Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"The fact that you’ve done bad things in the past doesn’t mean you’re a bad person now . A lot of people are embarrassed to think about the fact that they may have committed some pretty bad karma in the past. But we’re all in that boat, simply that some people’s karma is showing now and other people’s is going to show later. Because you can’t look into your karmic account and figure out what the running balance is or when good things are going to come, when bad things are going to come. The Buddha’s image is more like a field. You plant seeds, and some of the seeds sprout quickly, some seeds sprout slowly. What you’re seeing right now are the seeds that are sprouting right now, but you don’t know what else you have planted in that field. You don’t know what else other people have in their fields. Use this thought to depersonalize the issue." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Karma Storms"

"The distinction between skillful and unskillful provides an insightful explanation for the causes for good and evil behavior. This distinction is not limited to the values of any particular society, and it avoids the issue of whether beings are inherently good or bad. When people act in evil ways, it is because they lack skill in the way they think; when they think in skillful ways, they naturally will do good. Because skill is something that can be acquired, the way to goodness is open for all people who want to be good, no matter how badly they have behaved in the past. The Canon tells of people who had committed misdeeds and, upon realizing their mistakes, confessed them to the Buddha. The most striking instance was King Ajatasattu [DN 2], who had killed his father in order to secure his position on the throne. In spite of the gross nature of the deed, the Buddha approved of the king’s confession, and — instead of playing on any feelings of guilt the king might have had — enco...

"Buddhism is unusual among the world’s religions in admitting that it was founded by someone who knew he had made mistakes. The Buddha was a human being just like us. Through many years of his many lives, he knew he had made lots of mistakes but he learned how to learn from those mistakes. That’s what made all the difference. This means that he knew what it’s like to make a mistake, to regret making mistakes, to be in the position of living forward but only understanding backwards. And so from his experience of learning how to overcome those difficulties, he gives us wise advice on not only trying to prevent as many mistakes as you can, but also learning how to live with mistakes, because that’s what life is full of. We often make mistakes. If we take them as an opportunity to learn rather than a reason to go into strong guilt or strong denial, we can benefit from them. The more clearly you see and understand what’s going on right now, then the less likely it is that the choices y...

Question: I was in a situation where I was forced to do something that harmed someone else. How do I live with this fact so that it is not too heavy to bear? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Remember that kamma depends on many different factors. When you’re forced into doing something harmful, the kamma is much less heavy than if you had done it on your own initiative through anger or ill will. Remember, too, the Buddha’s recommendation that you not get involved in thoughts of remorse. Instead, simply recognize that it was a mistake and resolve not to repeat the mistake. Then spread thoughts of goodwill to yourself, to the person you harmed, to the people who forced you to do the harm, and then to all beings. You spread goodwill to yourself to give yourself more encouragement to do good now and into the future. You spread it to others to strengthen your desire not to harm anyone at all. ~ "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"In the guilt cultures that we have, especially in monotheism, there’s the sense that justice has to be done one way or another. Whereas Buddhism doesn’t talk about justice at all — it talks about being skillful in your behavior. Now, sometimes skillfulness does involve punishing people who are wrong, but you’re not necessarily trying to get justice done. Think of the case of Aṅgulimāla: all those people he’d killed, and yet the Buddha saw that he had a potential. So he taught him. Aṅgulimāla was able to give up his murderous ways and become an arahant. The karmic consequence of all the killing he’d done was simply that, as he was on his alms rounds, there were people who were probably upset that he’d literally gotten away with murder and they would throw things at him: sometimes tearing his robes, sometimes bashing his bowl, sometimes bashing his head. But as the Buddha said, that was a lot less than the consequences would have been if he hadn’t gained that attainment. So the who...

"There’s another thing that [the Buddha] recommends that you not think about in his discussion on appropriate attention in Majjhima 2. He talks about questions that are not worth following, not worth paying attention to. And some of them are, “What was I in the past? Was I in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? How will I be in the future? What will I be in the future?” Some people say, “Well, didn’t the Buddha ask these questions of himself when he first gained awakening?” The answer is that perhaps that was his first motivation to gain those first two knowledges. But then those are precisely the questions he dropped, because he realized that the question of who he was, was not a useful question — because, after all, the whole process was driven by action. He asked himself: Why not look directly at actions? Actions that are skillful, actions that are unskillful — in ways that you can get past those categories of skillful and unskillful — in other words, to ...

