Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Of course this few minutes is part of a longer practice. It’s good to remember that we’re not here just running 100-meter dashes. We’re running a marathon, which means you have to learn how to pace yourself. If you push yourself too hard, you won’t finish. If you don’t push yourself hard enough, you won’t finish. [....] Even if you stumble, remember: This is a marathon, you can pick yourself up and keep going. If it were a 100-yard dash, if you stumbled that would be the end of it, you wouldn’t even try to finish. But in this case. you do pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep on running. Because, as I said, we’re not competing with anyone else, we’re just competing with ourselves. And you want to find just the right amount of pressure, just the right amount of effort to go along with the energy you’ve got. That way you make it all the way to the finish line. Now, whether it’s now or tomorrow or the next day: That’s not the issue. Just keep on plugging away, plugging away,...

"A lot of people think, “Well, as long as I want something that’s really good, I can do whatever I want to get it.” In other words, the ends justify the means. But the Buddha said, “No, the means have to be good, too.” After all, that’s all there is in samsara — means, the things we do. The only thing that gives you permanent, unchanging well-being is nibbana, and that’s beyond ends and means. You take that as your goal, and then when you’ve arrived, you no longer have any need for goals. But to get there, the means have to be good as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Strong Through Admirable Friendship"

"You might hear people say that we don’t practice for the sake of the future, that we don’t want to have any goals. But actually, everything you do has to have a goal. If you deny a goal, then you’re putting yourself in denial, and that doesn’t help. The teachings on kamma will tell you, “What you do now is going to have an impact in the present and in the future.” Remember that, too, so you can be clear about what really needs to be done right now. That’s how this becomes an auspicious day." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An Auspicious Day (2015)"

"[The Buddha] doesn’t give a complete theory about how everything happens in the world and can be traced back to particular actions. He teaches karma to the extent that it’s useful in getting the mind to be trained so that it can put an end to suffering. That’s as far as his teaching goes, but that’s pretty far. It’s much better than having a map to everything but still suffering. So use these teachings to take you where you want to go because they can take you farther than you can imagine." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Meditation Karma Checklist"

"Even though you may not reach awakening any time soon, if you keep this understanding of kamma and mindfulness in mind and apply it to your actions, your life becomes a progressively better life. You learn to delight in abandoning unskillful qualities and to delight in developing skillful qualities. Right there you possess what the Buddha called one of the values of the noble ones. You become less harmful to yourself and others. This teaching is also empowering: You realize you have the power to make skillful changes in your life, and the ability to suffer less and less from what you cannot change. The sense of self that you develop around doing this becomes a healthy sense of self: one that develops around the willingness always to learn. As long as you need a sense of self, this is a good one to have. In following these teachings, you also develop what the Buddha called the seven noble treasures [conviction, virtue, conscience, concern, learning, generosity, discernment]. These...

"So, the whole teaching of the Dhamma has a purpose, and its purpose is the happiness of all. Now, it’s not going to make them happy by saying pleasing things all the time. But it is going to make them happy by giving them instructions, or giving them things to think about that they will then act on, and find true happiness as a result. So, the Dhamma has its attha,  it has its purpose, and its purpose is happiness. That’s the Dhamma’s goodwill [mettā] . And it’s limitless: It’s not only for monks or only for lay people, only for Asian people or only for Americans, or for any particular group of people at all. It’s for everybody, because it’s not specifically tailored for any one group. It points to a problem we all have, which is we’re creating suffering for ourselves. And it’s basically saying, “Look, this is how you can stop!” When you stop creating that suffering, you’re not left with just an empty, neutral state. You’re left with true happiness, which goes beyond abundant, b...

