Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"I think a large part of the problem is that many people come to Buddhism having had their first spiritual experience with drugs. The nature of a drugged spiritual experience is pretty passive. It’s all about acceptance. Just let go, and everything’s really already wonderful. That may be good when you’re on drugs, but we can’t live that way. We can’t function that way. We’re acting in the world. We have to realize that the mind is not passive. When you start being passive like that, you can do it only for a little bit of time. Then you’ve got to get active again. Look what happens to people who are hooked on drugs. Anything! They’ll do anything in order to get that drugged experience again. This is where the ugly side of the eating nature of the mind shows itself, when you look for your happiness based on something that’s impermanent like that. You have to realize that the Buddha’s vision begins with something utterly different: realizing the importance of your actions. We’re all ...

"Oftentimes we see ourselves as the passive recipients of experiences: things come in the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body; thoughts come into the mind. And we tend to miss how much we’re doing right now to turn those experiences into suffering. The early Buddhists said that this point was the one where the Buddha’s teaching differed most radically from everything else that was available at the time: pointing to what you’re doing right now and the effects that it has right now. And also to the possibility for change. You don’t have to create that suffering for yourself. But first you have to see yourself doing it. Otherwise, it simply seems to be a part of what you’re receiving. Actually, a lot of what we experience in the present moment is what we’re doing right now. And yet we see it as something happening to us. As a result, we don’t see the opportunity for change. So when you look at experience, try to see that element of what you’re doing. Of course, to see yourself doing it, y...

"If you’re the sort of person who’s been angry, you might say, “Well, I need to be really loving and compassionate,” and you try being a Pollyanna for a while, and you realize that doesn’t work. So you go thrashing back and forth, feeling that you’re either too passive or too aggressive. It’s not the passivity or the being aggressive that’s the issue: It’s what your intention is when you’re dealing with people. Look at the Buddha. In some cases he would totally avoid getting into arguments, and in other cases he’d pursue an argument and be really aggressive. So you have to realize: There was something else going on. The passivity or the aggressiveness was not the issue. It was his intention. His intention was kind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Between Either & Or"

"[The Buddha] has an interesting analysis of attention. He’s not talking about bare attention — just sitting there, passively watching things arise and pass away, as if you’re in a drugged state. To pay attention to life means to ask questions. Appropriate attention is when you start asking the right questions. And this is a good one to begin with: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” “Long-term” here is important. You want long-term rather than short-term happiness. That’s part of the wisdom. The other part is that happiness depends on your actions — what you do, what you say, what you think. From that principle, you can derive a lot of the Buddha’s teachings." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Living Honorably" (Meditations8)

"The outside world is not a set factor. A lot of your experience of the outside world depends on how you interact with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. That’s the world you experience. And so much of it comes from your intentions in the present moment. So if you can work on the mind to get its intentions right and skillful, as much as possible, then you find that you have a better world to live in, a better space to meditate in. So remember this: You’re not a passive victim of outside circumstances. You’re part of the shaper of those outside circumstances. When you realize your responsibility for the world you experience, then you can do something about it. When you see what’s under your control, what’s not under your control, and are very clear about that distinction, it clears up a lot of issues in life — and a lot of issues in your meditation. You may not have full control over the outside results of your actions, but you do have control over your intentions ...

"We’re all active creatures. Our minds are active. We’re not simply sitting here passively observing the world and asking, as an idle pastime, “Well, what is the nature of the world? How does the world act?” We have to know how the world acts because we’re acting in it. We’re pulling the levers all the time, with every moment. We’re engaged in the act of fabrication, and it’s because we do it with a lack of skill that we’re suffering. That’s the problem the Buddha wants to solve. As long as you realize that suffering is one thing and not suffering is something else, and you decide that you really want to stop suffering, you’ve got to think in dualities. This is your protection. It’s what discernment is all about." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Safety of Dualities" (Meditations10)

"I don’t know how many times I’ve run into people who say that they’ve learned from their meditation that there is no agency, there is no choice. There are meditation methods that try to drive choice underground: You get to the point where you deny that you have choice, that you’re simply there on the receiving end of what happened from the past. But that’s not in line with what the Buddha taught. He said that if you think that the present moment is totally determined by the past, you have no freedom at all. If whatever you do is determined by the past, you have no choice as to kill or not to kill, to steal or not to steal. It would be a meaningless life. There would be no meaning in the path. And, he said, it would leave you unprotected and bewildered. “Unprotected” in the sense that you wouldn’t have any way of arguing against your urges to do something unskillful. And “bewildered” because you’d say, “What did I do in the past that made me compelled me to do this?”...

"So we’re not here to be as passive as possible, to say that we’re seeing things just as they are. Look at the way the Buddha approached awakening. He didn’t just sit there passively. He tried different approaches. He focused his mind in different places. He took different things as the themes of his meditation. Then he evaluated the results. How did it work? What was he able to do? And what was not up to his expectations? Then the question always was, “What am I doing wrong?” He would turn around and check out other possibilities. He experimented, which meant that he had to act and then look at the results of his actions, pass judgment on them, and then decide what to do next based on that judgment. It was through this process of committing himself to doing what he thought was the wisest and most skillful thing to do and then reflecting on the results that he was able to come up with some good standards for judgment. And that’s what the four noble truths are, standards for judgm...

