Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"As [the Buddha] saw, people would fare through the world up and down, based on their actions. Their actions were shaped by their intentions. Their intentions were shaped by their views. The way these things worked out was pretty complex, but the basic principle was simple: You act on skillful intentions, the result is happiness. You act on unskillful intentions, the result is suffering, pain. Of course, you look at your life, and it’s not the case that you do nothing but good actions, nothing but bad actions. There’s a mixture. But what’s important is that, as you go through life and you realize you’ve made mistakes, you admit the mistakes and you try to develop right view. Then your actions really do make a difference. Believing in that gives you the energy to try to do your best. There are people out there, just as there were people in the Buddha’s time, who say that you’re powerless. Either actions are not real at all, or even though they are real, they have no impact on shapi...

"Instead of arguing from abstract science, the Bodhisatta focused directly on the level of immediate experience and explored the implications of truths that both sides overlooked. Instead of fixing on the content of the views expressed, he considered the actions of those who were expressing the views. If views of determinism and total chaos were followed to their logical end, there would be no point in purposeful action, and yet the proponents of both theories continued to act in purposeful ways. If only physical acts bore consequences, there would be no point in teaching a proper understanding of the nature of action — for the mental act of understanding, right or wrong, would have no consequences — and yet all sides agreed that it was important to understand reality in the right way. The fact that each side insisted that the other used unskillful forms of observation and argumentation to advance its views implied that mental skills were crucial in determining the t...

"Are your views right? If your views are wrong, they can send you off in all sorts of directions. So you want to make sure that you’re aiming, at the very least, at not harming anyone, finding a happiness that’s reliable and trustworthy that doesn’t require that you harm anybody else, doesn’t require that you harm yourself. Ultimately you want to be able to find a way to put an end to suffering. That’s the right direction in which you should aim your life. So you should ask yourself, “The people I’m associating with: Is that where they aim? How about myself: Is that where I aim?” Look at where you’re aiming your life. If you see that you’re heading off in the wrong direction, you’ve got the wrong target, try to change the target. Change so that it’s the right direction, so that you’re not causing any suffering — you’re not causing yourself suffering, you’re not causing anyone else any suffering. At the same time, you’re developing those treasures you can take with you. Because in...

"All of [the Buddha's] really basic teachings have to do with action, which is why kamma is so central to what he taught. Kamma consists of your intentions, and your intentions are shaped by your views. If your views are concerned with what you are or what the world is, you’re going to be sloppy in your actions. But if your views deal with what are you doing, what kind of actions are skillful, what kind of actions are not skillful, they focus your attention where it really can make a difference — where it really can be of use. The rest of the path then follows on that. You make up your mind that you’re going to act on intentions that are not harmful, and you apply that principle to your daily life." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Expert's Mind"

"As you meditate, you learn the lessons that help you wise up after realizing you’ve been foolish. Strengthen these lessons by looking at your intentions, attention, and perceptions, and realize that these govern your actions. Remember: What you do is what matters. There’s a clear distinction between skillful and unskillful. You don’t want to act in unskillful ways. You’ve seen the harm. This is the wisdom of wising up: recognizing when you’ve been a fool in any way. The lessons implicit in that wisdom include believing that choices are real; they have real consequences; those choices depend on views, which in turn are based on perceptions, attention, and intentions, what you would like to achieve through your actions. These are all important lessons. This is why the Buddha focuses on these elements as being crucial to what shapes your life so you can start shaping it in a wise way." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Wisdom of Wising Up" (Meditations6)

"In the second watch of the night of his awakening, the Buddha gained insight into how beings pass away and are reborn in line with their actions [MN 19]. This insight was the source both of the content and of the method of his teachings on skillful and unskillful kamma. He saw that beings fared well on the basis of skillful kamma, and poorly on the basis of unskillful kamma. Their choice of skillful or unskillful kamma, in turn, was influenced by their views and by their level of respect for noble ones. This last factor indicated that skillful and unskillful kamma were not inspired solely by internal factors. If beings could be induced to develop respect for the noble ones, they could learn from those noble ones to develop right view and skillful kamma. This meant that they could be taught." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Skill in Questions: How the Buddha Taught"

"Someone was saying today that she had trouble seeing that she deserved happiness. But the Buddha never talks about deserving happiness or not deserving happiness. He was here to put an end to suffering, whether deserved or not. We can think about lots of different ways we might deserve to suffer or other people might deserve to suffer, but that’s part of our views that are making us continue to suffer, unnecessarily . The opportunity to stop making yourself suffer is here. And in not placing the burden of suffering on yourself, you’re putting less of a burden on other people. You’re actually more able to help them." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Clinging, Addictions, Obsessions" (Meditations8)

 "All of [the Buddha's] really basic teachings have to do with action, which is why kamma is so central to what he taught. Kamma consists of your intentions, and your intentions are shaped by your views. If your views are concerned with what you are or what the world is, you’re going to be sloppy in your actions. But if your views deal with what are you doing, what kind of actions are skillful, what kind of actions are not skillful, they focus your attention where it really can make a difference — where it really can be of use. The rest of the path then follows on that. You make up your mind that you’re going to act on intentions that are not harmful, and you apply that principle to your daily life." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Expert's Mind"

"Forgiveness seems to be such a basic human activity that we forget that our ideas about forgiveness are picked up from our culture and our view of what’s going on in the world. If you want forgiveness to be a helpful part of the practice, you have to look at how your ideas of forgiveness are tied up with your views about the world. Many of us in the West have a feeling that we’ve picked up from the culture, that there’s a plan for everything: The universe had a beginning point, it’s going to have an end point, there’s a story, and it’s going to come to closure. Now there are different ideas about what exactly that story is and where it’s headed, but just the idea that there is a beginning point and there is an end point, that there’s a purpose to the universe at large: That right there has a big impact on how we think about forgiveness. If there’s a beginning point, you can tally up who did what first: how many times you’ve been wronged, how many times you’ve wronged the other pe...

