Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"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 ...

"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." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Skill in Questions: How the Buddha Taught"

"It’s easy to see the appeal of a notion of Oneness benevolently designed to take care of us all in spite of our actions. And why that notion can appear to be a more compassionate teaching than interconnectedness through action, in that it provides a more comforting vision of the world and is more forgiving around the precepts. But actually, the principle of interconnectedness through our actions is the more compassionate teaching of the two — both in showing more compassion to the people to whom it’s taught and in giving them better reasons to act toward others in compassionate ways. To begin with, interconnectedness through kamma allows for freedom of choice, whereas Oneness doesn’t. If we were really all parts of a larger organic Oneness, how could any of us determine what role we would play within that Oneness? It would be like a stomach suddenly deciding to switch jobs with the liver or to go on strike: The organism would die. At most, the stomach is free simply to act in lin...

"The first lesson of skillfulness is that the essence of an action [kamma] lies in the intention motivating it: an act motivated by the intention for greater skillfulness will give results different from those of an act motivated by greed, aversion, or delusion. Intention, in turn, is influenced by the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the act of attention to one’s circumstances. The less an act of attention is clouded by delusion, the more clearly it will see things in appropriate terms. The combination of attention and intention in turn determines the quality of the feeling and the physical events (“form”) that result from the act. The more skilled the action, the more refined these results will be." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Refuge in Skillful Action"

"One of the results of practicing the Dhamma to a high level is that the results of your past bad actions get weakened and weakened, and have less of an impact on the heart and mind. Think of the case of Angulimala. He had killed a lot of people, but the Buddha saw that he had potential. So, through his psychic powers, he was able to subdue Angulimala’s pride. Angulimala submitted and practiced the Dhamma under the Buddha until he became an arahant. A lot of people were not happy with this. They may have been the relatives of people who had been killed by Angulimala. So when he was on his alms round, they would throw things at him — stones, pieces of pottery — tearing his robes, breaking his bowl, sometimes gashing his head. He’d come back from his alms round all bloody, and the Buddha would say, “Bear up with it. This is much milder than it would’ve been if you hadn’t gained this attainment.” So it is possible to gain awakening even with bad kamma in your background. But that mea...

“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...

Question: So there’s no self. So in that case, who acts and who creates the kamma? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: The Buddha never said that there is no self. When he teaches not -self, he’s teaching a technique, a strategy for getting rid of attachment. There’s a common misconception that the Buddha starts with the idea of there being no self, and in the context of no self teaches the doctrine of kamma, which doesn’t make sense: If there’s no self, who does the kamma and who receives the results? But that misconception gets the context backwards. Actually, the Buddha starts with the doctrine of kamma, and then views ideas of “self” and “not-self” as types of kamma. In other words, he focuses on seeing the way we define our sense of self as an action. Then the question becomes, when is the activity of identifying things as your self skillful, and when is it not? When is the activity of identifying things as not-self skillful, and when is it not? There are some instances where the B...

"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)

"Genuine helpfulness: You see what the other person really needs, and if you’re in a position to provide it, you go ahead. You don’t make a show of helping them just to make a good impression on them. You don’t do it for their sake or anyone else’s sake. You do it for the sake of the practice, for the sake of developing your own goodness. You try to see what needs to be done, and then you go ahead and do it. One of the lessons I learned from my father is there are a lot of jobs that need to be done in the world that nobody wants to do. So they provide a huge, wide-open opportunity for you to develop your goodness with no competition. Look for that kind of job, those kinds of tasks around the monastery or wherever you’re living." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Make Yourself Small"

"If you come to the meditation simply thinking, “What’s in it for me?” you won’t benefit much from the meditation. You’ve got to train yourself to say instead, “What’s in it for the whole mass of beings? To what extent can my meditation help them too?” At the very least, it gets you out of that feeding system. There’s at least one less mouth to be fed. In the meantime, you can be an inspiration. You can take refuge in the Sangha. It’s good to keep having members of the noble Sangha appearing in the world, so that it’s not just a matter of some story way in the past, the time of the Buddha or over there in Asia. When there are members of the noble Sangha appearing right now, that’s an inspiration to other meditators. So we’re not doing this just for ourselves. We’re doing it for everybody. If we can get to the point where we have less greed, aversion, and delusion, we’re not the only ones benefiting. Other people are suffering less from our greed, aversion, and delusion. If we ge...

Question: So there’s no self. So in that case, who acts and who creates the kamma? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: The Buddha never said that there is no self. When he teaches not -self, he’s teaching a technique, a strategy for getting rid of attachment. There’s a common misconception that the Buddha starts with the idea of there being no self, and in the context of no self teaches the doctrine of kamma, which doesn’t make sense: If there’s no self, who does the kamma and who receives the results? But that misconception gets the context backwards. Actually, the Buddha starts with the doctrine of kamma, and then views ideas of “self” and “not-self” as types of kamma. In other words, he focuses on seeing the way we define our sense of self as an action. Then the question becomes, when is the activity of identifying things as your self skillful, and when is it not? When is the activity of identifying things as not-self skillful, and when is it not? There are some instances where the B...

