Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"The pleasures that come from taking into account mistakes you’ve made in the past and then you learn to do something right: Those pleasures are really satisfying. As the Buddha says, people who were heedless in the past but then change to become heedful, brighten the world like a moon at night when released from a cloud. So don’t be ashamed of the fact you’ve made mistakes, in the sense of not letting them get you down." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Learn from Your Mistakes"

"Some people’s way of being heedful is to hoard food, in case of a collapse of civilization. That’s heedfulness with wrong view. Heedfulness with right view is when you want to hoard good actions, skillful actions. If you trust in the principle of skillful action, then you focus your attention there. You realize that this is where your true safety can be found." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Victory"

"If each person in this world would mind his or her own business, clean up his or her own house, there wouldn’t be any trouble or conflicts in the world. Our problem is that we leave our own immediate responsibilities and start worrying about other people: what they’re doing, what messes they’re creating for us, or what messes they’re creating for other people. That can be appropriate only after we’ve really taken care of our own business. Otherwise, we leave huge blind spots in our mind about what we’re doing and saying and thinking. We become oblivious to our impact on the world where we really are responsible." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Minding Your Own Business"

"We talked about different ways you deal with the causes of suffering. Some causes of suffering go away when you just look at them; others require that you engage in what the Buddha calls, “exerting a fabrication” [MN 101]. And when the Buddha’s talking about fabrication in this context, he’s talking about these three kinds of fabrication. For example, suppose that you’re feeling a strong sense of anger and you want to get over it. The first thing you do is to look at your breath. Usually when you’re angry, your breath is disturbed, which aggravates the anger. So, remember what you’ve learned to do with the breath in meditation: calm the breath down, breathe through any tightness you may feel in your chest or your abdomen, and in this way you begin to reclaim your body from the anger, which has hijacked it. You make the breath your own again. That’s bodily fabrication. When the body feels calmer, it’s easier to think clearly about the situation. This is where you apply directed th...

"So you’ve got to reflect on your actions. You’ve got to reflect on your thoughts, words, and deeds, on how they have an impact on you and how they have an impact on others. Keep your attention focused there more than outside. Our media nowadays tend to focus on everything outside. We almost live in the screens of our hand-held devices or our computers or whatever. And the important people seem to be the ones who are in the screens. But they’re not. The important person is the person holding the screen. What is this person doing? What is this person saying? What is this person thinking? That’s something you can actually have an impact on. And the impact is not felt only by you; it’s felt by all the people around you. So you have to be very, very careful. This is what the principle of heedfulness is all about. Your actions do have consequences. So instead of having the energy run out your eyes and ears or whatever, try to keep the energy focused inside so that you can ...

"Every little movement of the mind is either skillful or unskillful, so you have to watch for each movement. You can’t just say, “Oh, it doesn’t really matter.” Because it does matter. Unskillful thoughts hide unskillful intentions, and where do these unskillful intentions come from? Have you really looked into them? Sometimes they come from some very basic flaws in our character. So we’ve got to watch out. We have to be very careful." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Fool & the Wise Person"

"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)

"The pleasures that come from taking into account mistakes you’ve made in the past and then you learn to do something right: Those pleasures are really satisfying. As the Buddha says, people who were heedless in the past but then change to become heedful, brighten the world like a moon at night when released from a cloud. So don’t be ashamed of the fact you’ve made mistakes, in the sense of not letting them get you down." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Learn from Your Mistakes"

"Some people actually find it easier to start with thoughts of goodwill [mettā] for someone who’s been a benefactor, a person who has helped them. Whoever you find it easiest, start with that person first. Think about what it means to have goodwill for that person. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to be there for that person all the time, simply that whatever you do or say or think that’s going to have an impact on that person, you don’t want it to harm them. If possible, you want them to act to skillfully, too. Because it’s not that the case that your wishing them happiness is going to be like a magic wand that will light up a little light someplace in their head. After all, there is that phrase: “May they look after themselves with ease,” in other words, may they know how to behave in such a way that actually does lead to true happiness. This is where goodwill goes deeper than just hoping that people have a nice life. You hope that they, too, will act on skillful intentions. I...

"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 — ...

"Meritorious actions, of course, are generosity, virtue, and developing goodwill [mettā]. Skillful actions have to do with the ten guidelines: no killing, no stealing, no illicit sex, no lying, no divisive speech, no harsh speech, no idle speech. And then for the mind: no inordinate greed, no ill will, and developing right view. These are the things that you shouldn’t underestimate. They can do a lot of good for you. Even little things, like generosity: You think of ways in which you can add to the goodness of the world, even if it’s just immediately around you. When I was at Wat Dhammasathit, especially during the time of construction, my job was to look after all the cleaning up around the monastery. I found that by cleaning up the place, I felt that I really belonged there. I no longer felt like a foreigner because I had put something of myself into the place — and I was getting something back. So don’t underestimate acts of merit, and don’t underestimate the joy that can come ...

