Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

Question: I was in a situation where I was forced to do something that harmed someone else. How do I live with this fact so that it is not too heavy to bear? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Remember that kamma depends on many different factors. When you’re forced into doing something harmful, the kamma is much less heavy than if you had done it on your own initiative through anger or ill will. Remember, too, the Buddha’s recommendation that you not get involved in thoughts of remorse. Instead, simply recognize that it was a mistake and resolve not to repeat the mistake. Then spread thoughts of goodwill to yourself, to the person you harmed, to the people who forced you to do the harm, and then to all beings. You spread goodwill to yourself to give yourself more encouragement to do good now and into the future. You spread it to others to strengthen your desire not to harm anyone at all. ~ "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"Although the Jains, like the Buddhists, teach a doctrine of the moral consequences of actions, the teachings of the two traditions differ in many important details. This discourse points out two of the major points where the Buddhist teaching is distinctive: its understanding of the complexity of the kammic process, and its application of that understanding to the psychology of teaching. The Buddha shows that a simplistic, fatalistic view of the kammic process is logically inconsistent, and also leads to unfortunate results for any person who, with a background of bad kamma, believes in it. The actual complexity of kamma, however, allows for a way in which past evil deeds can be overcome: through refraining from evil now and into the future, and through developing expansive mind-states of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, & equanimity. In such an expansive mind state, the unavoidable consequences of past evil actions count for next to nothing. The Buddha als...

"Then there will be part of the mind that says, “I don’t want to think about [the Dhamma right now] because it means I’ve been acting unskillfully in the past, and it just hurts too much to think about that.” That’s where the Buddha recommends developing the right attitude toward your past mistakes. It’s not inevitable that you’re going to have to suffer a lot from your past mistakes. As the Buddha said, if you can develop an attitude of limitless goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, that’ll mitigate the results of your past bad actions. If you can train yourself so that the mind isn’t overcome by pleasure, isn’t overcome by pain — in other words, you don’t let these feelings get in the way of your seeing what’s actually going on — then again, the mind is immune, or at least the results of your past mistakes will be mitigated. So the proper attitude to have toward your past bad actions is, one, realize that remorse is not going to undo them. Simply ...

Question 13. What’s the best way to act if you know you’ve done unskillful things in the past? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: First off, remember that each moment that you’re still alive gives you the opportunity to change your ways and engage in skillful actions. And remember, too, that actions tend to give certain results, and that these tendencies can be strengthened or weakened by other actions. This means that if you’ve been acting unskillfully but then, seeing the error of your ways, begin to act more skillfully, your newer actions will weaken the results of your older, unskillful actions. In fact, the Buddha points out that simply affirming the intention to act skillfully is already a positive first step. So if you’ve done something unskillful, recognize that the action was unskillful and wrong, but that feelings of remorse and guilt won’t undo what you’ve already done — in fact, too much remorse or guilt can actually sap your confidence that you can change your ways. Then...

"As for the forms of doubt and uncertainty, one is the sense of insecurity that comes when you know you’ve done some wrong things and there’s the possibility after death that you’re going to be punished for them. It’s not necessarily the case that there’s somebody up there keeping records and they’re going to catch you and say, “Hey, look, you did this wrong, you did that wrong, and we’ve got these laws and we’re going to carry you off and punish you.” It’s simply a fact of action: You do something unskillful and it’s going to come back in an unpleasant way. For a lot of us, we don’t know this for sure, but there’s always the possibility. You can start thinking about things that you did in the past, where you harmed other people, and there’s always that uncertainty. I’ve noticed that when people hear the teaching on karma for the first time, that’s the first thing they think about: “Oh my gosh, I’ve got all these horrible I did in the past. You mean I can’t get away with them?” ...

 "We have this inbred difficulty of looking at our own actions, but that’s precisely what the meditation is: looking at your own actions. It’s not so much self-purification as action-purification. It requires that you see your intentions and the actions and their results. Often these are things we don’t like to look at. Sometimes it’s just simple dishonesty. Other times we don’t like to look at these things because we don’t know how to handle what we see. How can you look at your mistakes without getting all tangled up in self-hatred, self-frustration? This is where the right attitudes come in. Look at those instructions the Buddha gave to Rahula. He said that when you see an action that you’ve done has caused harm, you should feel shame and loathing — not shame and loathing for yourself, shame and loathing for the action. That’s an important distinction. Shame around the action means that you realize you’re a better person than that. You shouldn’t have done it. It doesn’t mean th...

"You have to learn how to judge your actions and not come down on yourself for being really bad when you see that you’re making poor judgments or you’ve done something unskillful. You’ve got to develop the attitude of a craftsperson. You’re sitting at your bench, working on building a piece of furniture, and you just realized that you planed the wood a little bit too deeply. So what do you do? Do you throw the wood away? That would be a waste. Do you start yelling at yourself? That wouldn’t accomplish anything. You figure out how to correct for the mistake. And then you move on. Perhaps it’s because we have so few manual skills nowadays that we haven’t developed this faculty of judging a work in progress. But here’s your opportunity to develop it. Remember the basic principles. You’re judging the actions, not yourself as a good or bad person. And the purpose of the judgment is so that you can apply what you’ve learned the next time around. If you’re going to be noticing how other ...

"One of the really fine things about Buddhism is that it was founded by someone who knows what it’s like to make a mistake. Even in his last lifetime, the Buddha made a huge mistake — six years of tormenting himself. And all those previous lifetimes! You look in the Jātaka stories and it’s not as if the Buddha was always perfect. He was making mistakes and having to learn from them. So unlike a religion that’s supposedly founded by a God who’s never been a human being, who’s never had to admit a mistake, the Buddha knows what it’s like to make a mistake and to have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on. Those instructions he gave to Rāhula are really useful in this regard. He said that if you see you’ve made a mistake, admit the mistake, talk it over with someone else, and then simply resolve not to repeat that mistake. You don’t have to carry the guilt around with you, just the memory that that was a mistake. Then you move on. The Buddha gave similar instructions to...