"Instead of arguing from abstract science, the Bodhisatta focused directly on the level of immediate experience and explored the implications of truths that both sides overlooked. Instead of fixing on the content of the views expressed, he considered the actions of those who were expressing the views. If views of determinism and total chaos were followed to their logical end, there would be no point in purposeful action, and yet the proponents of both theories continued to act in purposeful ways. If only physical acts bore consequences, there would be no point in teaching a proper understanding of the nature of action — for the mental act of understanding, right or wrong, would have no consequences — and yet all sides agreed that it was important to understand reality in the right way. The fact that each side insisted that the other used unskillful forms of observation and argumentation to advance its views implied that mental skills were crucial in determining the truth. Thus the...

 "You’ve got to change your views, that strong sense of offended justice. You’ve got to look into that. We’ve talked about this before, how justice requires that you know the beginning of the story. You can tabulate who did what to whom, whose actions can be justified, whose actions cannot, and then you tally up the score. But from the Buddhist point of view, there is no beginning point. You can’t say who did what to whom in the beginning, who was the first mover in a particular story. It’s like coming in on the tail end of a movie: You don’t know who got their just desserts. Kamma itself doesn’t go around dishing out just desserts. Think of the case of Angulimala. He killed all those people but then he had a change of heart. The Buddha saw that he had the potential for a change of heart, so he went right to him and taught him, and Angulimala became an arahant. He ended up not getting punished for all those murders. There were people who were upset and would throw things at him wh...

"All of [the Buddha's] really basic teachings have to do with action, which is why kamma is so central to what he taught. Kamma consists of your intentions, and your intentions are shaped by your views. If your views are concerned with what you are or what the world is, you’re going to be sloppy in your actions. But if your views deal with what are you doing, what kind of actions are skillful, what kind of actions are not skillful, they focus your attention where it really can make a difference — where it really can be of use. The rest of the path then follows on that. You make up your mind that you’re going to act on intentions that are not harmful, and you apply that principle to your daily life." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Expert's Mind"

"Someone was saying today that she had trouble seeing that she deserved happiness. But the Buddha never talks about deserving happiness or not deserving happiness. He was here to put an end to suffering, whether deserved or not. We can think about lots of different ways we might deserve to suffer or other people might deserve to suffer, but that’s part of our views that are making us continue to suffer, unnecessarily . The opportunity to stop making yourself suffer is here. And in not placing the burden of suffering on yourself, you’re putting less of a burden on other people. You’re actually more able to help them." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Clinging, Addictions, Obsessions" (Meditations8)

"All of [the Buddha's] really basic teachings have to do with action, which is why kamma is so central to what he taught. Kamma consists of your intentions, and your intentions are shaped by your views. If your views are concerned with what you are or what the world is, you’re going to be sloppy in your actions. But if your views deal with what are you doing, what kind of actions are skillful, what kind of actions are not skillful, they focus your attention where it really can make a difference — where it really can be of use. The rest of the path then follows on that. You make up your mind that you’re going to act on intentions that are not harmful, and you apply that principle to your daily life." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Expert's Mind"

"In the second watch of the night of his awakening, the Buddha gained insight into how beings pass away and are reborn in line with their actions [MN 19]. This insight was the source both of the content and of the method of his teachings on skillful and unskillful kamma. He saw that beings fared well on the basis of skillful kamma, and poorly on the basis of unskillful kamma. Their choice of skillful or unskillful kamma, in turn, was influenced by their views and by their level of respect for noble ones. This last factor indicated that skillful and unskillful kamma were not inspired solely by internal factors. If beings could be induced to develop respect for the noble ones, they could learn from those noble ones to develop right view and skillful kamma. This meant that they could be taught." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Skill in Questions: How the Buddha Taught"

"Someone was saying today that she had trouble seeing that she deserved happiness. But the Buddha never talks about deserving happiness or not deserving happiness. He was here to put an end to suffering, whether deserved or not. We can think about lots of different ways we might deserve to suffer or other people might deserve to suffer, but that’s part of our views that are making us continue to suffer, unnecessarily . The opportunity to stop making yourself suffer is here. And in not placing the burden of suffering on yourself, you’re putting less of a burden on other people. You’re actually more able to help them." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Clinging, Addictions, Obsessions" (Meditations8)

"All of [the Buddha's] really basic teachings have to do with action, which is why kamma is so central to what he taught. Kamma consists of your intentions, and your intentions are shaped by your views. If your views are concerned with what you are or what the world is, you’re going to be sloppy in your actions. But if your views deal with what are you doing, what kind of actions are skillful, what kind of actions are not skillful, they focus your attention where it really can make a difference — where it really can be of use. The rest of the path then follows on that. You make up your mind that you’re going to act on intentions that are not harmful, and you apply that principle to your daily life." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Expert's Mind"