Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"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"

"We could view samsara as a big mud fight. I splash mud on you. You splash mud on me. And then I splash mud on you back because you splashed mud on me. It goes back and forth like this and it never ends. So the idea of trying to straighten everybody out — or trying to settle the score — again makes no sense. There’s that famous story of Somdet Toh. A junior monk came to see him once, complaining that another monk had hit him over the head for no reason at all. He hadn’t done anything to harm the other monk. The other monk was just a really bad guy who came up and hit him. And Somdet Toh said, “Well, you hit him first.” The junior monk replied, “No, no, he came up and hit me first. I didn’t do anything to him at all.” Somdet Toh kept insisting, “No, you hit him first.” And so the young monk went to complain to Somdet Toh’s superior, who must’ve been the supreme patriarch. He went to Somdet Toh to question him about this: “Why did you keep insisting that the innocent m...

"When you forgive someone who’s wronged you, it doesn’t erase that person’s karma in having done wrong. This is why some people think that forgiveness has no place in the karmic universe of the Buddha’s teachings, and that it’s incompatible with the practice of what he taught. But that’s not so. Forgiveness may not be able to undo old bad kamma, but it can prevent new bad karma from being done. This is especially true with the bad kamma that in Pali is called vera . Vera is often translated as “hostility,” “animosity,” or “antagonism,” but it’s a particular instance of these attitudes: the vengeful animosity that wants to get back at someone for perceived wrongs. This attitude is what has no place in Buddhist practice. Patience can weaken it, but forgiveness is what clears it out of the way. The Dhammapada , a popular collection of early Buddhist poems, speaks of vera in two contexts. The first is when someone has injured you, and you’d like to inflict some injury ba...

"So look out for any wrong views that would make you want to listen to what the world out there has to say about how you have to get back at certain people, or that you have to fight in an unfair way for what you think is right. The idea that ends justify the means is really destructive because there are no ends in samsara. It’s like a series of meadows I walked through one time near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. You came across a meadow and you could see to the end of the meadow. But then when you came to the end of the meadow, it turned out there was a slight turn in the path, and there was another meadow. You saw to the end of that meadow and when you walked there, there was another meadow. It just kept going and going and going like that. So remember: There are no “ends” out there in samsara, there are just “means.” They only real end is nibbana. You may not be sure whether you can attain any of the ends that you want, but you can be sure that your means are...

"Ordinary happiness — the happiness of the body eating, sleeping, getting the things it wants — involves conflict because there are only so many resources in the world, and the fact that we need to eat and have clothing, shelter, and medicine means we’re a burden on the rest of the world. So that kind of happiness inevitably brings conflict, which is why the desire for release from all this is not a selfish thing. Now, we can’t release other people. The reason we’re tied up in this world of wandering on is because of our own lack of skillfulness. The same holds true for others: They’re tied up by their lack of skillfulness, too. We can learn to be skillful but we can’t make other people skillful. You can teach them how, but it’s up to them to want to do it, and it’s up to them to put in the necessary effort. So our first order of business in being kind to others and showing true goodwill is to develop our own skillfulness, because one way of encouraging other people to become skil...

"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 you forgive someone who’s wronged you, it doesn’t erase that person’s karma in having done wrong. This is why some people think that forgiveness has no place in the karmic universe of the Buddha’s teachings, and that it’s incompatible with the practice of what he taught. But that’s not so. Forgiveness may not be able to undo old bad kamma, but it can prevent new bad karma from being done. This is especially true with the bad kamma that in Pali is called vera . Vera is often translated as “hostility,” “animosity,” or “antagonism,” but it’s a particular instance of these attitudes: the vengeful animosity that wants to get back at someone for perceived wrongs. This attitude is what has no place in Buddhist practice. Patience can weaken it, but forgiveness is what clears it out of the way. The Dhammapada , a popular collection of early Buddhist poems, speaks of vera in two contexts. The first is when someone has injured you, and you’d like to inflict some injury ba...

"This is where our culture at large is really lacking. The basic assumption is that there has to be a lot of strife and a lot of conflict. The newspapers thrive on conflict. If everybody were at peace, you couldn’t sell a newspaper — except for the Sudokus and the comics — and so they try to stir up as much controversy as possible. They thrive on that. There are other people, too, who profit off of conflict, who try to keep it all stirred up. The image they project is that we can’t live in peace with one another. It’s either them or us. In this kind of culture, the idea of a happiness that spreads around, a happiness that’s shared, gets trampled. The people who do good are the fools: That’s the attitude of the culture. You’ve got to fight for yourself. It’s interesting that many people who don’t believe in biological Darwinism do believe in social Darwinism. The people who fight are the ones who will get ahead: That’s the attitude. It’s a very unhealthy culture. So you can’t expec...