Question 13. What’s the best way to act if you know you’ve done unskillful things in the past? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: First off, remember that each moment that you’re still alive gives you the opportunity to change your ways and engage in skillful actions. And remember, too, that actions tend to give certain results, and that these tendencies can be strengthened or weakened by other actions. This means that if you’ve been acting unskillfully but then, seeing the error of your ways, begin to act more skillfully, your newer actions will weaken the results of your older, unskillful actions. In fact, the Buddha points out that simply affirming the intention to act skillfully is already a positive first step. So if you’ve done something unskillful, recognize that the action was unskillful and wrong, but that feelings of remorse and guilt won’t undo what you’ve already done — in fact, too much remorse or guilt can actually sap your confidence that you can change your ways. Then resolve never...

"Then there will be part of the mind that says, “I don’t want to think about [the Dhamma right now] because it means I’ve been acting unskillfully in the past, and it just hurts too much to think about that.” That’s where the Buddha recommends developing the right attitude toward your past mistakes. It’s not inevitable that you’re going to have to suffer a lot from your past mistakes. As the Buddha said, if you can develop an attitude of limitless goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, that’ll mitigate the results of your past bad actions. If you can train yourself so that the mind isn’t overcome by pleasure, isn’t overcome by pain — in other words, you don’t let these feelings get in the way of your seeing what’s actually going on — then again, the mind is immune, or at least the results of your past mistakes will be mitigated. So the proper attitude to have toward your past bad actions is, one, realize that remorse is not going to undo them. Simply ...

"Although the Jains, like the Buddhists, teach a doctrine of the moral consequences of actions, the teachings of the two traditions differ in many important details. This discourse points out two of the major points where the Buddhist teaching is distinctive: its understanding of the complexity of the kammic process, and its application of that understanding to the psychology of teaching. The Buddha shows that a simplistic, fatalistic view of the kammic process is logically inconsistent, and also leads to unfortunate results for any person who, with a background of bad kamma, believes in it. The actual complexity of kamma, however, allows for a way in which past evil deeds can be overcome: through refraining from evil now and into the future, and through developing expansive mind-states of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, & equanimity. In such an expansive mind state, the unavoidable consequences of past evil actions count for next to nothing. The Buddha also shows how hi...

"When [the Buddha] introduces the topic of kamma, he doesn’t talk about the bad things you’ve done in the past; he talks about good things. The first topic he mentions in connection with kamma is generosity. Generosity, he says, is something real. It’s a good thing to be generous. He even has you use it as a topic of focused contemplation. When things are going dry in your meditation and everything seems to come to a stop, remind yourself of the ways you’ve been generous in the past. The other topic the Buddha uses to introduce the topic of kamma is gratitude. Think of all the people who have helped you in the past — the ones who volunteered to help without you’re doing something nice to them first. They helped you out of the goodness of their hearts. That sort of action is worth appreciating, worth emulating. You realize how much you benefited when you were fed by them or clothed by them or taught or helped in whatever way they did. And this, combined with the princ...

"Then there will be part of the mind that says, “I don’t want to think about [the Dhamma right now] because it means I’ve been acting unskillfully in the past, and it just hurts too much to think about that.” That’s where the Buddha recommends developing the right attitude toward your past mistakes. It’s not inevitable that you’re going to have to suffer a lot from your past mistakes. As the Buddha said, if you can develop an attitude of limitless goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, that’ll mitigate the results of your past bad actions. If you can train yourself so that the mind isn’t overcome by pleasure, isn’t overcome by pain — in other words, you don’t let these feelings get in the way of your seeing what’s actually going on — then again, the mind is immune, or at least the results of your past mistakes will be mitigated. So the proper attitude to have toward your past bad actions is, one, realize that remorse is not going to undo them. Simply ...

"When [the Buddha] introduces the topic of kamma, he doesn’t talk about the bad things you’ve done in the past; he talks about good things. The first topic he mentions in connection with kamma is generosity. Generosity, he says, is something real. It’s a good thing to be generous. He even has you use it as a topic of focused contemplation. When things are going dry in your meditation and everything seems to come to a stop, remind yourself of the ways you’ve been generous in the past. The other topic the Buddha uses to introduce the topic of kamma is gratitude. Think of all the people who have helped you in the past — the ones who volunteered to help without you’re doing something nice to them first. They helped you out of the goodness of their hearts. That sort of action is worth appreciating, worth emulating. You realize how much you benefited when you were fed by them or clothed by them or taught or helped in whatever way they did. And this, combined with the principle of genero...

"Then there will be part of the mind that says, “I don’t want to think about [the Dhamma right now] because it means I’ve been acting unskillfully in the past, and it just hurts too much to think about that.” That’s where the Buddha recommends developing the right attitude toward your past mistakes. It’s not inevitable that you’re going to have to suffer a lot from your past mistakes. As the Buddha said, if you can develop an attitude of limitless goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, that’ll mitigate the results of your past bad actions. If you can train yourself so that the mind isn’t overcome by pleasure, isn’t overcome by pain — in other words, you don’t let these feelings get in the way of your seeing what’s actually going on — then again, the mind is immune, or at least the results of your past mistakes will be mitigated. So the proper attitude to have toward your past bad actions is, one, realize that remorse is not going to undo them. Simply make the resol...