Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Like the teaching on not-self, or the teaching on all three of the three perceptions [inconstant, stressful, not-self]: There are certain cases where, he says, you don’t apply them. You don’t draw out inferences, like inferring from the fact that all feelings are fabricated that all feelings have to be regarded as stressful, painful. He says that when you’re talking about karma, that’s not the inference you should draw. You should talk about the three types of feelings that result from karma: pleasant, painful, neither pleasant nor painful, because they’re related to skillful, unskillful, and neutral actions. You’re talking about karma to get people to know what kind of actions they should and shouldn’t be doing. If you say that all feelings resulting from action are painful, who’s going to bother trying to be skillful? That’s a case where there’s a wrong inference." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Give of Yourself"

"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)

"It’s easy not to believe that the quality of your intention is going to determine the results of your actions, because you see a lot of people acting out of greed, hatred, and delusion, and yet they seem to be pretty happy, in the short term at least. So it is a matter of belief. And the Buddha’s proof simply is a pragmatic one: If you believe in your actions, you’ll act more skillfully. He adds that if you really want to put an end to suffering through your own efforts, this is what you have to believe. You have to take this as your working hypothesis." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Believe in Your Actions"

"Everything talked about in the Dhamma relates to actions. When people talk about interconnectedness: We’re connected through our actions. We’re not connected through anything else. What kind of connections do we have? It’s not something we are born with, aside from the results of past actions. These connections are created right now as we’re acting. Then act well so that the connections are good, as long as you need connections. But ultimately you find the mind is a lot better off without connections to anything at all." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "It's All about Action"

"So how do you use appropriate attention [yoniso manasikāra] to apply the four noble truths? You look at things in terms of what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing. If the results are leading to stress, okay, you’re doing something unskillful. You might want to look into what you’re doing and see if you can change it. There’s going to be desire on both sides: the desires that lead to suffering and the desires that help get the path together. So you can’t just say, “Well, I give up desires.” You have to figure out: What kind of desire is it? Is it a desire that should be encouraged? Or is it a desire that should be discouraged? To see that, you’ve got to get the mind really quiet." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Appropriate Attention (2015)"

"A good action, an action motivated by a skillful intention, leads to good results. It’s impersonal. Unskillful actions motivated by unskillful motivations lead to pain. Each of us has a lot of actions in the past, so there’s bound to be good mixed with bad. You don’t have to wear off the bad kamma before you can enjoy the good. You simply learn to make the best use of both pleasure and pain when they come along." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Empathetic Joy"

"Learning how to get along with one another also requires skill. You don’t just do what you feel like doing. You have to think about, “When I act, what are the results going to be? How is this going to impact the people around me?” And then try to have the best kind of impact you can think of." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Happiness as a Skill"

"If you act with skillful intentions, the results are going to be good. You’re convinced of that. If you act with unskillful intentions, the results are going to be bad. This is very different from what the world tells us. Success in their eyes can often come from being very devious. But the Buddha says genuine success, genuine well-being, requires that you start with a good heart, that you desire to harm no one. You have goodwill [mettā] for all. You take that good intention and you work on it to make it skillful." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "True Values"

"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"

"Your actions are the only things that will provide happiness. When you look everywhere else around you, you see that the things you could hold onto will slip through your fingers. It’s like trying to hold onto a handful of water. But the results of your actions stick with you. So this reflection focuses your attention on your actions. Your actions are going to make the difference between whether you suffer or not." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Encouragement"

"The real basis for a sense of connectedness comes through kamma. When you interact with another person, a connection is made. Now, it can be a positive or a negative connection, depending on the intention. With generosity you create a positive connection, a helpful connection, a connection where you’re glad that the boundary is down, a connection where good things can flow back and forth. If it’s unskillful kamma, you’re creating a connection, you’re creating an opening that sooner or later you’re going to regret. There’s a saying in the Dhammapada that a hand without a wound can hold poison and not be harmed. In other words, if you don’t have any bad kamma, the results of bad kamma won’t come to you. But if you have a wound on your hand, then if you hold poison it will seep through the wound and kill you. Unskillful kamma is just that, a wound. It’s an opening for poisonous things to come in. The opposite principle also works. If there’s a connection of skillful beh...

"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"

"When the Buddha discourages speculation about karma, he’s discouraging the kind of speculation that says, “Why did this particular event happen right here, right now, to me?” If you try to trace things back, you go crazy. Karma is very complex in its working out, but simple in its basic principle: that if you act on skillful intentions, you get good results; if you act on unskillful intentions, you get bad results. And you can learn how to make your intentions skillful by acting on the best intentions you can think of. When you find the results are not good, you talk it over with those who are more advanced on the path. You reflect on what you did, where it might be wrong, where there was some delusion even in your good intentions. That’s how you learn. This is what the Buddha taught to Rāhula and it applies all the way along the path. That’s the kind of thing you need to know about karma. ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Suffering Starts Before Life"

"As you’re getting the mind still, it’s not just a question of stress reduction or staying calm. You’re trying to understand something. The something you’re trying to understand is what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing. The mind is doing things on a lot of levels. It’s like a big switchboard in there. All kinds of signals are coming in from all the different nerves, and it’s as if there are several different people at the switchboard, deciding which calls to answer and which ones just to leave. Lots of decisions are being made all the time, simply as you sit here. You may think you’re sitting here just being still, but there’s a lot of doing going on in the being still. The reason we try to get the mind still is so that we can see more and more clearly exactly what’s going on in the mind, what ideas are in charge, and then learning to watch to see what the effects are, learning to make the connections." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Watch What You’re Doing"

"It’s so easy to get caught up in the narratives that you spin about, “Well, how about if this happened?” Or, “How about if that happened?” Or, “I wished that had happened. I wish this had happened.” That’s the mind just creating worlds for itself right here and now. Again, the Buddha reminds you, no matter how wonderful the world, it all comes down to this: aging, illness, death, and separation. Then there’s the whole issue of karma: What did you do in order to maintain those things before they left you? That’s what you’ll be left with: the results of your actions, the imprint that they leave on the mind and the worlds they create for you." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Worldly Narratives"

"Figure out what your actions are and what the results are, how they’re connected, and which actions give rise to better results than others. This is why we meditate — to develop those powers. So it’s not a matter of you versus the system outside, where you are trustworthy and the system outside is not. Rather, it’s learning how to sort out inside you which perceptions and which thought constructs are actually more trustworthy than others." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Trust in Heedfulness"

"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"

"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"

"I know some people who say that when you’re working with kamma, you’ve got to realize that your intentions are simply the result of causes and conditions. They don’t have anything to do with you. But that doesn’t give you any motivation to try to make skillful choices. Those people say you have to let go of every sense of “I” because it causes you trouble. Well, it’s actually necessary for certain skillful decisions." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters" (Meditations11)

"Of course this few minutes is part of a longer practice. It’s good to remember that we’re not here just running 100-meter dashes. We’re running a marathon, which means you have to learn how to pace yourself. If you push yourself too hard, you won’t finish. If you don’t push yourself hard enough, you won’t finish. [....] Even if you stumble, remember: This is a marathon, you can pick yourself up and keep going. If it were a 100-yard dash, if you stumbled that would be the end of it, you wouldn’t even try to finish. But in this case. you do pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep on running. Because, as I said, we’re not competing with anyone else, we’re just competing with ourselves. And you want to find just the right amount of pressure, just the right amount of effort to go along with the energy you’ve got. That way you make it all the way to the finish line. Now, whether it’s now or tomorrow or the next day: That’s not the issue. Just keep on plugging away, plugging away,...