Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"There’s a phrase you often hear in Buddhist circles, that you have to accept that things are the way they should be. There’s one way in which that’s right, but a lot of ways in which it’s wrong. It’s right in the sense that, given the past and present conditions, you can’t complain because this is the raw material you have to work with. But you don’t just let it sit there and say, “Well, that’s just the way it’s got to be.” That’s what you’re presented with, but you can learn skills to deal with what’s coming up in the present moment and to handle it well, to do something good with it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Things Aren’t as They Should Be" (Meditations13)

"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...

"In dependent co-arising [paṭiccasamuppāda]: As we will see, present kamma consists of fabrication [saṅkhāra] and the sub-factors [perception, feeling, intention, contact, attention] coming under the factor of “name” in name and form [nāmarūpa] . Past kamma is the experience of the six senses [SN35:145], which comes after the factors of fabrication and name [SN12:2]. What this means in terms of our direct experience is that by the time we’re aware of sensory input, we’re already primed to experience it in a certain way. This fact can cause us a lot of trouble, but it also opens the way to free us from suffering. If suffering depends on the way we prime our minds, then if we prime them in a skillful way, we don’t have to suffer even when the input from the senses — past kamma — is bad." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"Oftentimes we see ourselves as the passive recipients of experiences: things come in the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body; thoughts come into the mind. And we tend to miss how much we’re doing right now to turn those experiences into suffering. The early Buddhists said that this point was the one where the Buddha’s teaching differed most radically from everything else that was available at the time: pointing to what you’re doing right now and the effects that it has right now. And also to the possibility for change. You don’t have to create that suffering for yourself. But first you have to see yourself doing it. Otherwise, it simply seems to be a part of what you’re receiving. Actually, a lot of what we experience in the present moment is what we’re doing right now. And yet we see it as something happening to us. As a result, we don’t see the opportunity for change. So when you look at experience, try to see that element of what you’re doing. Of course, to see yourself doing it, y...

"Restraint of the senses: being really careful about how you engage with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas — realizing, again, that your mind is what goes out and looks for trouble. If the mind were not actively involved in wanting  to see and hear and engage with other senses, it wouldn’t receive any input. There’s an act of the mind that goes out to these things — flows out to these things, as they would say in Thai — and you want to watch for that. Who’s flowing out? Your greed and your anger? Or your discernment? You want your discernment to be the strongest flow, so that when you look at things, you can take them apart and see where they might draw you into lust or anger or greed or fear. Then remind yourself: You don’t have to be drawn in that way.  Again, have a sense of your own power. Don’t let yourself be overpowered by influences from outside. Sensory input is not a given. Remember that it’s a construct. There’s the kamma of how you watch...

"So you’ve got to reflect on your actions. You’ve got to reflect on your thoughts, words, and deeds, on how they have an impact on you and how they have an impact on others. Keep your attention focused there more than outside. Our media nowadays tend to focus on everything outside. We almost live in the screens of our hand-held devices or our computers or whatever. And the important people seem to be the ones who are in the screens. But they’re not. The important person is the person holding the screen. What is this person doing? What is this person saying? What is this person thinking? That’s something you can actually have an impact on. And the impact is not felt only by you; it’s felt by all the people around you. So you have to be very, very careful. This is what the principle of heedfulness is all about. Your actions do have consequences. So instead of having the energy run out your eyes and ears or whatever, try to keep the energy focused inside so that you can ...

"So it’s not the case that you can say, “Well, I’m just going to not have any fabrications at all, just be with direct experience.” Direct experience is something that’s already fabricated. Anything that has to do with the six senses is all fabricated. The question is: Is it skillful or not? This is where we focus on the practice of the path: That’s skillful fabrication. You want to engage in that as much as you can, develop that as much as you can. Abandon anything that gets in the way of the path." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Path of Aggregates"

"I was just listening yesterday to a French Dhamma teacher saying that mindfulness is all about just being totally present to everything that’s coming into your senses all at once. Well, what’s coming into your senses all at once is not causing you to suffer. What’s causing you to suffer is your own actions, which is why the Buddha says to focus there — on what you’re doing. Be alert to what you’re doing." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Mirror Inside"

