Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"So in a world where people are engaging in wrong actions and wrong speech, there are times when you’re put at a disadvantage. But those disadvantages are only temporary. The fact that you’re holding to the precepts means you have something of solid worth that gives you a good future over the long term." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Values of the Noble Ones"

"[The Buddha] explicitly warns against taking on too many questions, particularly those that lead nowhere and tie us up in knots: “Who am I? Am I basically a good person? An unworthy person?” Instead, he tells us to focus on our intentions so that we can see how they shape our life, and to master the processes of cause and effect so that they can shape our life in increasingly better ways. This is the way every great artist or craftsman develops mastery and skill." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Road to Nirvāṇa Is Paved with Skillful Intentions"

"You wonder what the Buddha would think about teachings that are said in his name nowadays: that you don’t do the practice; that there’s no “you” there to do the practice, it’s just conditions happening. That sort of thinking defeats any sense of your worth as a person, or of the worth of your choices. The Buddha was very clear that what you choose to do right now — what you choose to focus on, what you choose to think about, which intentions you choose to act on — is of prime importance. He started Rahula, his son, on the path of the Dhamma by having him look at his actions to see the extent to which his actions do have an impact, and trying to make that impact harmless. That theme carries all the way through the practice." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "You Are Not Redundant"

"If you have goodwill [mettā] for yourself and goodwill for others, it’s a lot easier to act on skillful motives, to do skillful things. So how do you develop goodwill? You remind yourself of where happiness comes from: It comes from the mind and it gets expressed through your actions. Your actions can have an influence on your happiness and the happiness of others, so you want to be very careful about what you do and don’t do. This is why the precepts are a part of goodwill, an expression of goodwill. And goodwill is a motivation for the precepts. Not only that: The Buddha said that one of the best things you can do for someone else, if you’re really working for their benefit, is to get them to observe the precepts, too. Now, you can’t go around telling people they have to do this. You can tell your children and teach them. But the best way to teach them, of course, is to set an example. So you look at your precepts. Where are they still lacking? This is one way you can be kinde...

"There are things we may want out of other people that they don’t want to give, like respect, acknowledgment of our existence, or acknowledgment of our worth as a person. Then you have to ask yourself, “Is it really worth fighting for? What does the fighting accomplish? Is it going to gain any respect? And even if it does, how much is that respect worth?” There are so many battles in the world that just lead to bad kamma even when you win, sometimes especially when you win. Look at the history of the world when nations that won battles ended up being transformed into the enemy, taking on the enemy’s characteristics. Is this what you want? At the same time, when you win a battle, you gain the animosity of those who lost. This is why the Buddha said that it’s better to focus on the battles inside, battles over your own defilements, greed, aversion, and delusion. Those are the battles that can be won, and when you win, you don’t create any bad kamma. As for whether the people outsid...

"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 tha...

"[The Buddha is] saying that the people to whom you give have worth. It’s not that there’s nothing there or that the people get wiped out at death. They don’t. They move on to wherever their cravings take them. And so when you help somebody, you give something to someone who’s going to be lasting for a long time." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Spread Goodness Around" (Meditations9)

"Even though you may not know that the Dhamma’s true, it makes sense both in pointing out the dangers and in pointing out the ways to avoid the dangers. In pointing out the dangers, the Buddha said we get reborn and it’s based on our actions. As we come to the practice we don’t know this for sure, but it’s a wise premise to take on as your working hypothesis. As the Buddha pointed out many times, if you take on a hypothesis that says everything is beyond your power, you’re cutting off any possibility that you could learn or could develop a skill. So even though you don’t know that there’s rebirth and you don’t know that karma’s going to affect rebirth, it’s wise to take that on as a working hypothesis. You can’t just say, “Well, I don’t know” and leave it at that, because every time you act, you’re making a calculation: “Is the effort that goes into this action going to be worth it in terms of the results I’ll get?” You have to make up your mind: Are you going to calc...

"We know that people who simply follow their whims are psychologically not very happy. The people who can channel their desires in a direction that they find worthwhile: those are the ones who are really happy. And the teaching on kamma encourages that. You focus on the practice. You may not be able to get all the way to nibbana in this lifetime, but your efforts are not wasted. You can pick up in the practice again; you can create the conditions for being able to pick it up again after you die. So there are lots of ways you can learn how to get a better emotional relationship to the teaching on kamma, a relationship that will really sustain you. Ajaan Suwat would comment on how people who follow a life of sensual pleasures, when the time comes when they’re about to leave this life of sensual pleasures, look back and all they can have is regret and fear and grasping, because there’s nothing of any substance there in the memories of past pleasures. And of course, you know what happ...

"Even though you may not know that the Dhamma’s true, it makes sense both in pointing out the dangers and in pointing out the ways to avoid the dangers. In pointing out the dangers, the Buddha said we get reborn and it’s based on our actions. As we come to the practice we don’t know this for sure, but it’s a wise premise to take on as your working hypothesis. As the Buddha pointed out many times, if you take on a hypothesis that says everything is beyond your power, you’re cutting off any possibility that you could learn or could develop a skill. So even though you don’t know that there’s rebirth and you don’t know that karma’s going to affect rebirth, it’s wise to take that on as a working hypothesis. You can’t just say, “Well, I don’t know” and leave it at that, because every time you act, you’re making a calculation: “Is the effort that goes into this action going to be worth it in terms of the results I’ll get?” You have to make up your mind: Are you going to calculate the r...