Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Virtue, in Buddhism, is expressed in the five precepts. Of the five, truthfulness is said to be the highest virtue because it’s only through truthfulness that you’re in a position to admit your mistakes and to learn from them. There are passages in the Canon called the Jātaka tales, which tell the stories of the Buddha in previous lifetimes. And it’s obvious from some of the stories that he’s still learning the ropes, because sometimes he breaks the precepts: Sometimes he kills, sometimes he steals, sometimes he has illicit sex, sometimes he takes alcohol. But he never lies. Ever. For him, that’s the most important precept. Because after all, if you lie to someone, the misunderstanding you create can have a bad effect not only in this lifetime but also into future lifetimes. And as the Buddha says, if you feel no shame at telling a deliberate lie, there’s no evil you’re incapable of doing." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Five Faculties: Putting Wisdom in Charge o...

"As long as we live in a sensual realm, the Buddha said, there are going to be fights between parents and children, brothers and sisters, brothers and brothers, sisters and sisters, and between the parents themselves. This is something you’ve got to accept. There are two ways you can try to get past those quarrels. One is through reconciliation; the other’s through forgiveness. Now, reconciliation requires that everybody involved wants to patch up the relationship. Whoever’s acted harmfully has to admit that he or she has acted harmfully and to promise never to do it again — and has to make the promise in such a way that the other side believes it, or at least is determined to continue with the relationship. In other words, you share common values about what’s right and wrong, what’s proper and improper. As for the person wronged, he or she has to behave in a way that shows respect for the other side. Reconciliation is a lot of work, and it requires that both sides want it. This i...

"When the Buddha advises you not to kill, he also recommends that you be gentle and protective of other beings. The same with the precept against stealing: You also protect other people’s belongings as best you can. The precept against illicit sex: You respect people’s rights; you don’t let your lust overcome the bounds of propriety. The precept against lying: You try to be a person who tells the truth, you try to promote friendships, you try to promote goodness in other people as well. So there’s a positive side to virtue, too." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Spread Goodness Around" (Meditations9)

"In the Buddha’s teachings, character is an important part of the practice. We tend to miss that as we come into contact with Buddhism here in the West, because we meet it either through an Internet chatroom, or in an academic setting when we’re taking a class in school, or through a meditation retreat center where we’re taught a technique. We may be taught a bit about loving-kindness [mettā], which comes across as a kind of a general niceness. But in none of these contexts is anything much taught about character, the principle that you have to be truthful and harmless in your search for happiness." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Peace Requires Character"

"Two more qualities the Buddha said he looked for in any student: One was that the student be observant; and the other was that the student be honest — “not deceitful,” as he said. In other words, when you make a mistake, you admit it. You don’t try to cover it up because, after all, you’re trying to change your actions from unskillful to skillful. And if you refuse to recognize your own mistakes, there’s no way you’re going to learn." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Prerequisites for the Practice"

"When you’re observing the precepts, there come times when you know that people are going to take advantage of you because you’re honest, because you’re telling the truth. You have to decide which is to be feared more: telling a lie or having people take advantage of you? If you’re wise, you’ve got to decide that telling a lie is more fearful, something more worthy of fear." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Right Fear"

"Once you learn how to deal with the sleepiness and the pain and the distraction, you’re beginning to master the skills for understanding the mind, mastering the skills for finding happiness inside. Underlying all this is a willingness to learn, to notice your actions, to connect cause and effect, and to figure out which kinds of causes are good causes and which ones are not. When you have that attitude — that you’re here to learn — then no matter what comes up in the meditation, it becomes grist for the mill. If you simply have it in mind that you want this or that to happen in the meditation and it doesn’t happen and you get frustrated, that’s not how you’re going to find true happiness inside. It has to come from a willingness to learn, a willingness to observe, and particularly a willingness to being alert to your own actions. So it’s not just a matter of sitting there and watching whatever comes up. You’ve got to realize that you’re playing a role in fashioning what comes up....

"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"

"The Buddha placed great emphasis on this virtue of truthfulness. It’s one of the reasons why he said that people who feel no shame in telling a lie are capable of any kind of evil. This doesn’t mean that everybody who lies is capable of all kinds of evil. There are people who will feel ashamed about the lies they tell, which shows that they know some boundaries, that they have a sense of right and wrong. The people who feel no shame at all are the ones you have to watch out for. It’s especially troubling when you hear somebody say, “There are circumstances where a lie is perfectly acceptable.” They’ll give extreme examples where if you don’t tell a lie, somebody might die. Then they turn it into a principle that lies can be okay in circumstances that are far less drastic. But even in the drastic cases, can you be sure that telling a lie will save the person’s life? Some people are very poor liars. More importantly, what kind of person feels no shame in justifying the telling of ...