"Many people in the modern world come to Buddhism suffering from their conceptual framework. They’re raised in a materialist worldview whose basic concepts — that life comes from nothing and returns to nothing, with a brief chance to pursue pleasure in the interim — are pretty dismal. They believe that if they could free their minds from these concepts and simply dwell in the present with no thought of what happens at the end, they’d be happy. They’d be able to squeeze as much pleasure out of the present as they could before the inevitable hits. So they look for a way to be free of all concepts. When they come here, though, they run into concepts. They see the Buddha’s teachings on kamma and rebirth, and they say, “This is invalid; you can’t make presuppositions about these things. Nobody knows anything about what happens before we’re born. Nobody knows anything about what happens after we die. Doesn’t the Buddha say that you have to prove things before you can accep...

"One of the distinctive teachings of the Forest tradition is its emphasis on how proactive the mind is in its engagement with the senses and with the world. We’re not just on the receiving end of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations coming in. We don’t simply respond to the stimulus of other people’s actions. We’re proactive. We go out looking for things. This is in line with the Buddha’s teachings on intention. Our experience of the present moment is made up of the results of past actions, but also our current intentions and the results of our current intentions. When you look at the way the Buddha lines things up in dependent co-arising, our intentions actually come before our engagement with the senses. We intend to engage the senses, and that’s how we meet up with the sensory material that’s coming in. What this means is that our intentions don’t have to be shaped by what’s coming in. They don’t have to be pushed around by what’s coming in. We can be more skillf...

"Our problem is that we tend to be conspiracy theorists. We want to know: What’s happening behind the scenes? Who’s operating the lasers that shot lightning over northern California last year? We have a sense of “our self” and we have a sense of the world in which “our self” operates, but those ideas are behind-the-scenes ideas. The Buddha tries to reduce them to what’s on the surface. The world, he says, is simply events of the six sense spheres, and the feelings that arise from contact, all of which are happening right here. The same with your sense of self: It’s just the aggregates. What are they? They’re events. They’re actions that are happening right here on this level. The more you try to elaborate a theory that gets behind, behind, behind the scenes, the further you’re getting away from what the Buddha wants you to look at: What are the patterns right on the surface?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "On the Surface of Things"

Saṁyutta Nikāya 35:145 Kamma Sutta: Action, translated from the Pāli by Thānissaro Bhikkhu “Monks, I will teach you new & old kamma, the cessation of kamma, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of kamma. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak. “Now what, monks, is old kamma? The eye is to be seen as old kamma, fabricated & willed, capable of being felt. The ear… The nose…The tongue… The body… The intellect is to be seen as old kamma, fabricated & willed, capable of being felt. This is called old kamma. “And what is new kamma? Whatever kamma one does now with the body, with speech, or with the intellect: This is called new kamma. “And what is the cessation of kamma? Whoever touches the release that comes from the cessation of bodily kamma, verbal kamma, & mental kamma: This is called the cessation of kamma. “And what is the path of practice leading to the cessation of kamma? Just this noble eightfold path: right view, right resolve, right speech, ri...

"In dependent co-arising [paṭiccasamuppāda]: As we will see, present kamma consists of fabrication [saṅkhāra] and the sub-factors [perception, feeling, intention, contact, attention] coming under the factor of “name” in name and form [nāmarūpa] . Past kamma is the experience of the six senses [SN35:145], which comes after the factors of fabrication and name [SN12:2]. What this means in terms of our direct experience is that by the time we’re aware of sensory input, we’re already primed to experience it in a certain way. This fact can cause us a lot of trouble, but it also opens the way to free us from suffering. If suffering depends on the way we prime our minds, then if we prime them in a skillful way, we don’t have to suffer even when the input from the senses — past kamma — is bad." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"The outside world is not a set factor. A lot of your experience of the outside world depends on how you interact with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. That’s the world you experience. And so much of it comes from your intentions in the present moment. So if you can work on the mind to get its intentions right and skillful, as much as possible, then you find that you have a better world to live in, a better space to meditate in. So remember this: You’re not a passive victim of outside circumstances. You’re part of the shaper of those outside circumstances. When you realize your responsibility for the world you experience, then you can do something about it. When you see what’s under your control, what’s not under your control, and are very clear about that distinction, it clears up a lot of issues in life — and a lot of issues in your meditation. You may not have full control over the outside results of your actions, but you do have control over your intentions ...