"The first level of right view is conviction in the principle of kamma: that there are good and bad actions that lead to good and bad results, which are determined by the quality of intention behind the action. A lot of us resist the teaching on kamma because we tend to run into it mostly when we find ourselves facing a bad situation, and kamma seems to say, “Well, you’re guilty, or you deserve this bad situation,” which is not what it really teaches at all. But because we think that, we tend to have a negative impression of the teaching. Actually, when the Buddha introduced kamma, he introduced it to show that it affirms two very important values in life: generosity and gratitude...." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Need for Right View"

Question: I’ve come to meditation to help me bear the atrocities of the world. What is awakening? Is it a moment of conscience when one embraces all the sorrows of the world, and in that case means hello to all sorrows or is it on the contrary a state of total forgetfulness and egotism, in that case it would be hello to guilt? So, which is it? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Neither. Remember the image of feeding. Ordinarily, we feed on the world, both physically and mentally, in order to gain happiness and maintain our identity as beings. But when you gain full awakening, the mind no longer needs to feed because it already has enough in terms of its own happiness. When you’ve reached that state, you can engage in the world without having to feed on it. You can help those whom you can help, and you don’t have to suffer in cases where you can’t help. In this way, you’re neither embracing the sorrows of the world nor are you running away from them. Instead you have a different relati...

"Real injustices are being done out there. The question is: what to do about them? Often we see a situation that we don’t like, anger arises, and we try to think of what to do about the situation while the anger is still in the mind. From the Buddha’s perspective, the problem is not so much that we want to do something about the injustices, but that we allow the anger to color our perception of the situation and of what should be done. So he’s not telling us to simply accept things as they are and try to swallow your anger, feeling that we’re to blame for the anger. Rather, he’s saying that we have to deal with the anger in such a way that it doesn’t get in the way of responding in an appropriate way, or a skillful way, to what we see as wrong. Once you get the anger out of the way, there are two things that can happen. One is that you may see that the situation is not as bad as you thought it was, but simply that your opinions had colored the situation. The other is ...

"Although the Jains, like the Buddhists, teach a doctrine of the moral consequences of actions, the teachings of the two traditions differ in many important details. This discourse points out two of the major points where the Buddhist teaching is distinctive: its understanding of the complexity of the kammic process, and its application of that understanding to the psychology of teaching. The Buddha shows that a simplistic, fatalistic view of the kammic process is logically inconsistent, and also leads to unfortunate results for any person who, with a background of bad kamma, believes in it. The actual complexity of kamma, however, allows for a way in which past evil deeds can be overcome: through refraining from evil now and into the future, and through developing expansive mind-states of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, & equanimity. In such an expansive mind state, the unavoidable consequences of past evil actions count for next to nothing. The Buddha als...

Question: I’ve come to meditation to help me bear the atrocities of the world. What is awakening? Is it a moment of conscience when one embraces all the sorrows of the world, and in that case means hello to all sorrows or is it on the contrary a state of total forgetfulness and egotism, in that case it would be hello to guilt? So, which is it? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Neither. Remember the image of feeding. Ordinarily, we feed on the world, both physically and mentally, in order to gain happiness and maintain our identity as beings. But when you gain full awakening, the mind no longer needs to feed because it already has enough in terms of its own happiness. When you’ve reached that state, you can engage in the world without having to feed on it. You can help those whom you can help, and you don’t have to suffer in cases where you can’t help. In this way, you’re neither embracing the sorrows of the world nor are you running away from them. Instead you have a different relati...

"People who’ve come back from near-death experiences often say that the things they regret most — when they look back on their lives, thinking that they’re about to die — are the opportunities where they could have helped someone else, been kind to someone else, but they didn’t. So, be generous with others and have some restraint in your behavior: no killing, no stealing, no illicit sex, no lying, no taking of intoxicants; no divisive speech, no ill will. Then as you look back on your life, you realize there’s nothing for which you have to reproach yourself, or anything you have to be afraid of, that you’re going to be punished for. That’s one fear that can be alleviated by generosity and virtue." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Fear of Death"

"Ajaan Fuang once said that it’s a good thing most of us can’t remember our past lives because we could very easily get fixated on all the wrong that was done to us, all the issues that never got settled. And we might want to go back and settle some old scores. Of course, there’d be no end to that. After all, the people whose scores got settled would probably want to settle some scores with us, because the other part of potentially remembering your past lives is remembering all the wrongs you did, the ways you harmed people, that you’d be ashamed to think about now. But just the thought of that possibility leaves us with an important lesson. No scores are fully settled. Things don’t come to closure. This is the nature of samsara: It just keeps wandering on and on and on. No story comes to an end. We watch plays, read books, where events come to a satisfying closure, and part of us would like to see that in our own lives as well. But one of the facts you have to accep...