“We suffer [householder] grief and so we look for [householder] joy in terms of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas. When we don’t get what we want, that brings more grief, but we turn around to look for joy in the same places. What the Buddha wants us to do is to turn our attention to what he calls renunciate grief, renunciate joy, renunciate equanimity. Renunciate grief is when you reflect on how you haven’t attained what you want in terms of freeing the mind from suffering. You haven’t reached the goal of the path. Renunciate joy is the joy that comes when you have  reached the goal. And then renunciate equanimity is the peace and equanimity that come when you know the path is completed. One of the Buddha’s most interesting tactics is that when we suffer from householder grief, the way to get ourselves above and beyond that is to try to transform it, not into householder joy, but into renunciate grief. Householder grief and joy, he says, don’t provide u...

"People do unskillful things all over the world all the time. This is the world we’re born into — and this is one of the relatively good ones. So equanimity cannot be the goal. But the fact that the reflection on equanimity is also the same as the reflection that leads to a motivation to want to practice the path  [that we're owners of our kamma],  shows that when the Buddha teaches us equanimity, it’s not just a general indifference. When you have equanimity for all beings, it’s not just saying, “Well, who cares?” It’s more to focus you. There are a lot of things you cannot change in the world, but there are some things that are  within your power, and the path is something that’s within your power. It’s something you can do. That, the Buddha says, is a type of action. It’s the type of action that leads to the end of action, but it’s a choice you can make. So when you develop thoughts of equanimity to overcome disappointment, grief, or just general irritation of the wor...

 "When Westerners went over to Thailand to study with the great ajaans, they often found they had problems with the heat, the bugs, and the general hardships. The ajaans would teach them a lot about equanimity and patience — so much so that, in some cases, that seemed to be the only message that got through. This may be why we sometimes hear craving, the cause of suffering, defined as wanting things outside to be different from what they are — the implication being that if you accept things as they are, and are okay with things as they are, then you’re not going to suffer. All you need is some contentment, some patience, some equanimity. But when the Buddha explained craving, it was something much deeper than that. The equanimity that comes from just accepting things in the senses the Buddha called worldly equanimity. It’s the lowest stage of equanimity, and there are two stages higher than that. There’s the equanimity that comes from getting the mind into good concentration and t...

"Direct your thinking specifically to making the mind still. In other words, you don’t try simply to stop thinking altogether, because that doesn’t work. You have to do something that seems a little bit paradoxical: You’re going to think about bringing the mind to stillness, or think about bringing it to a point where it doesn’t have to think. That recognizes steps in the process. Like that old paradox, you have to have a desire to put an end to desire before you can actually get to the end of desire, because life is a constant process of desiring and acting. People tend to lose sight of this, especially when they try to turn the Buddha’s teachings into a philosophy or a philosophical system whose purpose is to step back and take a look at the way the world is and draw a map of the world. Now, the Buddha did draw maps, but instead of, say, drawing a whole set of plans for how the house is built, he simply drew a map to where the exits are. Part of the Buddha’s map to the exits is ...

"One of the distinctive teachings of the Forest tradition is its emphasis on how proactive the mind is in its engagement with the senses and with the world. We’re not just on the receiving end of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations coming in. We don’t simply respond to the stimulus of other people’s actions. We’re proactive. We go out looking for things. This is in line with the Buddha’s teachings on intention. Our experience of the present moment is made up of the results of past actions, but also our current intentions and the results of our current intentions. When you look at the way the Buddha lines things up in dependent co-arising, our intentions actually come before our engagement with the senses. We intend to engage the senses, and that’s how we meet up with the sensory material that’s coming in. What this means is that our intentions don’t have to be shaped by what’s coming in. They don’t have to be pushed around by what’s coming in. We can be more skillf...

"Are your views right? If your views are wrong, they can send you off in all sorts of directions. So you want to make sure that you’re aiming, at the very least, at not harming anyone, finding a happiness that’s reliable and trustworthy that doesn’t require that you harm anybody else, doesn’t require that you harm yourself. Ultimately you want to be able to find a way to put an end to suffering. That’s the right direction in which you should aim your life. So you should ask yourself, “The people I’m associating with: Is that where they aim? How about myself: Is that where I aim?” Look at where you’re aiming your life. If you see that you’re heading off in the wrong direction, you’ve got the wrong target, try to change the target. Change so that it’s the right direction, so that you’re not causing any suffering — you’re not causing yourself suffering, you’re not causing anyone else any suffering. At the same time, you’re developing those treasures you can take with you. Because in...

