Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"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...

"As for the recollection of the virtues of the devas, that’s useful if you want to raise the level of your mind here in present life. You don’t have to wait until you become a deva. Ajaan Suwat did make a statement once, saying that when you’re thinking about your next life, don’t make a determination to come back as a human being. The human world is going to go through a lot of difficulties. It’d be better to take rebirth as a deva. The belief that devas can’t practice is not true. There are lots of devas who practice. If they get the opportunity to hear the Dhamma, they can even gain the noble attainments." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Recollecting the Devas" (Meditations6)

"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...

"This body we have, the mind we have: They’re like the gold you hear about in fairytales. The gremlin or the goblin gives you the gold, but it turns out that if you try to hoard the gold, it turns into ashes. It turns into feathers. But if, when you get the gold, you give it away, it keeps replenishing itself. It keeps repaying you in more and more ways. So as long as you have a body, as long as you have a mind, give them to whatever you find is noble, whatever you find is inspiring." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "You Bet Your Life"

"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...

"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"

"There’s a sense of joy in seeing that the teachings on kamma really work: You do skillful things and there will be rewards. That’s a somewhat more impersonal principle, but it lifts the mind to a higher state, because it’s getting “you” out of the way. Think about it: What are the attitudes in your mind that would interfere with empathetic joy? They’re all very childish. One is if you see someone who has something that you want but you don’t have, and you feel resentment, jealousy, envy. But when you’re able to overcome that and take yourself out of the picture, that heightens the concentration. There are also cases where people have done things that lead to happiness, who acted skillfully in the past, but they’re not skillful anymore. In fact, they’ve taken the results of their past skillful actions and now they’re abusing them — and you don’t like it, you don’t want to see them be happy, you feel they don’t deserve their happiness. But when you think in the terms of the princip...

"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"