Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"The Buddha once said that wisdom starts with the question: “What when I do it will lead to my long-term harm and suffering? And what when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” That’s getting you to think in terms of the four noble truths right there, noticing that what you do is going to be a cause and can lead either to harm and suffering, or to welfare and happiness. That’s the framework of the four noble truths. And the focus again is on what you’re doing and the results you’re getting. When the Buddha first taught his son, that was the first teaching he gave him: Look at your actions and see what results you’re actually getting. If you see you’re getting bad results, don’t repeat that action again. If you see you’ve got good results, take pride in the fact that you’re progressing in the training. “Progress” here means that you’re becoming more and more sensitive to the results you’re getting, and to the connection between those results and causes that act...

"As the Buddha said, discernment begins when you ask the question of someone who seems reliable: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” Now you can interpret that on an external level, but you can also interpret it on an internal level. The external level is the practice of merit. Generosity leads to long-term welfare and happiness. Virtue leads to long-term welfare and happiness. Developing attitudes of universal goodwill [mettā] in the mind leads to long-term welfare and happiness. Those are attitudes and actions you want to develop because they help you see more clearly how your actions have an impact on your life. As you act in more skillful ways, life becomes a lot lighter. You feel a lot better about yourself. There are a lot of people out there who, when they’re feeling bad about themselves, go see a therapist. And what the therapist should tell them is, “Go out and do something good. Go out and help somebody. Try to be more principled in y...

"If a teaching is going to protect you, the first level of protection has to be on the theoretical level: You have to understand that your present actions are free, to at least some extent, to shape the present moment — for good or bad — and to have an impact on the future. This understanding of kamma would then provide you with motivation for looking carefully at what should and shouldn’t be done right now to avoid causing suffering. And this is precisely the understanding of kamma that the Buddha taught: As he pointed out in AN 3:101 , past actions do have their impact on the present moment, but your experience of that impact is filtered through your present-moment state mind. This is one of the reasons why Buddhist meditation focuses on being alert to what the mind is doing right now. If you’re sensitive to your present actions, you can shape them well enough to mitigate the influences from any past bad kamma and, through your present skillful kamma, to provide conditions for p...

"The Buddha once said that concentration, when nurtured by virtue, has great fruit, great reward. Now, he wasn’t saying that you can’t do concentration without virtue. There are many examples around of people who have very strong powers of concentration but very little virtue at all. What he was saying is that if you want your concentration to yield great fruit — in terms of bringing about the discernment that leads to release — it has to be done in the context of life where you’re trying to be virtuous in your actions, taking your actions and your words seriously, and also taking seriously their impact both on yourself and on others. This sensitivity to your actions and their results is what helps to bring your concentration to the state where it can lead to great fruit. If you go through life not really being careful about what you do, or not being sensitive to the impact of your actions, it’s going to be very hard for you to be very careful about your meditation, and to be sens...

"So keep your meditation a private affair. After all, the suffering you’re causing yourself is a private affair, something nobody else can see. Even when we live together day in and day out, each of us is making a lot of decisions that nobody else here will know. We may see some of the outside effects, but the actual experience of suffering — your suffering, your pain: You’re the only person who can feel it. And you’re the only person who can know which little decisions you make from moment to moment to moment. That’s what you want to learn how to observe. So try to develop your inner sensitivity as much as you can, so that you can make sure your decisions are going in the right direction. The intentional element here is to try to minimize suffering as much as possible." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Private Matter" (Meditations4)

"You learn how to be a connoisseur of your actions, and particularly a connoisseur of actions and events in the mind. A connoisseur of food has to develop a very refined palate; a connoisseur of music, a very refined ear. What you’re trying to do is to develop a refined sensitivity to what’s going on in the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The End of Uncertainty" (Meditations3)

Question 9. When people talk about kamma, why do they tend to focus on the punishments and hardships coming from past kamma? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Because they ignore the positive role that present kamma can play in shaping your life. They think that past kamma is deterministic, leaving you helpless in the face of misfortune in the present moment — which is not how the Buddha taught kamma at all. In fact, when he introduced the topic of kamma to his listeners, he focused on how it empowers you in the present moment, at the same time allowing for qualities we all know to be good — like generosity and gratitude — to actually make sense [AN 10:165]. Here’s why: • In terms of empowerment, the Buddha’s teachings on kamma and causality explain why we can develop skills that lead to the end of suffering. On the one hand, because certain actions tend to lead to certain results, we can learn from past actions the general pattern as to what would and wouldn’t work in leading to more happiness. ...

