s heavy and narrow, a contentment found by lowering your standards for satisfaction. We bow down to the Buddha, though, because he actually has us raise our standards for satisfaction, to accept nothing less than the ultimate happiness. There’s nothing defeatist in his attitude at all. In fact, he called the noble eightfold path the path to victory: You can find a happiness that’s not subject to aging, illness, and death, that’s totally free of s...

"There’s also fear of death. What with the war and with the pandemic, that’s a lot on people’s minds. But the Buddha said that wars and pandemics can harm you only up to the end of this life. The things you really have to be afraid of are your own unskillful actions, because they can harm you beyond that. No one else can send you to hell. But you can send yourself to hell if you’re not careful." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Skillful Fear (2022)"

 "It’s important as we meditate that we don’t just think about ourselves. We also have to think about others. You see this pattern again and again in the Buddha’s teachings. Think of the five reflections that we have as a common chant: “I am subject to aging, subject to illness, subject to death, subject to separation from all that is dear and appealing to me. I am the owner of my actions.” The Buddha says that as you reflect in that way, it gives you motivation to become more and more skillful in what you do in thought, word, and deed. But he doesn’t leave the reflection there. He has you reflect not only on “me,” but also on the fact that all beings everywhere,  on every level of the cosmos, are subject to aging, illness, death, and separation. They, too, all have their kamma. Think about that: everybody, no matter what they are, from hell-beings all the way up through the highest levels of heaven. There’s nobody in charge, nobody in the universe who lies above the laws of k...

"It’s easy to see the appeal of a notion of Oneness benevolently designed to take care of us all in spite of our actions. And why that notion can appear to be a more compassionate teaching than interconnectedness through action, in that it provides a more comforting vision of the world and is more forgiving around the precepts. But actually, the principle of interconnectedness through our actions is the more compassionate teaching of the two — both in showing more compassion to the people to whom it’s taught and in giving them better reasons to act toward others in compassionate ways. To begin with, interconnectedness through kamma allows for freedom of choice, whereas Oneness doesn’t. If we were really all parts of a larger organic Oneness, how could any of us determine what role we would play within that Oneness? It would be like a stomach suddenly deciding to switch jobs with the liver or to go on strike: The organism would die. At most, the stomach is free simply to act in lin...

"There’s that paradox that we so often encounter when we chant before the meditation: First are the contemplations of aging, illness and death, inconstancy, stress, not-self; thinking about how the things that we tend to identify with as us or ours, really aren’t us or ours, and ultimately, lie beyond our control. And we live in a world that’s swept away, with no protection. Whatever we have we will have to leave behind, and yet we’re still a slave to craving: All of that on the one hand. Then on the other hand, the chant: “May I be happy.” It sounds so wistful in face of all those other contemplations of how things are. It sounds pretty hopeless, but the Buddha didn’t teach us to be hopeless. When he pointed out the negative side of the world, it wasn’t just to say, “Okay, give up hope all ye who have been born here.” It was to help us realize that the things we’ve been contenting ourselves with for so long are not really worth contentment, but there is something better — and t...

"We live a life full of the power of kamma — old kamma and new. You can’t do anything about old kamma. You have to accept it like a good sport. That’s why you practice equanimity. But as for the new kamma you’re creating right now, you can’t practice equanimity with that. You have to be very concerned about what you’re putting into the system because you realize that this is the only chance you get to make the choice. Once the choice is made and it gets put into the system, then whatever the energy — positive or negative — that’s the sort of energy you’re going to have to experience. So pay attention: What are you putting into the system right now? This is the important thing to focus on. Whatever other people do to you, whatever arises in your body in terms of pains, illnesses, aging, death, or whatever: That’s old kamma that you simply have to learn to take with good humor, with a sense of equanimity. As for what you’re putting into the system right now, that’s ser...

"When I was up in the Bay Area [in September 2017], I came across a new word: corelessness . Apparently, the latest fashion is to claim that the Buddha said we are coreless, and that that’s the meaning of anatta . In other words, there’s a jumble of karmic activities that make up a human being. That’s what you are. The anatta  teaching, in this interpretation, is not a not-self teaching; it’s a no-self teaching. It answers the question of what you are, saying that what you are has no core. You’re like a karmic fuzz ball. All the fuzz that’s picked up as the fuzz ball moves across the floor under the force of the wind is held together only by static electricity, but there’s no real core there. This is supposed to represent what the Buddha taught about what we are. The problem is that the Buddha never talked about what we are. That was one of the questions he consistently avoided. If you say that there’s no core there, then when kamma ends in the attainment of nibbana, there’d be no...

"You look in the newspapers and it seems like everything in the world is falling apart. And it is. So, what is there to accomplish? We train our minds. We’re good to one another, because that kind of goodness isn’t erased by death." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Living Honorably (2015)" (Meditations8)