Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"For most of us, a lot of the interest in the stories coming up in our lives is about the injustices, the feeling that something hasn’t been settled, something hasn’t been brought to closure. But when you realize it’s part of a long, long, long mudslinging battle through the many lifetimes, it gets less and less and less interesting. Less and less worthy of anger. Some people say, “That means you’re saying that the victim is responsible for his or her suffering.” Well, what’s wrong with that? What’s really wrong with that is what people tend to make out of it, which is the belief that if someone did something bad in a previous lifetime, then they deserve to get what they’re getting now, so you don’t have any compassion for them. That’s the wrong response. As I said, everybody here in the human realm has some bad karma. If you reserve your compassion only for good people, who are you going to have compassion for? Only people who have no bad actions in their past? There would be nob...

"Modern sociologists have identified five basic strategies that people use to avoid accepting blame when they’ve caused harm, and it’s noteworthy that the early Buddhist teaching on moral responsibility serves to undercut all five. The strategies are: to deny responsibility, to deny that harm was actually done, to deny the worth of the victim, to attack the accuser, and to claim that they were acting in the service of a higher cause. The Pali responses to these strategies are: (1) We are always responsible for our conscious choices. (2) We should always put ourselves in the other person’s place. (3) All beings are worthy of respect. (4) We should regard those who point out our faults as if they were pointing out treasure. (Monks, in fact, are required not to show disrespect to people who criticize them, even if they don’t plan to abide by the criticism.) (5) There are no — repeat, no — higher purposes that excuse breaking the basic precepts of ethical behavior." ~ Thanissaro ...

"We talked about different ways you deal with the causes of suffering. Some causes of suffering go away when you just look at them; others require that you engage in what the Buddha calls, “exerting a fabrication” [MN 101]. And when the Buddha’s talking about fabrication in this context, he’s talking about these three kinds of fabrication. For example, suppose that you’re feeling a strong sense of anger and you want to get over it. The first thing you do is to look at your breath. Usually when you’re angry, your breath is disturbed, which aggravates the anger. So, remember what you’ve learned to do with the breath in meditation: calm the breath down, breathe through any tightness you may feel in your chest or your abdomen, and in this way you begin to reclaim your body from the anger, which has hijacked it. You make the breath your own again. That’s bodily fabrication. When the body feels calmer, it’s easier to think clearly about the situation. This is where you apply directed th...

"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 ...

"You have to have confidence in the principle of action — that it can have an impact on your suffering. You’re not just a victim. You can come out victorious. After all, that’s what the images of the path often say: unexcelled victory. Victory over what? Over our ignorance, over our craving, over all our foolish tendencies. Our ways of looking for happiness that don’t really work out but we keep doing them again and again and again." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Reflecting on Karma"

"When the Buddha tells you to look inside for the causes of your suffering, it’s not a case of blaming the victim. He’s trying to remind you of what does lie in your power to change. There may be a lot of things outside that contribute to you suffering, but you can’t change them. Or you could change them if you spent a lot of time. But there’s no certainty as to how permanent that change would be. So as meditators, we’re not here trying to settle old scores or to create justice in the world. We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing that’s contributing to our own suffering. After all, we go to all the effort of thinking and acting and speaking with the purpose of causing happiness, and yet the results don’t always come out that way. In fact, most of the time they come out the other way. We end up causing suffering for ourselves. That’s the big paradox in life. Fortunately, the way we act and speak and think depending on our intentions is something we can change. We...

"As a meditator, you have to be constantly self-reflective — and that’s what appropriate attention [yoniso-manasikāra] is. It keeps focusing you back on your actions and the results you’re getting from them. This is what the four noble truths are all about. You’re suffering? You can’t blame it on the weather. You can’t blame it on the economy. You can’t blame it on the political structure. Those things may be miserable, but you don’t have to be miserable because of them. It’s what you’re doing right now. Now, this is not blaming the victim. It’s giving you the power to change the fact that you may be suffering right now and reminds you that you don’t have to be anybody’s victim, that the important element — i.e., the extent to which you’re suffering over things: That’s under your control. Or you can bring it under your control. This is why this self-reflective ability is so important. It’s what makes or breaks a meditator." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Gift of Discernment...

"Our sense of self does have two roles. On the one hand, it’s the experiencer. You’re the one who’s experiencing the pain, experiencing the results of your own actions, the results of other people’s actions. But you’re also the agent. You’re shaping your experience. So when you find yourself in a bad mood, it’s not against the principle of acceptance to try to work your way out of it. After all, what are you accepting? Are you simply accepting the fact that you’re a passive victim of things? The Buddha never asks you to accept that. He just wants you to accept the fact that you have a role in shaping your experience. That’s the essential element in his teaching on conditionality. There are some influences that come in from the past, but there are other things that you have the choice to shape in the present moment. As for what’s happened in the past, you can’t change that. And the effects that you’re feeling from things that happened in the past, you can’t change that. But you do ...

