Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Don’t latch on to the results of your actions; latch on to the fact that you’re making the decisions right now, all the time. Once a decision has been made, it’s been put into a larger circle of cause and effect beyond your control; but you do have a chance to make a decision again the next moment, and the next moment, and then the next. Focus on that. Don’t get caught up in the results of past actions. Focus on what you can do now to make the present actions skillful. That’s the focus of the teaching, “We’re the owners of our actions.” " ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sublime Attitudes" (Meditations2)

"You want to look at the attitudes you’re fostering in your mind and make sure they’re skillful ones — because the whole issue of kamma boils down to this: What you do right now is important. What was done in the past may have some influence on what you can do right now, but what you do right now is what’s really important. And the possibility of doing something skillful right now is always present." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Story-telling Mind" (Meditations1)

"In dependent co-arising [paṭiccasamuppāda]: As we will see, present kamma consists of fabrication [saṅkhāra] and the sub-factors [perception, feeling, intention, contact, attention] coming under the factor of “name” in name and form [nāmarūpa] . Past kamma is the experience of the six senses [SN35:145], which comes after the factors of fabrication and name [SN12:2]. What this means in terms of our direct experience is that by the time we’re aware of sensory input, we’re already primed to experience it in a certain way. This fact can cause us a lot of trouble, but it also opens the way to free us from suffering. If suffering depends on the way we prime our minds, then if we prime them in a skillful way, we don’t have to suffer even when the input from the senses — past kamma — is bad." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"Look at everything, even your sense of who you are, as types of action, and then look at whether they’re skillful or not. This is where that reflection on karma can take you. That fifth reflection may sound very simple, very basic — some people call it kindergarten Buddhism: You do good, you get good results; you do bad, you get bad results. But it’s exploring that basic principle that can take you all the way." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Up for the Challenge"

"Don’t latch on to the results of your actions; latch on to the fact that you’re making the decisions right now, all the time. Once a decision has been made, it’s been put into a larger circle of cause and effect beyond your control; but you do have a chance to make a decision again the next moment, and the next moment, and then the next. Focus on that. Don’t get caught up in the results of past actions. Focus on what you can do now to make the present actions skillful. That’s the focus of the teaching, “We’re the owners of our actions.” " ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sublime Attitudes" (Meditations2)

"We do have the power to exert control over our intentions right now. And our intentions do shape our experience of the world around us, the world inside us, at least to some extent: enough to make the difference between suffering and not suffering. What we’re experiencing right now is the result of past intentions, plus our current intentions, plus the results of our current intentions. Even though we may not have absolute control over things, and will ultimately have to let them all go, we do have some control over our actions now. And you want to make the most of that fact." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Limits of Control"

"When an intention comes up to do or say or think something, you want to know what that intention is. It’s a teaching that the Buddha teaches his son Rahula: to look at his intentions before he does or says or thinks anything. I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Gee, that’s an awful lot of attention to something like that,” because they have so many other things they have to pay attention to. Well, it turns out that the other things you’re paying attention to are often the results of your own past actions. It’s much better to start at the very beginning to make sure that the new intentions coming out are well-formed. So try to stay right here. Find ways of making the mind happy to be right here, so that it has the energy and the inclination to want to look into what’s going on in the mind and straightening that out. Once you’ve straightened out the mind, everything else gets straightened out further down the line." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Straightened Intentions...

"We’ve all made mistakes in the past, but we’ve all done some good things, too. Focus on the good things. Those are what give you strength to keep on doing more good things. If you focus on the bad things you’ve done, you just start spiraling down and it’s hard to pull yourself up. So focus on the good that you’ve done. Dedicate that to your future, dedicate that to the people you’ve harmed in the past, so that you can live in this world without a sense that you’ve got a big debt. You’re working on paying off your debts, so work at it every day, every day." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Focus on the Good"

"We often think of kamma as something very diametrically opposed to goodwill [mettā] . How can people be happy if they’ve got bad kamma and deserve to suffer? — that’s what we think, but that’s not what the Buddha taught. The teachings on kamma and goodwill go together. You realize the difference between suffering and non-suffering is a matter, not of past kamma, but of present kamma: your skill in the present moment. The same principle applies to other people as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill & Kamma"

"You probably know the story of how Devadatta tried to kill the Buddha. He rolled a rock down a mountain, hoping to crush the Buddha. Fortunately, the rock hit another rock that diverted it. But still, a sliver broke off from the big rock and pierced the Buddha’s foot, causing him a lot of pain. The texts tell us how, after the sliver was removed, the Buddha went to lie down and rest. Mara came to taunt him, accusing him of moping and being depressed and not facing pain like a real Buddha who apparently should get up and walk around even though he was in a lot of pain. The Buddha replied, “I’m not moping. I’m lying down out of sympathy for all beings.” We can take two lessons from that. The first is that when the body is sick, you look after it. You don’t try to prove that you’re able to deal with pain to the extent that you abuse the body. Lying down out of sympathy, the Buddha was preserving his strength so that he could help other beings. At the same time, that accusation that ...