"One of [the Buddha's] big discoveries is the extent to which we fabricate our experience from within, through our intentions. In other words, we’re not just on the receiving end of the material world. We actually shape the world we live in. The whole point of the path is to learn how to take advantage of that fact — so that, on the one hand, we can shape it well — and then shape it really well so that we can get beyond these worlds that we ordinarily shape and arrive at something that’s really reliable, something really solid. Yet it is an inside job. You can get advice from outside, but the actual work is something you have to do. This is very different from the materialist’s idea, which is that the material world is real and what you experience, your consciousness of things, is what they call an epiphenomenon. In other words, it’s just a side effect of the real things, which are atoms doing their thing. And the Buddha’s perspective is also very different from the post-moder...

"It’s this desire for happiness that underlies the whole practice, coupled with an understanding of karma: Without that understanding, the desire for happiness becomes sentimental and sometimes rather unrealistic. But as the principle of karma says, if you act with skillful intentions, the results will be happy, the results will be pleasant. This means we have to act with skillful intentions, intentions that don’t want to cause harm. It’s that desire not to cause harm and the realization that we have to implement it through the principle of karma: That’s the beginning of the practice. It’s the motivation and the understanding." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Desire for Happiness"

Question: So there’s no self. So in that case, who acts and who creates the kamma? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: The Buddha never said that there is no self. When he teaches not -self, he’s teaching a technique, a strategy for getting rid of attachment. There’s a common misconception that the Buddha starts with the idea of there being no self, and in the context of no self teaches the doctrine of kamma, which doesn’t make sense: If there’s no self, who does the kamma and who receives the results? But that misconception gets the context backwards. Actually, the Buddha starts with the doctrine of kamma, and then views ideas of “self” and “not-self” as types of kamma. In other words, he focuses on seeing the way we define our sense of self as an action. Then the question becomes, when is the activity of identifying things as your self skillful, and when is it not? When is the activity of identifying things as not-self skillful, and when is it not? There are some instances where the B...

"When the Buddha teaches us right view, he’s advising us to think about the long term. As Ajaan Lee would say, anybody can find pleasure in one way or another. Even common animals have their ways of finding pleasure. But it takes discernment to realize that there are long-term consequences to your actions. You have to take into consideration that your actions depend on your motivation. And your actions can have consequences that last for a long, long time, which means you have to check your motivation for why you’re acting and try to motivate yourself to act in a way that will lead to long-term well-being. This is what makes human beings different from animals. We can take a longer view. Yet there are a lot of people who refuse to take that longer view. That’s precisely why the Buddha made the topic of rebirth part of mundane right view. You’ve got to take this into consideration. Your actions really do have consequences, even beyond this life. There’s a continuation beyond death,...

"One of the major things [the Buddha] woke to was the principle of action, kamma: that our lives are shaped by our actions. Our happiness, our pains, are shaped by our actions, the intentions on which we act. Having conviction in that fact is a very strengthening thing. On the one hand, it empowers you. You see that you really can shape your life. There may be obstacles that you have to overcome, but if you stick with this path long enough — the path of skillful action — you will find good results coming. This is encouraging. It helps overcome apathy. It helps to overcome hopelessness. And it focuses your attention on the right place: that regardless of the conditions of your life, if you focus on acting skillfully, things are going to improve." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Beyond Inter-eating"

"The sense that you’ve benefited from another person’s action underscores the point that action does give results; the importance you give to the other person’s motives in helping you underscores the point that the quality of the action lies in the intention behind it; and the sense that the other person went out of his or her way to help you underscores the sense that action isn’t totally determined: You feel indebted to the people who helped you because you sense how easily they might have denied that help, and how difficult your life might have been if that’s what they had chosen to do." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Lessons of Gratitude"

"You should start every day with thoughts of goodwill [mettā] and end the day with thoughts of goodwill, to keep your intentions in line. Because the major motivation for our practice is that we want a happiness, a sense of well-being that doesn’t harm anybody. We have to follow a path of practice that doesn’t harm anybody. But it’s so easy to think thoughts of harm. So we have to consciously train the mind not to think those thoughts. You have to reason with it. You can’t browbeat it into submission by just saying, “May all beings be happy, be happy, be happy.” That doesn’t do it. You have to think about what that means, and particularly what it means in terms of your own actions. On the one hand, you realize other beings are not going to be happy unless they actually put together the causes for happiness, genuine happiness. Think about that for a bit and you realize that’s a thought you can think about anybody without any kind of hypocrisy, even people who’ve been really miser...

"I had a student once who told me that his version of checking the morning news was to go out into his garden and check on what was growing, what was blooming, what was dying. I had to tell him that even that was too far afield. The important news is what’s going on in your mind right now: What are you doing? What are you saying? What are you thinking? Why? What’s the motivation? This is the news that’s really important for us, because it’s what we’re responsible for." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Current News" (Meditations10)