"The Buddha defines the world as your six sense media: the external sense media that make contact at your internal ones, plus the feelings and awareness that arise through that contact. That’s the world. And the Buddha adds that that’s your old kamma. Try to see it simply in those terms. He also says that it’s burning. So if we try to straighten out the world, we’re working at the wrong place. It burns us because our greed, aversion, and delusion try to hold on to the results of our past kamma. And, of course, those results are going to slip through our fingers. They often may not be what we want, but we can’t go back and change our past kamma. So the problem is not with the world. The problem is with our greed, aversion, and delusion. Now, this doesn’t mean we don’t try to change the world when we can. Our kamma is such that it does allow for some things to be changed for the better. But the real cause of the suffering in the world is not the world itself. It’s the ...

Question 17. Does forgiveness have any effect on kamma? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: It can’t erase the effects of old bad kamma, but it can help prevent new bad kamma. When people wrong you, it’s always wise to forgive them. Although this won’t negate the bad kamma of their actions, it does remove you from what the Buddha called vera, or animosity: the kammic mud fight of trying to settle old scores. You console yourself with the thought that, if you didn’t have that kind of kamma in your own background, you wouldn’t have been wronged that way in the first place. In fact, in light of rebirth, you don’t know how long the back-and-forth of that kind of kamma has already been going on. If you tried to get back at the people who’ve wronged you, you’d simply be continuing the mud fight, creating more of that kamma, which would tend to lead to another round of the same sort of thing. Do you want that? If not, forgive the other side. This doesn’t mean that you have to love them. You simply promise...

"We could view samsara as a big mud fight. I splash mud on you. You splash mud on me. And then I splash mud on you back because you splashed mud on me. It goes back and forth like this and it never ends. So the idea of trying to straighten everybody out — or trying to settle the score — again makes no sense. There’s that famous story of Somdet Toh. A junior monk came to see him once, complaining that another monk had hit him over the head for no reason at all. He hadn’t done anything to harm the other monk. The other monk was just a really bad guy who came up and hit him. And Somdet Toh said, “Well, you hit him first.” The junior monk replied, “No, no, he came up and hit me first. I didn’t do anything to him at all.” Somdet Toh kept insisting, “No, you hit him first.” And so the young monk went to complain to Somdet Toh’s superior, who must’ve been the supreme patriarch. He went to Somdet Toh to question him about this: “Why did you keep insisting that the innocent monk had hit...

"There are so many battles in the world that just lead to bad kamma even when you win, sometimes especially when you win. Look at the history of the world when nations that won battles ended up being transformed into the enemy, taking on the enemy’s characteristics. Is this what you want? At the same time, when you win a battle, you gain the animosity of those who lost. This is why the Buddha said that it’s better to focus on the battles inside, battles over your own defilements, greed, aversion, and delusion. Those are the battles that can be won, and when you win, you don’t create any bad kamma." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Victory that Matters" (Meditations6)

"A lot of people like the brahma-vihāras. It feels good to be sitting here thinking, “May all beings be happy” or to think of anyone who’s suffering and send compassion: “May that person be free from suffering.” You see people who are happy or doing things that are good, you’re happy for them. Those are pleasant things to think about, and you feel good about yourself thinking them. But you have to realize the brahma-vihāras are not entirely pleasant, especially the first three, because after all they’re involved in wishes. May all beings be happy. May all those who are suffering be free from their suffering. May all those who are happy or doing good things, may they continue to be happy. May, may, may. But you look at the world. Not everybody is happy. A lot of people are suffering or doing things that are going to cause suffering both for other people now and for themselves on into the future. And there are some people who are happy and yet are abusing their happiness. So the b...

"There are things we may want out of other people that they don’t want to give, like respect, acknowledgment of our existence, or acknowledgment of our worth as a person. Then you have to ask yourself, “Is it really worth fighting for? What does the fighting accomplish? Is it going to gain any respect? And even if it does, how much is that respect worth?” There are so many battles in the world that just lead to bad kamma even when you win, sometimes especially when you win. Look at the history of the world when nations that won battles ended up being transformed into the enemy, taking on the enemy’s characteristics. Is this what you want? At the same time, when you win a battle, you gain the animosity of those who lost. This is why the Buddha said that it’s better to focus on the battles inside, battles over your own defilements, greed, aversion, and delusion. Those are the battles that can be won, and when you win, you don’t create any bad kamma. As for whether the people outsid...

