Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Sometimes the Pali word for stress, dukkha is translated as unsatisfactoriness. There’s a way in which that’s right, but a huge way in which it’s wrong. Dukkha means pain, stress, suffering. It’s unsatisfactory because there is something better, but taken on its own, when you say that something is unsatisfactory, it sounds as if you could simply change your standards and learn how to be satisfied with things, and then you’d be okay. And that’s a lot of what modern Dhamma teaches: Accept the fact that things change. Don’t want them to be any way different, and you’ll be okay. Learn some equanimity. That is not  the escape from suffering. That’s not the escape from unsatisfactoriness. The escape is realizing that you’re implicit in making these things happen. When the Buddha says that the objects of the senses and the senses themselves are fabricated, it’s not simply that they depend on conditions, but that you play a role in getting engaged with them, shaping them. And it’s becau...

Question: The precept against killing is often translated into adopting a vegetarian diet. Is this necessary? Aren’t you also killing these poor vegetables, stripping their skin off while they’re still alive and boiling them? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: For the monks, our rule is that we’re not allowed to eat meat if we either know or suspect that it was killed for the purpose of feeding us. The precept against killing is specifically against either killing something on your own or telling someone else to kill. Now, if you want to take the precept further and adopt a vegetarian diet, that’s perfectly fine. But the precept doesn’t require it. Just make sure that when you go to a seafood restaurant and they have a fish tank with live fish, don’t choose any of the live fish. As for vegetables, they don’t come under the concept of sentient being — they don’t feel pain — so the precept doesn’t cover them. We’ve received several questions on the issue of the relationship between the ...

"You look in the newspapers and it seems like everything in the world is falling apart. And it is. So, what is there to accomplish? We train our minds. We’re good to one another, because that kind of goodness isn’t erased by death." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Living Honorably (2015)" (Meditations8)

"Virtue, in Buddhism, is expressed in the five precepts. Of the five, truthfulness is said to be the highest virtue because it’s only through truthfulness that you’re in a position to admit your mistakes and to learn from them. There are passages in the Canon called the Jātaka tales, which tell the stories of the Buddha in previous lifetimes. And it’s obvious from some of the stories that he’s still learning the ropes, because sometimes he breaks the precepts: Sometimes he kills, sometimes he steals, sometimes he has illicit sex, sometimes he takes alcohol. But he never lies. Ever. For him, that’s the most important precept. Because after all, if you lie to someone, the misunderstanding you create can have a bad effect not only in this lifetime but also into future lifetimes. And as the Buddha says, if you feel no shame at telling a deliberate lie, there’s no evil you’re incapable of doing." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Five Faculties: Putting Wisdom in Charge o...

"So even though the mountains of aging, illness, and death may be moving in, we can still train the mind. Because as the Buddha pointed out, death is not the end. It’s one incident in a very long story. Poverty is not the end. Famine, the four horsemen [death, famine, war & pestilence], are not really the end. The four horsemen have been stampeding all over the world for who knows how long. But we can still do good." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "In Charge of Your World"

"In the large scheme of things, as long as you’re in samsara, you’re going to meet the people you love again. Wealth that’s gone comes back again. Your health’s that’s gone can come back again. But when you lose your virtue and you lose your right views, it can sometimes be a very long and miserable time before you get them back. You’ve got them now. Protect them." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Mending the Social Fabric"

"We all know that life is going to end at some spot and the question is, what comes next? So you want to develop the qualities of mind that will help ensure that, whatever comes next, it’s something not to be afraid of, but something actually to look forward to. Not in the sense that you want to die, but at least you feel secure about where you’re going after death." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Try This at Home"

"In his effort to master kamma in such a way as to bring kamma to an end, the Buddha discovered that he had to abandon the contexts of personal narrative and cosmology in which the issue of kamma first presented itself. Both these forms of understanding deal in categories of being and non-being, self and others, but the Buddha found that it was impossible to bring kamma to an end if one thought in such terms. For example, narrative and cosmological modes of thinking would lead one to ask whether the agent who performed an act of kamma was the same as the person experiencing the result, someone else, both, or neither. If one answered that it was the same person, then the person experiencing the result would have to identify not only with the actor, but also with the mode of action, and thus would not be able to gain release from it. If one answered that it was another person, both oneself and another, or neither, then the person experiencing the result would see no nee...

"Dangers in your own mind: Ultimately, those are the ones that are really dangerous. Other people can hurt you, they can even kill you, but the results go only as far as this lifetime. But through your actions — your thoughts, your words, and your deeds — you can do yourself a lot of damage that goes beyond just this lifetime, so you need a source of safety that’s nearby." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Near to the Buddha"

Question: Kamma and Rebirth, second try. How does individual kamma migrate from this life to the next one? Is this a relevant question? If no, how can our next life be better if we don’t have the benefit of a kind of karmic legacy? Thank you, Ajaan, for clarifying this “critical” question. Thanissaro Bhikkhu: It’s not a matter of migrating. Our kamma is actually what creates our experience of the next life — or rather, it supplies the raw material for our experience of the next life. When we leave this life and go to the next one, it doesn’t feel like we’re going someplace else. Just as we have a sense of our present life as “right here,” the next life will also have a sense of being “right here,” right at our consciousness. It’s like going from one dream to another. Even though the appearance of the location in the second dream is different from the location in the first, it still has a sense of happening “right here” just as the first one did. To give another examp...