"You have to be clear about your intentions, mature about admitting when you have some unskillful intentions in the mind, and honest about the results that come when you act on unskillful intentions. Only by observing that, again and again, can you finally get tired of those intentions. When you really see that there’s a connection between unskillful intentions and needless suffering, you become genuinely motivated to find the escape from that suffering. This is the only way you can do it. Basically, you have to learn to judge what’s worth observing and what’s not. And again the Buddha points you to what’s worth observing. The issue of needless stress that comes from unskillful states of mind: That’s where he points you – “Look here, look here, look here.” Then it’s up to you to see and — when you’ve seen — to take that knowledge and put it to use. This requires that you be responsible." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Adult Dhamma" (Meditations5)

"We’re people who’ve known mistakes in the past, done mistakes in the past, done some really stupid things in the past. We want to admit that and then move on to something better. That’s what the meditation is for." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "You Can Do It"

Karma by Thanissaro Bhikkhu Karma [Sanskrit noun; Pāli kamma] is one of those words we don’t translate. Its basic meaning is simple enough — action — but because of the weight the Buddha’s teachings give to the role of action, the Sanskrit word karma packs in so many implications that the English word action can’t carry all its luggage. This is why we’ve simply airlifted the original word into our vocabulary. But when we try unpacking the connotations the word carries now that it has arrived in everyday usage, we find that most of its luggage has gotten mixed up in transit. For most people, karma functions like fate — and bad fate, at that: an inexplicable, unchangeable force coming out of our past, for which we are somehow vaguely responsible and powerless to fight. “I guess it’s just my karma,” I’ve heard people sigh when bad fortune strikes with such force that they see no alternative to resigned acceptance. The fatalism implicit in this statement is one reason why so many of ...

"There are people whose kammic background — past or present — is such that they will respond to the Dhamma teaching the path to the end of suffering and stress. Within the context of this background, the act of teaching and learning is a collaborative effort. On the one hand, the act of teaching is a type of kamma, which means that the teacher has to maintain a pure intention while teaching, to ensure that he is teaching from kind and compassionate motives. He must also keep in mind the performative nature of his words — what they do to the listener or incite the listener to do — and that they must follow the principles of right speech. On the other hand, the act of learning is also a type of kamma, in that the listener must respond sincerely to the teacher’s words in order to benefit from them. This means that the purity of the listener’s intention plays an important role as well. The Buddha cannot take his listeners to awakening simply by acting on his own. Because the act o...

Skillful Bodily Action “And how is one made pure in three ways by bodily action? There is the case where a certain person, abandoning the taking of life, abstains from the taking of life. He dwells with his rod laid down, his knife laid down, scrupulous, merciful, compassionate for the welfare of all living beings. Abandoning the taking of what is not given, he abstains from taking what is not given. He does not take, in the manner of a thief, things in a village or a wilderness that belong to others and have not been given by them. Abandoning sexual misconduct, he abstains from sexual misconduct. He does not get sexually involved with those who are protected by their mothers, their fathers, their brothers, their sisters, their relatives, or their Dhamma; those with husbands, those who entail punishments, or even those crowned with flowers by another man. This is how one is made pure in three ways by bodily action. Skillful Verbal Action “And how is one made pure in four ways by verbal...

"When the Buddha described his quest for awakening as a series of responses to questions of the form, “Why am I doing this?” he was indicating the point at which the search for a way out of stress turns inward: the realization that stress may be caused by one’s own actions. He was also indicating that an important part of the path consists of the realization that one’s habits — and in particular, one’s intentions — are not to be blindly accepted or taken for granted. They should be called into question and subjected to honest scrutiny. However, he also was indicating that not everything is to be questioned — in particular, conviction in the efficacy of action should be maintained as a working hypothesis all the way to release." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Skill in Questions: How the Buddha Taught"

Question: Could you give the Pāli term for each perfection? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Dāna is giving, sīla is virtue, nekkhamma is renunciation, paññā is discernment, viriya is persistence, khanti is endurance or patience, sacca is truth, adhiṭṭhāna is determination, mettā is goodwill, and upekkhā is equanimity. Question: What is the relationship between the perfections and kamma? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: They’re qualities of mind that will determine whether you will make good kamma or bad kamma — in other words, good or bad intentional actions. Everything in the Buddha’s teachings except for nibbāna is related to kamma. ~ Good Heart, Good Mind: The Practice of the Ten Perfections

"When the Buddha advises you not to kill, he also recommends that you be gentle and protective of other beings. The same with the precept against stealing: You also protect other people’s belongings as best you can. The precept against illicit sex: You respect people’s rights; you don’t let your lust overcome the bounds of propriety. The precept against lying: You try to be a person who tells the truth, you try to promote friendships, you try to promote goodness in other people as well. So there’s a positive side to virtue, too." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Spread Goodness Around" (Meditations9)

"If other people were ultimately responsible for shaping your experience, what could you do? You’d have to go around pleasing them all the time. But the key fact is that you’re shaping your pleasures and pains here in the present moment. Some of your experience comes from past actions, but a lot comes from the way you shape things with each present intention. So learn to be open and honest about the role you’re playing in this moment. That way the meditation leads to greater and greater sensitivity into precisely this — what you’re doing right now — and into the fact that if you were really observant you’d be a lot more sensitive in shaping your experience. There’d be a lot less suffering." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Get Real" (Meditations3)

"When the Buddha advises you not to kill, he also recommends that you be gentle and protective of other beings. The same with the precept against stealing: You also protect other people’s belongings as best you can. The precept against illicit sex: You respect people’s rights; you don’t let your lust overcome the bounds of propriety. The precept against lying: You try to be a person who tells the truth, you try to promote friendships, you try to promote goodness in other people as well. So there’s a positive side to virtue, too." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Spread Goodness Around" (Meditations9)

"When the Buddha advises you not to kill, he also recommends that you be gentle and protective of other beings. The same with the precept against stealing: You also protect other people’s belongings as best you can. The precept against illicit sex: You respect people’s rights; you don’t let your lust overcome the bounds of propriety. The precept against lying: You try to be a person who tells the truth, you try to promote friendships, you try to promote goodness in other people as well. So there’s a positive side to virtue, too." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Spread Goodness Around" (Meditations9)