"That’s some of the mystery of the present moment: Not everything in the present moment is determined by the past; you have to have some input from the mind right now. You look into dependent co-arising: The intentions of the present moment come prior to sensory contact. Now, sensory contact, as the Buddha said, is old kamma coming at you. This means that you actually experience your present kamma before you experience your past kamma. But we pay so little attention to it — because we’re more interested in the things coming in through the senses — that we don’t really realize what we’re contributing. So, try to gain a sense of what you’re bringing. You have some preconceived notions, you have some perceptions, you have some intentions. Air them out. Open them up." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Power of Present Karma"

"One of [the Buddha's] big discoveries is the extent to which we fabricate our experience from within, through our intentions. In other words, we’re not just on the receiving end of the material world. We actually shape the world we live in. The whole point of the path is to learn how to take advantage of that fact — so that, on the one hand, we can shape it well — and then shape it really well so that we can get beyond these worlds that we ordinarily shape and arrive at something that’s really reliable, something really solid. Yet it is an inside job. You can get advice from outside, but the actual work is something you have to do. This is very different from the materialist’s idea, which is that the material world is real and what you experience, your consciousness of things, is what they call an epiphenomenon. In other words, it’s just a side effect of the real things, which are atoms doing their thing. And the Buddha’s perspective is also very different from the post-moder...

"So we’re not here to be as passive as possible, to say that we’re seeing things just as they are. Look at the way the Buddha approached awakening. He didn’t just sit there passively. He tried different approaches. He focused his mind in different places. He took different things as the themes of his meditation. Then he evaluated the results. How did it work? What was he able to do? And what was not up to his expectations? Then the question always was, “What am I doing wrong?” He would turn around and check out other possibilities. He experimented, which meant that he had to act and then look at the results of his actions, pass judgment on them, and then decide what to do next based on that judgment. It was through this process of committing himself to doing what he thought was the wisest and most skillful thing to do and then reflecting on the results that he was able to come up with some good standards for judgment. And that’s what the four noble truths are, standards for judgm...

"So you’ve got to reflect on your actions. You’ve got to reflect on your thoughts, words, and deeds, on how they have an impact on you and how they have an impact on others. Keep your attention focused there more than outside. Our media nowadays tend to focus on everything outside. We almost live in the screens of our hand-held devices or our computers or whatever. And the important people seem to be the ones who are in the screens. But they’re not. The important person is the person holding the screen. What is this person doing? What is this person saying? What is this person thinking? That’s something you can actually have an impact on. And the impact is not felt only by you; it’s felt by all the people around you. So you have to be very, very careful. This is what the principle of heedfulness is all about. Your actions do have consequences. So instead of having the energy run out your eyes and ears or whatever, try to keep the energy focused inside so that you can ...

"The Buddha recommends viewing the world as nothing more than the six senses — the five physical senses plus the mind — and the activities based on them. Then he has you see the six senses and their objects as old kamma, and everything you do based on them as new kamma ( SN 35:145 ). This is where the focus shifts to habits and practices. To develop dispassion for both types of kamma, he recommends observing the world so-defined as simply originating and passing away. When you focus on these things originating from moment to moment, the concept of “non-existence” with regard to the world doesn’t occur to you. When you focus on their passing away, the concept of “existence” with regard to the world doesn’t occur to you. This means that there’s nothing left to cling to in terms of the world ( SN 12:15 )." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Clinging & the End of Clinging"

"So you’ve got to reflect on your actions. You’ve got to reflect on your thoughts, words, and deeds, on how they have an impact on you and how they have an impact on others. Keep your attention focused there more than outside. Our media nowadays tend to focus on everything outside. We almost live in the screens of our hand-held devices or our computers or whatever. And the important people seem to be the ones who are in the screens. But they’re not. The important person is the person holding the screen. What is this person doing? What is this person saying? What is this person thinking? That’s something you can actually have an impact on. And the impact is not felt only by you; it’s felt by all the people around you. So you have to be very, very careful. This is what the principle of heedfulness is all about. Your actions do have consequences. So instead of having the energy run out your eyes and ears or whatever, try to keep the energy focused inside so that you can ...