Question 11. If hurting others tends to lead to illness in the next lifetime, is illness in this lifetime always the result of past kamma? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: As with every other experience of pain, illness can come from a wide variety of kammic factors, past and present. You’ve already noticed this yourself: When you intentionally stick your finger in a fire, the resulting pain doesn’t come from an action in your previous lifetime. It comes from a choice you made here and now. The Buddha himself argued against the idea that all pain comes from past kamma, and in the course of his argument he provided a list of other factors that could give rise to illness. The list comes from the medical beliefs of his day, and although it includes a lot of other causes besides past kamma — things like a chemical imbalance in the elements in the body, the change of the seasons, or poor care of the body — all the causes included in the list come under what, in another discourse, he ident...

"There are some cases where illness comes from purely mental causes, in which case meditation can cure it, but there are also cases where it comes from physical causes, and no amount of meditation can make it go away. If you believe in karma, there are some diseases that come from present karma — your state of mind right now — and others that come from past karma. If it's a present-karma disease, meditation might be able to make it go away. If it's a past-karma disease, the most you can hope from meditation is that it can help you live with the illness and pain without suffering from it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Using Meditation to Deal with Pain, Illness & Death"

Question 15. Is it possible to burn off old kamma — say, by simply putting up with pain? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: No. In the Buddha’s time, an ascetic group called the Nigaṇṭhas believed that they could burn off old kamma by not reacting to the pain of their austerities, and the Buddha reserved some of his sharpest ridicule for that belief. As he said, the Nigaṇṭhas should have noticed that the pain they experienced during their austerities ended when they stopped the austerities, which meant that the pain was the result not of old kamma being burned off, but of their present kamma in undertaking the austerities [MN 101]. Still, it is possible to weaken the results of bad past kamma. The Buddha compared past bad kamma to a big lump of salt. If you put the salt into a small glass of water, you can’t drink the water because it’s too salty. But if you toss it into a large, clean river, it doesn’t make the water of the river too salty to drink. The river here stands for a mind t...

"Look at everything, even your sense of who you are, as types of action, and then look at whether they’re skillful or not. This is where that reflection on karma can take you. That fifth reflection may sound very simple, very basic — some people call it kindergarten Buddhism: You do good, you get good results; you do bad, you get bad results. But it’s exploring that basic principle that can take you all the way." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Up for the Challenge"

"Often we think of the teaching on karma as something deterministic or fatalistic. “I’ve got to suffer because of my past karma,” or, “This had to happen because of past karma.” That puts your whole life out of your control. But when you start playing with the breath, you begin to realize that a lot of the shaping of your present experiences is something you’re doing right now. You improvise it. You cook it up fresh every moment. That puts an element of freedom into your life. What we’re doing as we meditate is to explore this freedom we have right here in the present moment to see how far it goes. As the Buddha said, when you explore this area, that’s when you start learning how to put an end to suffering. That’s the best use of your freedom." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Right Learning"

"Another argument against karma is that given the doctrine of not-self, how does karma make sense? If there is no self then who's doing the action? Who's receiving the action? What's there for continuity? That's getting the context backwards. The Buddha started with the teaching on karma first and then came up with the doctrine of not-self in the context of karma. In other words he said people act — you can see that for sure. Then the question of how does the doctrine of not-self fit in to the way people act? And it turns out that the Buddha said that our sense of self is something that we do — it is a type of karma. You create your sense of yourself. You create the sense of what you are. Your create your sense of what belongs to you. It’s a type of action and the question is: Is it a skillful action? Is it going to create suffering or is it not going to create suffering?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "War on Karma" (51min mp3 audio)

"Look at everything, even your sense of who you are, as types of action, and then look at whether they’re skillful or not. This is where that reflection on karma can take you. That fifth reflection may sound very simple, very basic — some people call it kindergarten Buddhism: You do good, you get good results; you do bad, you get bad results. But it’s exploring that basic principle that can take you all the way." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Up for the Challenge"

"It’s a matter of priorities: Where are you going to focus your energies to get the best results? The reflection connecting the principle of karma with equanimity is meant to clear the decks so that you can focus right there, on your present actions. That’s where the true issue is. That’s what underlies the basic structure of reality. When you can focus here, you don’t get all caught up in all the “what ifs” about the past: “What if I had done this? What if I hadn’t done that?” All those “what ifs” about the past are a massive waste of time. The important “what if” is: “What if I act skillfully now?” Try that out." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Intelligent Equanimity" (Meditations3)

"Don’t latch on to the results of your actions; latch on to the fact that you’re making the decisions right now, all the time. Once a decision has been made, it’s been put into a larger circle of cause and effect beyond your control; but you do have a chance to make a decision again the next moment, and the next moment, and then the next. Focus on that. Don’t get caught up in the results of past actions. Focus on what you can do now to make the present actions skillful. That’s the focus of the teaching, “We’re the owners of our actions.” " ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sublime Attitudes" (Meditations2)

Question: When you are in mindfulness, are you remembering and by this act soliciting the past, or are you firmly in the present? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: With mindfulness, you are trying to bring only what you need to know from the past. Through the quality of alertness, you focus on the present. Try to bring the two of them together, so that you remember what you need to know from the past so as to shape the present moment well. Remember, too, that the present is not just given to you. It’s also something that you’re shaping in the present moment as well. Past kamma gives you the potentials for the present moment, but your present kamma is actually what shapes your experience from those potentials. ~ "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"