"[The Buddha is] more interested in your having a sense not so much of what you are, as of what you do . You are the doer. When you experience something, there’s also a doing in the experiencing. You want to look for that as well, because it’s not that you’re sitting here totally passive, experiencing the results of past karma. You’re also creating present karma, present intentions, right now. The intentions you have right now are going to determine what you experience and what you focus on, what you do with what you focus on. This doing is really important here. So, for the purpose of the path, what you are doesn’t go beyond what you are as the doer, so that you focus on not so much on your identity here, but the actual quality of your actions, the quality of your intentions." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Riddle of “I Am”"

"Our sense of self does have two roles. On the one hand, it’s the experiencer. You’re the one who’s experiencing the pain, experiencing the results of your own actions, the results of other people’s actions. But you’re also the agent. You’re shaping your experience. So when you find yourself in a bad mood, it’s not against the principle of acceptance to try to work your way out of it. After all, what are you accepting? Are you simply accepting the fact that you’re a passive victim of things? The Buddha never asks you to accept that. He just wants you to accept the fact that you have a role in shaping your experience. That’s the essential element in his teaching on conditionality. There are some influences that come in from the past, but there are other things that you have the choice to shape in the present moment. As for what’s happened in the past, you can’t change that. And the effects that you’re feeling from things that happened in the past, you can’t change that. But you do ...

"I don’t know how many times I’ve run into people who say that they’ve learned from their meditation that there is no agency, there is no choice. There are meditation methods that try to drive choice underground: You get to the point where you deny that you have choice, that you’re simply there on the receiving end of what happened from the past. But that’s not in line with what the Buddha taught. He said that if you think that the present moment is totally determined by the past, you have no freedom at all. If whatever you do is determined by the past, you have no choice as to kill or not to kill, to steal or not to steal. It would be a meaningless life. There would be no meaning in the path. And, he said, it would leave you unprotected and bewildered. “Unprotected” in the sense that you wouldn’t have any way of arguing against your urges to do something unskillful. And “bewildered” because you’d say, “What did I do in the past that made me compelled me to do this?” Because you...

"The concept of kamma is usually disliked because people believe it to be deterministic, teaching that your present experience is controlled by your past kamma, which is something you’re powerless to change. But as the Buddha pointed out, your present experience is shaped not only by past kamma but also by present kamma. In fact, your present kamma is more important than your past kamma in determining whether or not you suffer in the present. Present kamma deals with the way you shape your experience in the present moment. We are active beings, not passive. The mind takes an active and proactive role in shaping its experience from moment to moment." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"When you experience something, there’s also a doing in the experiencing. You want to look for that as well, because it’s not that you’re sitting here totally passive, experiencing the results of past karma. You’re also creating present karma, present intentions, right now. The intentions you have right now are going to determine what you experience and what you focus on, what you do with what you focus on. This doing is really important here. So, for the purpose of the path, what you are doesn’t go beyond what you are as the doer, so that you focus on not so much on your identity here, but the actual quality of your actions, the quality of your intentions." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Riddle of 'I Am'"

"The Buddha never taught bare attention. He taught appropriate attention. This is an important distinction to bear in mind. If we think that the heart of the meditation is just simply bare attention, it causes all kinds of misunderstandings – such as the idea that meditation is simply a process of watching whatever comes up and not doing anything about it. Or even deeper, there’s the idea that if all you need to do is bare attention, why bother reading the Buddha’s other teachings at all? Just try to be as passive as possible. You don’t need to study. Just practice passive awareness and that will take care of all your problems. Sometimes people say that bare attention is the unconditioned, that a moment of bare attention is a moment of awakening. If you believe that, you close all of the paths to awakening. Because if you don’t see the difference between the path and the goal, you’re never going to get the goal. You have to work on the path and then you have to let it go at some p...

"Years back, I was giving a talk to a group of people on the topic of karma. They’d been meditating and most of them had the impression that karma was something superfluous in the Buddha’s teachings, something that had nothing to do with their meditation. So I pointed out that you have to look at your meditation as a kind of action: You’re creating karma by focusing on the breath, you’re creating karma by spreading thoughts of goodwill [mettā] . It’s good karma, but you want to learn how to do it even more and more skillfully. I was getting a lot of blank looks from the audience as I said this, and I found out later that the type of meditation they’d been doing was one where you’re not supposed to be doing anything at all. You were supposed to allow whatever’s going to happen to happen and take a totally passive, accepting role to what was happening. But that’s not how the Buddha taught meditation. He said he wanted you to see meditation as a kind of action that you want to maste...

" “All living beings are the owners of their actions, heir to their actions....Whatever they do, for good or for evil, to that will they fall heir.” This reflection actually turns up in lots of different contexts. In the five reflections, the reflection on karma is the one that gives hope. You realize that you’re in charge of your actions. You’re not simply a victim of fate or of the stars or of some other being acting through you. You’re the one who’s making the choices. That’s what gives you hope. But it’s hope coupled with heedfulness. You’ve got the power to do good with your actions, but also the power to cause harm. The principle of karma is a double-edged sword. If you’re not careful, you can use it to cut your own throat. This is why the Buddha recommends reflecting on the principle of karma as a way of inspiring heedfulness. Taken a little further, the universality of the principle of karma is a reflection for developing equanimity both toward yourself and toward other pe...