"There was one time when the Buddha was wounded by a stone sliver. That rock that Devadatta hurled down a mountain didn’t hit the Buddha but it did smash into slivers, and one of the slivers went right through the Buddha’s foot. So he had to lie down and rest. Mara came to taunt him saying, “Are you lying there moping?” And the Buddha said, “No, I’m not moping. I’m spreading thoughts of goodwill [mettā] to all beings.” When you can think that way, you get yourself out of your personal narratives about: “Why did they do this? Why did they do that? And why am I hurt? Why am I suffering? Why am I in pain, when other people are walking around okay?” The Buddha didn’t have any thoughts like that at all. It was simply, “Goodwill for all beings.” That helps to lighten a lot of the loads on the mind. So whether you’re feeling good or not, try to extend goodwill to all. That way, you feel like less of a victim. You’re more in charge of your situation. And that’s what the practice is all ...

 "One expression of goodwill [mettā] that’s always an appropriate gift is the gift of forgiveness. In one of the standard phrases for goodwill — “May all beings be free from animosity” — the Pali word for animosity, vera, is the opposite of forgiveness. It’s the vengeful animosity that wants to get back at someone for perceived wrongs. So when we wish that others be free from vera, we’re saying two things: “May all beings receive forgiveness for their wrong actions,” and “May all beings forgive others who have wronged them.” When you forgive others, you’re not saying that you’re going to love them — or that you’re even going to forget the wrong that they did. You’re simply saying that you won’t try to get back at them. When you forgive someone who’s wronged you, it doesn’t erase that person’s kamma in having done wrong. This is why some people think that forgiveness has no place in the karmic universe of the Buddha’s teachings. But that’s not so. Forgiveness may not be able t...

"In the five reflections, the reflection on karma is the one that gives hope. You realize that you’re in charge of your actions. You’re not simply a victim of fate or of the stars or of some other being acting through you. You’re the one who’s making the choices. That’s what gives you hope. But it’s hope coupled with heedfulness. You’ve got the power to do good with your actions, but also the power to cause harm. The principle of karma is a double-edged sword. If you’re not careful, you can use it to cut your own throat. This is why the Buddha recommends reflecting on the principle of karma as a way of inspiring heedfulness." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sublime Attitudes" (Meditations2)

"If we’ve been the victims of injustice, we don’t like to think that we’ve somehow been complicit in it. But that’s what the four noble truths are pointing us to: the suffering we create for ourselves. That’s the issue. The suffering coming from outside was not the main issue. It is an issue, but because we pile on our own suffering inside, we make it more and more difficult to deal properly with the outside stuff. So straightening out our own mind is not a question of laying the blame on us. It’s just saying that if we can’t take care of this issue inside, we won’t be able to take care of issues outside. This has to come first." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Unskillful Habits"

"When the Buddha tells you to look inside for the causes of your suffering, it’s not a case of blaming the victim. He’s trying to remind you of what does lie in your power to change. There may be a lot of things outside that contribute to you suffering, but you can’t change them. Or you could change them if you spent a lot of time. But there’s no certainty as to how permanent that change would be. So as meditators, we’re not here trying to settle old scores or to create justice in the world. We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing that’s contributing to our own suffering. After all, we go to all the effort of thinking and acting and speaking with the purpose of causing happiness, and yet the results don’t always come out that way. In fact, most of the time they come out the other way. We end up causing suffering for ourselves. That’s the big paradox in life. Fortunately, the way we act and speak and think depending on our intentions is something we can change. We can learn fro...

"The Buddha never taught bare attention. He taught appropriate attention. This is an important distinction to bear in mind. If we think that the heart of the meditation is just simply bare attention, it causes all kinds of misunderstandings – such as the idea that meditation is simply a process of watching whatever comes up and not doing anything about it. Or even deeper, there’s the idea that if all you need to do is bare attention, why bother reading the Buddha’s other teachings at all? Just try to be as passive as possible. You don’t need to study. Just practice passive awareness and that will take care of all your problems. Sometimes people say that bare attention is the unconditioned, that a moment of bare attention is a moment of awakening. If you believe that, you close all of the paths to awakening. Because if you don’t see the difference between the path and the goal, you’re never going to get the goal. You have to work on the path and then you have to let it go at some p...

"Think of people you haven’t forgiven yet, and you can sit right here and forgive them. What does forgiveness mean in the Buddhist context? It means that you pose no danger to them, you’re not going to try to get back at them, you’re not going to carry around a grudge. It doesn’t mean that you necessarily forget that they did something unskillful. Because there are people you’ve got to watch out for — in other words, the people you can forgive but you don’t want to have much more to do with them anymore. But you can remind yourself, okay, even though they’ve done unskillful things to you and they’ve harmed you or harmed people you love, you’re not going to pose any danger to them. You’re going to leave it at that. Now, the prospect of getting reconciled with that person may be impossible, but at the very least you can sit here and unilaterally forgive that person. There are times when you have to forgive yourself for certain things you did in the past. Be generous with that, too. ...

"The Buddha’s recommendation to examine the results of actions while doing them relates to the first principle, that actions can shape the present moment. When you slam the door on your finger, you don’t have to wait for the next lifetime to feel the pain. The Buddha’s instructions to check the long-term results of the action relate to the second principle, that actions can take time to show their results. When you plant a seed, it’ll take time, sometimes a lot of time, for the plant to mature. Keeping these two principles in mind as you look at your actions teaches you to be responsible for what you do. Seeing results in the present shows you that you don’t have to be a passive victim of present circumstances. You can take the initiative to make changes. Seeing results that take time to ripen teaches an important lesson in delayed gratification: Don’t measure your pleasures and pains only by how they feel in the present. Think about the long-term harm that can come from indulging...