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"

"When we say that people suffer because of their actions, past and present, it means that there’s no one in the human world who’s really innocent. Even if someone has behaved perfectly in this lifetime, there may be some bad seeds in his or her kamma field from past lifetimes that are now sprouting. Now, this doesn’t mean that that person deserves to suffer. And it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t feel compassion for that person. If your compassion is so picky that it can go only to innocent people, you won’t find anyone to give it to. Accept the fact that the human realm is one where we all have a mixture of past bad kamma and past good kamma. We’re all in this together, so we should all have compassion for one another. And remember that the Buddha never talked about people deserving to suffer. He offered his teachings on how to stop suffering to all beings, no matter what their past kamma was." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Sublime Determinations: a Retreat on the Brahmavihāras...

"When the compilers of the Canon characterized the Buddha’s teaching, they characterized it as a teaching on karma. The Buddha was a “karma-speaker,” they said. And they were right. It’s because this is a teaching on karma that it’s also a teaching on your dignity, your responsibility." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Only One Person"

"If you really want other people to be happy, you don’t just treat them nicely. You also want them to learn how to create the causes for happiness. The best way to do this is to show them through the example of your own behavior. If possible, you can also encourage them to follow your example. At the very least, you don’t thwart their attempts to act skillfully." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sublime Attitudes: A Study Guide on the Brahmavihāras"

"The Buddha never taught a theory of just [justified] war; no decision to wage war can legitimately be traced to his teachings; no war veteran has ever had to agonize over memories of the people he killed because the Buddha said that war was okay. These facts are among the glories of the Buddhist tradition, and it’s important for the human race that they not be muddied in an effort to recast the Buddha in our own less than glorious image." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Getting the Message"

"[The Buddha] didn’t ask that his listeners all commit themselves to an unquestioning belief in the possibility that their actions might lead to rebirth, but he wasn’t interested in teaching anyone who rejected that possibility outright. As we’ve already noted, he saw that heedfulness lay at the root of all skillful qualities. If a listener couldn’t be persuaded to develop an appropriate level of heedfulness around the risks of action, any further teaching would be a waste of time." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Truth of Rebirth and Why It Matters for Buddhist Practice"

"Our experience of the world is defined through our actions, our choices. Take that home and think about it quite a bit. It’s not that the world is imposed on us, willy-nilly. We’re looking for things, making choices, and in making choices, we develop our sense of the world, of what’s here and what’s over there. What comes first? What comes second? That’s how space and time are defined. So we’re defining space and time by our actions. When there’s no action, there’s no experience of space or time. The Buddha’s teachings are that radical." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Action & Result"

"There’s that old question you hear every time people hear the Buddha’s teachings explained, and it’s this: Given the teaching on not-self, how do to explain the teaching on karma? If there’s no self, who does the action? Who receives the results of the action? There are two problems with that question. One is that the Buddha never answered the question of whether there is or isn’t a self. The second problem with the question is that it’s got the context backwards. It should be: Given the teaching on karma, how do you explain the teaching on not-self? The teaching on karma comes first. It’s the context. On the night of the Buddha’s awakening, the second knowledge in the second watch of the night was about karma, about how people’s views shape their actions and how their actions then shape what happens to them, now and into the future. It wasn’t until later that issues of self and not-self came into the picture." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Karma & Not-self"

"You might hear people say that we don’t practice for the sake of the future, that we don’t want to have any goals. But actually, everything you do has to have a goal. If you deny a goal, then you’re putting yourself in denial, and that doesn’t help. The teachings on kamma will tell you, “What you do now is going to have an impact in the present and in the future.” Remember that, too, so you can be clear about what really needs to be done right now. That’s how this becomes an auspicious day." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An Auspicious Day (2015)"

"[The Buddha] doesn’t give a complete theory about how everything happens in the world and can be traced back to particular actions. He teaches karma to the extent that it’s useful in getting the mind to be trained so that it can put an end to suffering. That’s as far as his teaching goes, but that’s pretty far. It’s much better than having a map to everything but still suffering. So use these teachings to take you where you want to go because they can take you farther than you can imagine." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Meditation Karma Checklist"

"When the compilers of the Canon characterized the Buddha’s teaching, they characterized it as a teaching on karma. The Buddha was a “karma-speaker,” they said. And they were right. It’s because this is a teaching on karma that it’s also a teaching on your dignity, your responsibility." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Only One Person"

 "A proper understanding of kamma helps to correct the false idea that if people are suffering they deserve to suffer, so you might as well be equanimous and just leave them alone. When you catch yourself thinking in those terms, try to keep four principles in mind. First, remember that when you look at people, you can’t see all the karmic seeds from their past actions. They may be experiencing the results of past bad actions, but you don’t know when those seeds will stop sprouting. Also, you have no idea what other seeds, what wonderful latent potentials, will sprout in their place. There’s a saying in some Buddhist circles that if you want to see a person’s past actions, you look at his present condition; if you want to see his future condition, you look at his present actions. This principle, however, is based on a basic misperception: that we each have a single karmic account, and what we see in the present is the current running balance in each person’s account. Actually, no ...

