Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"As the Buddha said, you would have a hard time meeting up with someone who hadn’t been your mother in some previous lifetime, or your father, or your sister, or your brother, or your son, or your daughter. You’ve had so many different relationships, and they’ve scattered out. You can come across a complete stranger and tell yourself, “Hey. This person was my mother sometime, but now you look how strange we are to one another.” You begin to decide that maybe these relationships are meaningless, aside from what good we can develop, and what good we can help one another develop. But even then, we have to part ways. When we part ways, there’s a lot of sorrow. The tears you’ve shed over the loss of a mother, the Buddha said, are more than the water in the oceans. The tears you’ve shed over the loss of a father are more than the water of the oceans, and so on down with all those different relationships. Yet we keep coming back for more. The mind is looking for happiness, but it’s look...

"Most of the issues that seem so big when you take the view of just one lifetime become very small when you think about eons and eons of lifetimes. Think about the Buddha as he finally got to the town of Kusinara, where he was going to pass away for his last time and go into total nibbana. Ven. Ananda was upset because it was just a little tiny town — he called it a little daub and wattle town, which means basically that the houses were made of nothing but bamboo and mud. It’d be better for the Buddha to go to a great city for his unbinding. There the people would give him a proper send-off. The Buddha said, “No. This little town here used to be a great city as well.” Then he went into a long description of how great it was. In fact, there’s another sutta that goes into an even longer description of how great it was. He happened to be king that time. And in the story, there comes a point where he’s about to die. His wife, the queen, comes to him with tears on her fac...

"It’s good to think every day about the huge length of time that we’ve been around. That helps put things into perspective. As the Buddha said, the amount of tears you’ve shed is greater than the water in the oceans. The amount of blood you’ve shed, having had your head cut off — for having been a thief, for having been a highway robber, for having been an adulterer — in each case, is more than the water in the oceans. It’s good to think about that vast stretch of time, to give rise to a sense of samvega as motivation to want to get out. Because as the Buddha saw, we can go to many different kinds of rebirth, up and down, and there’s no place where you can stay and say, “Okay, that’s it.” You rise and then you fall. You fall and then you rise. Ajaan Maha Boowa once made a comment that people who like to plan their next life really don’t believe in rebirth. They say, “Okay, I’ll make merit here, and that’ll take care of everything next time around.” I saw this in Thai...

"Most of the issues that seem so big when you take the view of just one lifetime become very small when you think about eons and eons of lifetimes. Think about the Buddha as he finally got to the town of Kusinara, where he was going to pass away for his last time and go into total nibbana. Ven. Ananda was upset because it was just a little tiny town — he called it a little daub and wattle town, which means basically that the houses were made of nothing but bamboo and mud. It’d be better for the Buddha to go to a great city for his unbinding. There the people would give him a proper send-off. The Buddha said, “No. This little town here used to be a great city as well.” Then he went into a long description of how great it was. In fact, there’s another sutta that goes into an even longer description of how great it was. He happened to be king that time. And in the story, there comes a point where he’s about to die. His wife, the queen, comes to him with tears on her face. She says, ...

"It’s good to think every day about the huge length of time that we’ve been around. That helps put things into perspective. As the Buddha said, the amount of tears you’ve shed is greater than the water in the oceans. The amount of blood you’ve shed, having had your head cut off — for having been a thief, for having been a highway robber, for having been an adulterer — in each case, is more than the water in the oceans. It’s good to think about that vast stretch of time, to give rise to a sense of samvega as motivation to want to get out. Because as the Buddha saw, we can go to many different kinds of rebirth, up and down, and there’s no place where you can stay and say, “Okay, that’s it.” You rise and then you fall. You fall and then you rise. Ajaan Maha Boowa once made a comment that people who like to plan their next life really don’t believe in rebirth. They say, “Okay, I’ll make merit here, and that’ll take care of everything next time around.” I saw this in Thailand. Ther...