"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"

"[The Buddha] didn’t ask that his listeners all commit themselves to an unquestioning belief in the possibility that their actions might lead to rebirth, but he wasn’t interested in teaching anyone who rejected that possibility outright. As we’ve already noted, he saw that heedfulness lay at the root of all skillful qualities. If a listener couldn’t be persuaded to develop an appropriate level of heedfulness around the risks of action, any further teaching would be a waste of time." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Truth of Rebirth and Why It Matters for Buddhist Practice"

"I remember when I was becoming a Buddhist one of the main breakthroughs or milestones, I guess you would say, was when I realized that I really had to depend on my own karma. Prior to that I’d been raised a Christian, and even as I was beginning to have lots of doubts about those teachings, there was still a strong sense that there was somebody up there who was looking after us. Suddenly I realized that if I wanted to be a true Buddhist, I’d have to drop that. That was a real milestone in my mind. It threw me back on my own actions. I really had to be more honest with myself, I really had to be more careful about what I did." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Being a Buddhist"

"This reflection on kamma, like the other four reflections, teaches heedfulness. But it also teaches confidence: That through the power of our actions, we can find a way out of the sufferings of repeated birth and death. We keep in mind the fact that our only true possessions — given that we are subject to aging, illness, death, and separation — are our actions and their results. Ajaan Suwat liked to comment that the Buddha often teaches that this thing is not-self, that thing is not-self, this thing is not mine, that thing is not mine, but then would have you say to yourself, “I am the owner of my actions.” In this case, the sense of “I” does not increase your clinging. It actually makes you more heedful of your only real treasures — your actions and their results — and confident that developing skillful actions will really make a difference. So the “I” here is a useful “I” to develop for the sake of following the path. Now, if you look at your actions over the past week or so, ...

Saṁyutta Nikāya 35:145 Kamma Sutta: Action, translated from the Pāli by Thānissaro Bhikkhu “Monks, I will teach you new & old kamma, the cessation of kamma, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of kamma. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak. “Now what, monks, is old kamma? The eye is to be seen as old kamma, fabricated & willed, capable of being felt. The ear… The nose…The tongue… The body… The intellect is to be seen as old kamma, fabricated & willed, capable of being felt. This is called old kamma. “And what is new kamma? Whatever kamma one does now with the body, with speech, or with the intellect: This is called new kamma. “And what is the cessation of kamma? Whoever touches the release that comes from the cessation of bodily kamma, verbal kamma, & mental kamma: This is called the cessation of kamma. “And what is the path of practice leading to the cessation of kamma? Just this noble eightfold path: right view, right resolve, right speech, ri...

"There are people who complain that if you’re really serious about the practice you lose your spontaneity. Well, spontaneity may have its good side but it has its bad side as well. You want to be really careful, you have to be heedful, your actions do have consequences, you can’t pretend that they don’t. As for the pleasure in the practice, the Buddha says it’s loaded there in the practice of right concentration. If you want to find joy and spontaneity, look there. As for your other actions, you have to be very careful to be restrained. Otherwise, you end up doing and saying and thinking things that you later regret. And that regret is very hard to get rid of. Especially as life goes on and you don’t see any progress coming in your practice, you begin to wonder, “What’s this all about? What have I been doing?” Don’t be the sort of person who realizes that a lot of time was wasted, a lot of time was thrown away. After all, we don’t have an infinite amount of time. Th...

"Think: “What duty needs to be done? I’ll do it today, I’ll do it right now, because who knows, I may not have this chance tomorrow, or even a few moments from now.” If we die, it takes a long time to get back to the practice. Think how long it took you in this lifetime to find your way to sitting right here, learning how to train the mind. If you’re not careful, the next time around may be a lot longer than that. So you’ve got this opportunity right now. Focus on the “right now” because it’s a place where the practice is done and where you can make a difference. That is what it means to be with the present: to see it clearly and — once you see clearly what’s going on — to realize what your duties are right now. Then you do them. That’s when being in the present moment is really auspicious." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "In the Present" (Meditations8)

"Every little movement of the mind is either skillful or unskillful, so you have to watch for each movement. You can’t just say, “Oh, it doesn’t really matter.” Because it does matter. Unskillful thoughts hide unskillful intentions, and where do these unskillful intentions come from? Have you really looked into them? Sometimes they come from some very basic flaws in our character. So we’ve got to watch out. We have to be very careful." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Fool & the Wise Person"

"So you’ve got to reflect on your actions. You’ve got to reflect on your thoughts, words, and deeds, on how they have an impact on you and how they have an impact on others. Keep your attention focused there more than outside. Our media nowadays tend to focus on everything outside. We almost live in the screens of our hand-held devices or our computers or whatever. And the important people seem to be the ones who are in the screens. But they’re not. The important person is the person holding the screen. What is this person doing? What is this person saying? What is this person thinking? That’s something you can actually have an impact on. And the impact is not felt only by you; it’s felt by all the people around you. So you have to be very, very careful. This is what the principle of heedfulness is all about. Your actions do have consequences. So instead of having the energy run out your eyes and ears or whatever, try to keep the energy focused inside so that you can ...