"A lot of our problem with kamma is that we don’t have a sense of how to relate to it in an emotionally positive way. But when you think about it in terms of gratitude and generosity, you realize that this power we have to make choices is important. It’s to be valued. You want to protect it. You want to train it. As for the knowledge that we’ve done unskillful things in the past, the Buddha said the proper way of thinking about that is that as soon as you realize it’s unskillful, you make up your mind you’re going to refrain from it, you’re not going to make that mistake again. That’s it. As he says, feelings of remorse over the mistake, strong feelings of guilt, the feeling you see in a dog when it knows it’s done something wrong, gets on its back, and wags its tail, hoping you’ll forgive it: That’s not the kind of reaction the Buddha advocates. Because if you let remorse take over, then you feel more negative about yourself, and because you don’t like these negative feelings, th...

"Have some positive feelings toward this teaching on kamma. It’s not there just to punish you. It’s there to offer you opportunities. It’s there to remind you that your actions are important. And even though you’ve done unskillful things in the past, you’ve got a new opportunity right now to do something skillful. And then again right now. Each right now. So if you do find yourself in the middle of having made some unfortunate choices, you can say, “Well, I’ll stop.” And the fact that you stopped becomes positive kamma right there. Part of the mind may say, “You’ve been doing unskillful things in the past, you’re going to give in to unskillful impulses in the future, so why bother resisting now?” Fight that. You’ve got to fight it. And you have the freedom to fight it. That’s the important part of our kamma: that element of freedom. All of these good things associate with the teaching on kamma: gratitude, generosity, goodwill, freedom. So keep those positive associations in mind...

"There’s a passage in the Canon where one of the asuras basically says, “If people see that you’re not fighting back when they mistreat you, then they’ll think that you’re weak and they’ll mistreat you even more.” And Sakka, the king of the devas replies, “No. How they see you is not the issue. The issue is your own behavior, because that becomes your karma. If other people misbehave and you misbehave in response, then that misbehavior becomes yours. If they think you’re weak, then they know nothing of the Dhamma” — because you have to remember that qualities like goodwill, patience, equanimity, and kindness are forms of strength." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Helping Yourself by Helping Others"

"Have some positive feelings toward this teaching on kamma. It’s not there just to punish you. It’s there to offer you opportunities. It’s there to remind you that your actions are important. And even though you’ve done unskillful things in the past, you’ve got a new opportunity right now to do something skillful. And then again right now. Each right now. So if you do find yourself in the middle of having made some unfortunate choices, you can say, “Well, I’ll stop.” And the fact that you stopped becomes positive kamma right there. Part of the mind may say, “You’ve been doing unskillful things in the past, you’re going to give in to unskillful impulses in the future, so why bother resisting now?” Fight that. You’ve got to fight it. And you have the freedom to fight it. That’s the important part of our kamma: that element of freedom." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Good Side of Kamma"

"So look out for any wrong views that would make you want to listen to what the world out there has to say about how you have to get back at certain people, or that you have to fight in an unfair way for what you think is right. The idea that ends justify the means is really destructive because there are no ends in samsara. It’s like a series of meadows I walked through one time near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. You came across a meadow and you could see to the end of the meadow. But then when you came to the end of the meadow, it turned out there was a slight turn in the path, and there was another meadow. You saw to the end of that meadow and when you walked there, there was another meadow. It just kept going and going and going like that. So remember: There are no “ends” out there in samsara, there are just “means.” They only real end is nibbana. You may not be sure whether you can attain any of the ends that you want, but you can be sure that your means are...

"Remember that goodwill [mettā] is the desire not to harm anybody. If you can get other people to act in skillful ways, so much the better. But if you can’t, you have to guarantee that your own skillful actions aren’t going to be affected by other people’s crazy, strange, bad behavior. After all, your actions are yours. No one else can give you bad karma. You’re the only one who can give yourself bad karma. And you do that through a lack of goodwill, a lack of discernment. So goodwill’s something you have to keep in mind all the time. And as for the battles you fight in the world, choose them well. Choose your battles well. But always fight using goodwill. Remember that it is a strength." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill as a Strength"