"[The Buddha] didn’t ask that his listeners all commit themselves to an unquestioning belief in the possibility that their actions might lead to rebirth, but he wasn’t interested in teaching anyone who rejected that possibility outright. As we’ve already noted, he saw that heedfulness lay at the root of all skillful qualities. If a listener couldn’t be persuaded to develop an appropriate level of heedfulness around the risks of action, any further teaching would be a waste of time." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Truth of Rebirth and Why It Matters for Buddhist Practice"

"As [the Buddha] saw, people would fare through the world up and down, based on their actions. Their actions were shaped by their intentions. Their intentions were shaped by their views. The way these things worked out was pretty complex, but the basic principle was simple: You act on skillful intentions, the result is happiness. You act on unskillful intentions, the result is suffering, pain. Of course, you look at your life, and it’s not the case that you do nothing but good actions, nothing but bad actions. There’s a mixture. But what’s important is that, as you go through life and you realize you’ve made mistakes, you admit the mistakes and you try to develop right view. Then your actions really do make a difference. Believing in that gives you the energy to try to do your best. There are people out there, just as there were people in the Buddha’s time, who say that you’re powerless. Either actions are not real at all, or even though they are real, they have no impact on shapi...

"As [the Buddha] noted, you can’t see all the results of actions here in this lifetime. Some people say, “Everything I’ve seen in life is enough to convince me that kamma works.” Well, No, it’s not. There are plenty of people who do all kinds of horrible unskillful things, yet they’re still alive. They thrive. The Buddha has a long list of people who thrive because they kill, steal, engage in illicit sex, lie, or take intoxicants [Saṁyutta Nikāya 42:13]. They do it with the right people and they do it in the right way to please someone in power, so they actually get rewarded by society in one way or another. But as the Buddha commented, those are only the short-term consequences. You’ve got to take the long-term consequences into consideration as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Rebirth is Relevant"

"Admirable friends can’t do the work for you. As [the Buddha] says, no one can purify you; you can’t purify anybody else. You don’t go to heaven because of other people’s good actions; you don’t go to hell because of other people’s bad actions. It’s your actions that determine that. So there is that sense in which you’re separate. And of course you’re the one who chooses your friends to begin with. So in that way, the separateness of our selves comes first." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Separate Self"

"There’s a passage in the Dhammapada when the Buddha says that you don’t go to heaven or to hell because of other people’s actions. Yet all too often we find ourselves in our own mental heaven or hell because of what someone else did. Actually, though, we’re the ones who create that heaven and hell. It’s through our own actions that we take what they did, what they said, or even what we think they thought, and turn it into our own private heaven or our own private hell." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Other People"

"The news may tell us that other things in other parts of the world are really important, really worth getting worked up about. And people do get worked up about them. But as the Buddha said, you’re not going to go to hell or to heaven because of other people’s actions. It’s your  actions that take you to hell, your actions that can get you to heaven, your actions that can get you beyond heaven and hell, taking you all the way to nibbana." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "On Top of Your Actions"

"As the Buddha said, “You don’t go to heaven or hell because of other people’s actions. You go because of your own actions.” Those can take you to heaven; they can take you to hell. So why are you taking yourself to hell? And why are you upset with what other people are doing, which really has nothing to do, really, with you? It’s your actions that make all the difference." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Look at Yourself"

“And what is the stress [dukkha] of not getting what is wanted? In beings subject to birth, the wish arises, ‘O, may we not be subject to birth, and may birth not come to us.' But this is not to be achieved by wishing. This is the stress of not getting what is wanted." ~ the Buddha, The Great Establishing of Mindfulness Discourse: The Four Noble Truths, transl. Thanissaro

"Your actions will have consequences even as everything is winding down in your life. That doesn’t mean things are going to come to an end. It’s just the end of a chapter, and then there’s another chapter, and another chapter. You want to make sure that those following chapters are headed in the right direction, so you avoid unskillful qualities and develop skillful ones." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Conviction & Focus"

"We could view samsara as a big mud fight. I splash mud on you. You splash mud on me. And then I splash mud on you back because you splashed mud on me. It goes back and forth like this and it never ends. So the idea of trying to straighten everybody out — or trying to settle the score — again makes no sense. There’s that famous story of Somdet Toh. A junior monk came to see him once, complaining that another monk had hit him over the head for no reason at all. He hadn’t done anything to harm the other monk. The other monk was just a really bad guy who came up and hit him. And Somdet Toh said, “Well, you hit him first.” The junior monk replied, “No, no, he came up and hit me first. I didn’t do anything to him at all.” Somdet Toh kept insisting, “No, you hit him first.” And so the young monk went to complain to Somdet Toh’s superior, who must’ve been the supreme patriarch. He went to Somdet Toh to question him about this: “Why did you keep insisting that the innocent m...