"If other people were ultimately responsible for shaping your experience, what could you do? You’d have to go around pleasing them all the time. But the key fact is that you’re shaping your pleasures and pains here in the present moment. Some of your experience comes from past actions, but a lot comes from the way you shape things with each present intention. So learn to be open and honest about the role you’re playing in this moment. That way the meditation leads to greater and greater sensitivity into precisely this — what you’re doing right now — and into the fact that if you were really observant you’d be a lot more sensitive in shaping your experience. There’d be a lot less suffering." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Get Real" (Meditations3)

"Without present kamma, you wouldn’t experience the results of past kamma at all. The importance of your present kamma is the reason why we meditate. When we meditate, we’re getting more sensitive to what we’re doing in the present moment, we’re creating good kamma in the present moment, and we’re learning how to be more skillful in creating good kamma all the time, from now into the future." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"So get your ‘self’ out of the picture. This is the actual opposite of a narcissistic practice, trying to make yourself a wonderful person or whatever attitude you might have. Even when we’re really negative on ourselves, that’s an aspect of narcissism, too. When we’re really taken up with what kind of person we want to be: That’s narcissism again. Get your idea of who-you-are out of the picture. Just say, “Just look at this action; look at this situation. Is this the action appropriate for the situation?” If it’s not, find something else to do. Approach it in a different way. Because what-you-are is not something that you are, it’s an action. It’s a strategy. And you want to be the sort of person who habitually tries to master the most skillful strategy in any given situation. So when you look back on the practice, if you need some encouragement when you start getting discouraged about how things are going, remind yourself, “Well, at least I have this good habit, which is trying...

"If a teaching is going to protect you, the first level of protection has to be on the theoretical level: You have to understand that your present actions are free, to at least some extent, to shape the present moment — for good or bad — and to have an impact on the future. This understanding of kamma would then provide you with motivation for looking carefully at what should and shouldn’t be done right now to avoid causing suffering. And this is precisely the understanding of kamma that the Buddha taught: As he pointed out in AN 3:101 , past actions do have their impact on the present moment, but your experience of that impact is filtered through your present-moment state mind. This is one of the reasons why Buddhist meditation focuses on being alert to what the mind is doing right now. If you’re sensitive to your present actions, you can shape them well enough to mitigate the influences from any past bad kamma and, through your present skillful kamma, to provide con...

"So keep your meditation a private affair. After all, the suffering you’re causing yourself is a private affair, something nobody else can see. Even when we live together day in and day out, each of us is making a lot of decisions that nobody else here will know. We may see some of the outside effects, but the actual experience of suffering — your suffering, your pain: You’re the only person who can feel it. And you’re the only person who can know which little decisions you make from moment to moment to moment. That’s what you want to learn how to observe. So try to develop your inner sensitivity as much as you can, so that you can make sure your decisions are going in the right direction. The intentional element here is to try to minimize suffering as much as possible." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Private Matter" (Meditations4)

"Without present kamma, you wouldn’t experience the results of past kamma at all. The importance of your present kamma is the reason why we meditate. When we meditate, we’re getting more sensitive to what we’re doing in the present moment, we’re creating good kamma in the present moment, and we’re learning how to be more skillful in creating good kamma all the time, from now into the future." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"As you get more and more sensitive to what you’re doing, you begin to see that your actions in the present moment have a lot of power: They can create a sense of full well-being right here, right now. In fact, in the Buddha’s analysis, even though we may have the results of some bad actions coming in from the past that are going to influence the present moment, the question of whether or not we’re actually going to suffer from those results depends on our present actions. Which is good news. Otherwise, we’d just be stuck with whatever comes up from the past and we’d have no way out. But the fact is that our experience of the present moment is a combination of the results of past actions, our present actions, and the results of our present actions. The present actions are the ones that can make us suffer, or not, so those are the ones we want to focus on." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Mature Happiness"