Question 13. What’s the best way to act if you know you’ve done unskillful things in the past? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: First off, remember that each moment that you’re still alive gives you the opportunity to change your ways and engage in skillful actions. And remember, too, that actions tend to give certain results, and that these tendencies can be strengthened or weakened by other actions. This means that if you’ve been acting unskillfully but then, seeing the error of your ways, begin to act more skillfully, your newer actions will weaken the results of your older, unskillful actions. In fact, the Buddha points out that simply affirming the intention to act skillfully is already a positive first step. So if you’ve done something unskillful, recognize that the action was unskillful and wrong, but that feelings of remorse and guilt won’t undo what you’ve already done — in fact, too much remorse or guilt can actually sap your confidence that you can change your ways. Then...

"When our actions don’t measure up to certain standards of behavior, we either (1) regret the actions or (2) engage in one of two kinds of denial, either (a) denying that our actions did in fact happen or (b) denying that the standards of measurement are really valid. These reactions are like wounds in the mind. Regret is an open wound, tender to the touch, whereas denial is like hardened, twisted scar tissue around a tender spot. When the mind is wounded in these ways, it can’t settle down comfortably in the present, because it finds itself resting on raw, exposed flesh or calcified knots. When it’s forced to stay in the present, it’s there only in a tensed, contorted, and partial way. The insights it gains tend to be contorted and partial as well. Only if the mind is free of wounds and scars can it settle down comfortably and freely in the present and give rise to undistorted discernment. This is where the five precepts come in: They’re designed to heal these wounds and scars....

 "We have this inbred difficulty of looking at our own actions, but that’s precisely what the meditation is: looking at your own actions. It’s not so much self-purification as action-purification. It requires that you see your intentions and the actions and their results. Often these are things we don’t like to look at. Sometimes it’s just simple dishonesty. Other times we don’t like to look at these things because we don’t know how to handle what we see. How can you look at your mistakes without getting all tangled up in self-hatred, self-frustration? This is where the right attitudes come in. Look at those instructions the Buddha gave to Rahula. He said that when you see an action that you’ve done has caused harm, you should feel shame and loathing — not shame and loathing for yourself, shame and loathing for the action. That’s an important distinction. Shame around the action means that you realize you’re a better person than that. You shouldn’t have done it. It doesn’t mean th...

"One of the really fine things about Buddhism is that it was founded by someone who knows what it’s like to make a mistake. Even in his last lifetime, the Buddha made a huge mistake — six years of tormenting himself. And all those previous lifetimes! You look in the Jātaka stories and it’s not as if the Buddha was always perfect. He was making mistakes and having to learn from them. So unlike a religion that’s supposedly founded by a God who’s never been a human being, who’s never had to admit a mistake, the Buddha knows what it’s like to make a mistake and to have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on. Those instructions he gave to Rāhula are really useful in this regard. He said that if you see you’ve made a mistake, admit the mistake, talk it over with someone else, and then simply resolve not to repeat that mistake. You don’t have to carry the guilt around with you, just the memory that that was a mistake. Then you move on. The Buddha gave similar instructions to...

"People may have been good to you, but it’s not the case that they always will be. The human mind is very changeable, and they could change without notice. You can’t rely on their goodness as your nourishment. You’ve got to learn how to take as your nourishment whatever goodness you can give rise to in yourself. This is where goodwill [mettā] is very important. If, when you’re not wishing any harm on anybody, harm does come to you, you’re not going to feel guilty or that somehow it was a punishment for your unskillful attitude. You can just chalk it up to past kamma and leave it at that. It’s a much cleaner and more bearable way of thinking." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Unsentimental Goodwill"

Question 13. What’s the best way to act if you know you’ve done unskillful things in the past? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: First off, remember that each moment that you’re still alive gives you the opportunity to change your ways and engage in skillful actions. And remember, too, that actions tend to give certain results, and that these tendencies can be strengthened or weakened by other actions. This means that if you’ve been acting unskillfully but then, seeing the error of your ways, begin to act more skillfully, your newer actions will weaken the results of your older, unskillful actions. In fact, the Buddha points out that simply affirming the intention to act skillfully is already a positive first step. So if you’ve done something unskillful, recognize that the action was unskillful and wrong, but that feelings of remorse and guilt won’t undo what you’ve already done — in fact, too much remorse or guilt can actually sap your confidence that you can change your ways. Then resolve never...

"You have to see everything as an action. You have to see yourself as being responsible for what you’re doing. Your level of stress right now comes partly from past actions but the important element is what you’re doing right now. Particularly any stress you feel in the mind: It’s a result of what you’re doing right now. So learn how to look at your actions. And learn how to notice your mistakes, admit your mistakes, and not get all flustered by them. The judgment here isn’t the kind of final judgment that some judge is going to place on you, to determine guilt or innocence. It’s the judgment of a craftsman judging a work in progress: something that an artist or a carpenter or a musician would do. You look at what you’re doing, you’re looking at the results, and then you take what you’ve noticed and you improve what you continue to do, without tying yourself all up in knots. So remember that it’s all about action. The Buddha’s asking you to be responsible. This is why the element ...