Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Traditionally, we talk about taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. In the Buddha’s time, it seems to have been a common pattern: People who knew nothing about the Buddha’s teachings would come and listen to him once, and their first reaction was to want to take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. This may be related to a statement the Buddha made about a teacher’s duties to his or her students, one of which is to provide protection in all directions. If we were talking about a theistic system, that would mean asking the god to provide the protection. But in the Buddha’s system, it means teaching you how to be your own protection. The protection provided by the Triple Gem — the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha — comes in taking them as examples for how we should provide protection for ourselves." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Refuge in Quiescence"

"Think of the ajaans going into the forest. Before, when they were lay people, they would take their weapons with them. But then as monks they were going totally unarmed, and their protection was taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha: in other words, trying to develop the qualities of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, in their hearts, in their activities. And they learned over time that that really was a much more solid protection: the protection of being inoffensive, the protection of being unburdensome, the protection of having goodwill [mettā] for all." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Free Like a Wild Deer"

"So have faith in what you’re doing and in the skills you’re developing here, because they can see you through, even when everything else starts collapsing and the mountains come moving in. And remember: The mind is not crushed by mountains. Your goodness is crushed only by your own discouragement, by your own lack of faith, your lack of conviction, lack of persistence. Those are the things that crush you, and yet those are also things you can do something about. The mountains keep moving in, moving in. The world is swept away. It’s the nature of the world. If the north mountain doesn’t get you, the south mountain will. But they get just your body. So focus on your mind: That’s your important refuge. All the skills you develop as you practice: Those are your refuge. Those don’t get swept away. Remember where the escape is. The escape is inside. You can’t escape the world, as the Buddha said, by going to the edge of the cosmos. He had that image of the skywalker — an interesting te...

"You can really trust the practice to see you through. Often our desire to cover all the bases is a fear that if one thing doesn’t work out, something else will. And we hesitate to commit ourselves to a particular path of action for fear that it may not see us all the way through. We hedge our bets. Yet instead of providing us real protection, this attitude ends up giving us a life of nothing but bits and pieces: a little bit of this, fragments of that, a little bit of peace, a little bit of wealth, a little bit of health, nothing in any really solid measure. But by taking refuge in the Dhamma we’re taking refuge in the conviction that developing the mind will cover all contingencies. And because the practice of virtue, concentration, and discernment — all the seeds for happiness — lie right here, that simplifies matters. It also allows us to give our full energy to the things that matter most." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Simplify" (Meditations2)

"I remember when I was becoming a Buddhist one of the main breakthroughs or milestones, I guess you would say, was when I realized that I really had to depend on my own karma. Prior to that I’d been raised a Christian, and even as I was beginning to have lots of doubts about those teachings, there was still a strong sense that there was somebody up there who was looking after us. Suddenly I realized that if I wanted to be a true Buddhist, I’d have to drop that. That was a real milestone in my mind. It threw me back on my own actions. I really had to be more honest with myself, I really had to be more careful about what I did." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Being a Buddhist"

"Concentration teaches you how to be with pleasure and not be overcome by it. It’s in this way that you have a refuge from your past karma, a refuge from your urges to create unskillful karma in the present moment. But even then, as the Buddha said, you’re still in a world that goes up and down, and you’re still subject to the fact that your mind could change. This is why you need something more solid. This is what the noble eightfold path provides. It’s the karma that leads to the end of karma. It takes the mind to a place that really is secure, where you step outside of time, step outside of space, and nothing is being done in that dimension. No old karma can reach you in there, no new karma is being created — and that’s the ultimate happiness. It’s the ultimate security, the ultimate safety, the ultimate refuge. It’s a refuge that lies beyond not only unskillful karma, past and present, but also skillful karma. That’s where you’re really safe." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A...

"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 world has nothing of its own. One has to pass on, leaving everything behind.” Actually, we don’t leave everything behind. As the Buddha points out, you take your karma. So you try to only take good things with you by making sure you create only good karma. Ajaan Suwat used to comment on how the Buddha would talk about how the aggregates are not-self, the sense media are not-self, not-self, not-self. But then the Buddha would turn around and say, “We are the owners of our actions.” In Thai, the translation is basically both that we’re the doers of our actions and the owners, at the same time. Our actions are ours. So again, you develop the qualities of mind that give you good actions that you can depend on." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The World Offers No Shelter"

"There are some things you can control. You can exert some control over what you do and you say and you think. This is one of the reasons why we meditate: to gain some control. Because where do our actions come from? They come from our intentions. Where are you going to see your intentions in action so that you can straighten them out? While you’re meditating. Just the simple act of noticing when the mind has wandered off and you bring it back; the simple act of noticing, “How can I breathe in a way that gives my mind a sense of comfort so that it wants to stay here”: All these simple acts help put you more in control of the mind, the area where you are responsible and the area where you can be in charge. There’s nobody in charge outside, but you can be in charge inside your mind. That’s where you can find your refuge. So do your best to make this refuge strong. Because otherwise, you’ll have nothing to hold onto." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Owners of Our Actions"