"The reasonability of the teaching can be gauged by the central principle in views of integrity as explained above in MN 110. That principle is conviction in kamma, the efficacy of human action: that people are responsible for their actions, that their intentions determine the quality — the skillfulness or unskillfulness — of their actions, that actions give results, and that the quality of the action determines the quality of the result. A person who does not believe in these principles cannot be trusted. Because the distinction between skillfulness and unskillfulness is central to the principle of kamma — and also to the project of putting an end to suffering and stress — MN 135 recommends approaching potential teachers and asking them: “What is skillful? What is unskillful? What is blameworthy? What is blameless? What should be cultivated? What should not be cultivated? What, having been done by me, will be for my long-term harm & suffering? Or what, having been done by me,...

"Kamma and rebirth are often understood to be teachings of fate and helplessness in the face of unknowable influences from the past. For this reason, they’re often rejected. Many people regard them as Buddhism’s cultural baggage: a set of Indian beliefs that — either because the Buddha wasn’t thinking carefully or because his early followers didn’t stay true to his teachings — got mixed up with the Dhamma, his teaching, even though they don’t fit in with the rest of what he taught. So now that the Dhamma has come to the West, many people believe that it’s time to leave all this unnecessary baggage unclaimed on the carousel so that we can focus on his true message in a way that speaks directly to our own cultural needs. However, the real problem with kamma and rebirth is that we tend to misunderstand what these teachings have to say. This is because Buddhism came to the West at the same time as other Indian religions, and its luggage got mixed up with theirs in transi...

"We want to be able to see why the actions we do for the sake of happiness end up leading to stress and how we can change those ways, so that we can actually act in a way that leads to true happiness. We break things down into very simple components so that we can manage them. We realize that this is a problem we can manage. That’s the good news of the Buddha’s teachings: that even though we may be causing ourselves stress and suffering, we can put an end to it. If our suffering really were caused by things outside that were beyond our power, then there’d be no hope. Or if it were caused by things we were doing that we couldn’t change, there’d be no hope, either. But here we’re making choices. We’re probably not making them all that wisely, but we do have some wisdom. We do have some discernment. It’s just a matter of applying it, giving it a foundation here in the present moment, and then really using it to look carefully to see: Where are we creating unnecessary stress and suff...

"Without all the Buddha’s efforts, where would we be? Those six years of austerities and the many years of teaching difficult people, just so that the Dhamma and Vinaya could be established. And here it is, it’s free. We should be overwhelmed with gratitude and practice accordingly." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Buddha's Compassion"

"The first level of right view is conviction in the principle of kamma: that there are good and bad actions that lead to good and bad results, which are determined by the quality of intention behind the action. A lot of us resist the teaching on kamma because we tend to run into it mostly when we find ourselves facing a bad situation, and kamma seems to say, “Well, you’re guilty, or you deserve this bad situation,” which is not what it really teaches at all. But because we think that, we tend to have a negative impression of the teaching. Actually, when the Buddha introduced kamma, he introduced it to show that it affirms two very important values in life: generosity and gratitude...." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Need for Right View"

"In the West, these teachings [on kamma] are often misunderstood and, as a result, disliked. Part of the problem is that people, believing that these teachings to be deterministic, dismiss them as psychologically unhealthy. The complaint is that the teaching on kamma makes people fatalistic about their own suffering, complacent about their pleasure, and callous and indifferent to the sufferings of others. But this complaint is based on a misunderstanding of the Buddha’s actual teachings on kamma. In fact, the Buddha taught kamma in a way that is psychologically very healthy: neither fatalistic, complacent, nor callous." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Buddha Teaches His Son: An Essay on Majjhima Nikāya 61"

"In the Buddha’s teachings, character is an important part of the practice. We tend to miss that as we come into contact with Buddhism here in the West, because we meet it either through an Internet chatroom, or in an academic setting when we’re taking a class in school, or through a meditation retreat center where we’re taught a technique. We may be taught a bit about loving-kindness [mettā], which comes across as a kind of a general niceness. But in none of these contexts is anything much taught about character, the principle that you have to be truthful and harmless in your search for happiness." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Peace Requires Character"

"[An awakened person] feels sympathy for others and seeks their well-being, experiencing a sense of satisfaction when they respond to [his/her] teachings, but otherwise [he/she] stays equanimous, untroubled, mindful, and alert. This passage shows that the even-mindedness of a fully awakened person is an attitude not of cold indifference, but rather of mental imperturbability. Such a person has found true happiness and would like others to share that happiness as well, but that happiness is not dependent on how others respond. This is the ideal state of mind for a person who truly works for the benefit of the world." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Wings to Awakening"