"The noble eightfold path — including right mindfulness and right concentration — is a type of kamma: the kamma leading to the ending of kamma (AN 4:237). This kamma is not a matter of doing nothing or of denying what you’re doing. Instead, it involves mastering skills — the skills of meditation — and being clear about what you’re doing while you’re doing it. Only then will you understand action, and only then can you go beyond it. The goal can’t be reached in any other way." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Meditators at Work"

"Someone asked the other day, “Given the situation in the world right now, what are you supposed to do? Just give up?” And I said, “No. There is the possibility things could collapse. But you work on developing good qualities of the mind in the meantime. Even if you don’t attain your particular goals in the world outside this time around, the fact that you’ve worked on the mind means that you’re carrying something good with you as you go.”" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Patience & Hope"

"The noble eightfold path — including right mindfulness and right concentration — is a type of kamma: the kamma leading to the ending of kamma (AN 4:237). This kamma is not a matter of doing nothing or of denying what you’re doing. Instead, it involves mastering skills — the skills of meditation — and being clear about what you’re doing while you’re doing it. Only then will you understand action, and only then can you go beyond it. The goal can’t be reached in any other way." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Meditators at Work"

"You might hear people say that we don’t practice for the sake of the future, that we don’t want to have any goals. But actually, everything you do has to have a goal. If you deny a goal, then you’re putting yourself in denial, and that doesn’t help. The teachings on kamma will tell you, “What you do now is going to have an impact in the present and in the future.” Remember that, too, so you can be clear about what really needs to be done right now. That’s how this becomes an auspicious day." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An Auspicious Day (2015)"

"[The Buddha] doesn’t give a complete theory about how everything happens in the world and can be traced back to particular actions. He teaches karma to the extent that it’s useful in getting the mind to be trained so that it can put an end to suffering. That’s as far as his teaching goes, but that’s pretty far. It’s much better than having a map to everything but still suffering. So use these teachings to take you where you want to go because they can take you farther than you can imagine." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Meditation Karma Checklist"

"The Buddha never taught bare attention. He taught appropriate attention. This is an important distinction to bear in mind. If we think that the heart of the meditation is just simply bare attention, it causes all kinds of misunderstandings – such as the idea that meditation is simply a process of watching whatever comes up and not doing anything about it. Or even deeper, there’s the idea that if all you need to do is bare attention, why bother reading the Buddha’s other teachings at all? Just try to be as passive as possible. You don’t need to study. Just practice passive awareness and that will take care of all your problems. Sometimes people say that bare attention is the unconditioned, that a moment of bare attention is a moment of awakening. If you believe that, you close all of the paths to awakening. Because if you don’t see the difference between the path and the goal, you’re never going to get the goal. You have to work on the path and then you have to let it go at some p...

"So regardless of what raw material your past karma keeps popping up in the present moment, as long as you’re not in the hell of totally unpleasant sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, ideas, and as long as you’re not in the heaven of totally pleasant sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas, you’re in a good position to practice. And don’t think of how long you’ve been on the path or of how long you’re going to have to be on the path. It’s a good thing to be on the path. Some people get discouraged, thinking about how far away the goal is at the end of the path. But the way to deal with that is not to stop having goals. It requires learning to have a more mature attitude about being on the path: learning how to enjoy the path, remembering what life would be like if you didn’t have this path — and how lucky you are that you have this opportunity to practice it. So keep the goal in mind. After all, if we didn’t have a purpose in bei...

"Even if we don’t get all the way to the ultimate skill of reaching the Deathless, the fact that we’ve trained ourselves to be more and more skillful leads the mind in the direction of less and less suffering. It inclines the mind in that direction. If you don’t make it all the way to the Deathless in this lifetime, your quest for skillfulness insures that your next lifetime will keep heading in that direction. You build up a momentum." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Anger" (Meditations2)