Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"A lot of people don’t like looking at their actions because, after all, they’ve done a lot of unskillful things. Well, just remind yourself, all human beings have been doing unskillful things. If we had no unskillful behavior in our background, we wouldn’t be here, we’d be someplace else. So we all have habits that we have to learn how to undo, and new habits that we have to learn how to develop. But it’s in exploring the potential we have for choosing freely between different courses of action that we find a different kind of freedom ultimately. It’s a freedom that’s not conditioned. Now, looking at our past actions and looking even at our present actions is often like looking at a bramble patch. That’s where we want to say, “Forget about that, let’s just go for the larger Oneness.” But it turns out that you have to go through the brambles to get to the nice part inside the bramble patch — those brambles are protecting something. It’s not brambles all the way. But you explore y...

"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...

"Because interconnectedness through kamma is not very reassuring on the one hand, and very demanding on the other, 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." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "We Are Not One"