"We don’t often think of the teachings on karma as having much relevance to the meditation. Sometimes we’re even taught that karma was one of those weird pieces of cultural baggage that somehow got smuggled into Buddhism from its cultural background. But that’s not the case at all. The Buddha had some very specific teachings on karma that had nothing to do with what anybody else was teaching at the time, and they’re immediately relevant to why and how we’re meditating. The “why” has to do with the point I just raised. Given that karma is intention, and intention is the huge shaping force in your life, you want some control over it. If you make up your mind to do something that you know is good, you want to be able to stick with that intention. And where does intention happen? Right in the present moment. Where does it get changed? In the present moment. This is why we focus on the present moment, so that we can see the process of intention in action as it happens and...

"Two principles in [the Buddha's] teaching on kamma were especially distinctive. The first is that kamma is intention [AN 6:63]. In other words, action is not simply a matter of the motion of the body. It’s a matter of the mind — and the intention that drives the kamma makes the difference between good actions and bad. The second distinctive principle is that kamma coming from the past has to be shaped by kamma in the present before you can experience it. You actually experience your present kamma before you engage with the results of past kamma. Without present kamma, you wouldn’t experience the results of past kamma at all. The importance of your present kamma is the reason why we meditate. When we meditate, we’re getting more sensitive to what we’re doing in the present moment, we’re creating good kamma in the present moment, and we’re learning how to be more skillful in creating good kamma all the time, from now into the future. Now, in learning to shape our ...

"If a teaching is going to protect you, the first level of protection has to be on the theoretical level: You have to understand that your present actions are free, to at least some extent, to shape the present moment — for good or bad — and to have an impact on the future. This understanding of kamma would then provide you with motivation for looking carefully at what should and shouldn’t be done right now to avoid causing suffering. And this is precisely the understanding of kamma that the Buddha taught: As he pointed out in AN 3:101 , past actions do have their impact on the present moment, but your experience of that impact is filtered through your present-moment state mind. This is one of the reasons why Buddhist meditation focuses on being alert to what the mind is doing right now. If you’re sensitive to your present actions, you can shape them well enough to mitigate the influences from any past bad kamma and, through your present skillful kamma, to provide conditions for p...

"So keep your meditation a private affair. After all, the suffering you’re causing yourself is a private affair, something nobody else can see. Even when we live together day in and day out, each of us is making a lot of decisions that nobody else here will know. We may see some of the outside effects, but the actual experience of suffering — your suffering, your pain: You’re the only person who can feel it. And you’re the only person who can know which little decisions you make from moment to moment to moment. That’s what you want to learn how to observe. So try to develop your inner sensitivity as much as you can, so that you can make sure your decisions are going in the right direction. The intentional element here is to try to minimize suffering as much as possible." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Private Matter" (Meditations4)

"Every time we chant the five themes for daily recollection, I’m struck by the contrast between that chant and the one that follows it: “May I be happy.” The themes for recollection are not happy things. We’re subject to aging, subject to illness, subject to death, subject to separation. And even the principle of karma, which is what the Buddha offers as hope in our practice, still sounds pretty onerous. You slip up and you’re going to suffer. And then we chant, “May I be happy.” That contrast right there says a lot about life. We live in a world where there’s a lot of suffering. In addition to the basic suffering that comes from having a body, there are also all the horrible things that people do to one another: killing, stealing, cheating, abusing in one way or another. Yet in the midst of all this, we want happiness. It’s this desire for happiness that underlies the whole practice, coupled with an understanding of karma: Without that understanding, the desire for ...

"As you get more and more sensitive to what you’re doing, you begin to see that your actions in the present moment have a lot of power: They can create a sense of full well-being right here, right now. In fact, in the Buddha’s analysis, even though we may have the results of some bad actions coming in from the past that are going to influence the present moment, the question of whether or not we’re actually going to suffer from those results depends on our present actions. Which is good news. Otherwise, we’d just be stuck with whatever comes up from the past and we’d have no way out. But the fact is that our experience of the present moment is a combination of the results of past actions, our present actions, and the results of our present actions. The present actions are the ones that can make us suffer, or not, so those are the ones we want to focus on." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Mature Happiness"