Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"As for what other people are thinking or saying or doing, just remember: They can never take you to hell. If you’re going to go to hell, it’s through your own doing. They can’t take you to heaven, either. If you are going to heaven, it’s through your own doing. And you don’t have to worry about heaven and hell in the afterlife. Right here and now, you can see it. Other people can do horrible things, but it’s only when you let what they’re doing get into your mind, and then you start doing horrible things along with them: That’s when it really gets bad. At the same time, no matter how good other people may be, you can always be worried about how much longer that goodness is going to last. Sometimes, the better the person is, the more you’re worried: “It can’t last. So I’m just going to have to hold on to them.” The issue isn’t what other people are doing, it’s how you’re managing your own mind. This is why you have to give importance, give weight to this ability to st...

"If each person in this world would mind his or her own business, clean up his or her own house, there wouldn’t be any trouble or conflicts in the world. Our problem is that we leave our own immediate responsibilities and start worrying about other people: what they’re doing, what messes they’re creating for us, or what messes they’re creating for other people. That can be appropriate only after we’ve really taken care of our own business. Otherwise, we leave huge blind spots in our mind about what we’re doing and saying and thinking. We become oblivious to our impact on the world where we really are responsible." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Minding Your Own Business"

"We’re always worried about our relationships to people outside, but our relationship to ourself is very unskillful and that’s a lot more basic, and a much bigger problem. How do you relate to your own thoughts? How do you relate to your perceptions? Learn how to relate in more skillful ways." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Overcoming Complacency"

"You probably know the story of how Devadatta tried to kill the Buddha. He rolled a rock down a mountain, hoping to crush the Buddha. Fortunately, the rock hit another rock that diverted it. But still, a sliver broke off from the big rock and pierced the Buddha’s foot, causing him a lot of pain. The texts tell us how, after the sliver was removed, the Buddha went to lie down and rest. Mara came to taunt him, accusing him of moping and being depressed and not facing pain like a real Buddha who apparently should get up and walk around even though he was in a lot of pain. The Buddha replied, “I’m not moping. I’m lying down out of sympathy for all beings.” We can take two lessons from that. The first is that when the body is sick, you look after it. You don’t try to prove that you’re able to deal with pain to the extent that you abuse the body. Lying down out of sympathy, the Buddha was preserving his strength so that he could help other beings. At the same time, that accusation that ...

"It’s the same with worry and anxiety, or restlessness. These things that you’re worried about: If they really happened, what would be the best way to prepare for them? Not by spending the whole night worrying and wearing yourself out! You’re going to need mindfulness; you’re going to need alertness. You’re going to need an inner sense of strength that you can draw on, and this is what the meditation is for. It strengthens these good qualities that you can use in any situation if you’re willing to use them. So the best way to prepare for future contingencies is to strengthen the mind as much as you can. Gain practice in being as mindful as possible, as alert as possible, open to new ways of thinking. And also, try to get that perspective on future dangers. There’s that great passage where the monk is going to a dangerous part of India. He takes leave of the Buddha, and the Buddha says, “You know, the people there are reputed to be pretty savage. What if they curse you?” And the m...

"As for what other people are thinking or saying or doing, just remember: They can never take you to hell. If you’re going to go to hell, it’s through your own doing. They can’t take you to heaven, either. If you are going to heaven, it’s through your own doing. And you don’t have to worry about heaven and hell in the afterlife. Right here and now, you can see it. Other people can do horrible things, but it’s only when you let what they’re doing get into your mind, and then you start doing horrible things along with them: That’s when it really gets bad. At the same time, no matter how good other people may be, you can always be worried about how much longer that goodness is going to last. Sometimes, the better the person is, the more you’re worried: “It can’t last. So I’m just going to have to hold on to them.” The issue isn’t what other people are doing, it’s how you’re managing your own mind. This is why you have to give importance, give weight to this ability to st...

"When you come right down to it, there’s a part of you that’s totally alone as you come into the world, totally alone as you face your sufferings, totally alone as you leave here. Even when you are with other people, there’s an internal dialogue that’s just between you and yourself. That’s what you’ve got to be responsible for. The world would be a nice place if we could provide for each other’s happiness — and we can a little bit — but for the really deep down parts, we each have to be responsible for ourselves. If you constantly worry about this person and that person, no matter how close you are to them, there’s going to be a part of you that gets neglected that you really are responsible for." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Your True Responsibility"

"So try to sensitize yourself throughout your life to the choices you’re making. And realize that your happiness depends on making skillful choices, a process that you can learn. If your life has been unskillful up to this point, and you’ve got lots of burdens and issues in your life, you can make choices to deal with those burdens skillfully. You can make a choice, change your habits. That’s the good part of this process of fabrication: Nothing is ever permanently engraved in stone. After all, even stone washes away and disintegrates. But in the meantime, because there is this constant process of fabrication, you can focus on the present moment. You don’t have to worry about first causes or what happened way back in the past. Just notice what you’re doing right now, how you’re reacting to and shaping the raw material of life right now. Learn to do it more and more skillfully. And you find that it can take you a lot further than you might imagine." ~ Thanissaro B...

"We’re always worried about our relationships to people outside, but our relationship to ourself is very unskillful and that’s a lot more basic, and a much bigger problem. How do you relate to your own thoughts? How do you relate to your perceptions? Learn how to relate in more skillful ways." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Overcoming Complacency"

"I was talking to someone today who likes to get exercise by riding a bike. Recently a number of her acquaintances have had really bad bike accidents, and she was getting concerned. She’s getting older now. And seeing how badly mangled her friends were, she was beginning to worry about herself, and thought maybe she should stop riding the bike. She had mentioned this to a friend of hers, and the friend said, “Oh no, don’t think of accidents. We create our reality, so if you think about accidents, you’ll make them happen; but if you don’t think about accidents, they won’t happen.” Kind of a Barnie-the-dinosaur approach to the world. If it were true, nobody would age, nobody would die. Most people who die are not thinking about death. Most people who get sick are not thinking about illness. These things happen because of karma. We have all kinds of karma in our past, good and bad, and it’s a combination of past karma and present karma that actually shapes our experience. If we coul...

"As for what other people are thinking or saying or doing, just remember: They can never take you to hell. If you’re going to go to hell, it’s through your own doing. They can’t take you to heaven, either. If you are going to heaven, it’s through your own doing. And you don’t have to worry about heaven and hell in the afterlife. Right here and now, you can see it. Other people can do horrible things, but it’s only when you let what they’re doing get into your mind, and then you start doing horrible things along with them: That’s when it really gets bad. At the same time, no matter how good other people may be, you can always be worried about how much longer that goodness is going to last. Sometimes, the better the person is, the more you’re worried: “It can’t last. So I’m just going to have to hold on to them.” The issue isn’t what other people are doing, it’s how you’re managing your own mind. This is why you have to give importance, give weight to this ability to st...

"Where do you go next? Well, you don’t have to worry about that right now. As long as you’ve been doing good things in your life, you go to a good place. Where do the good things come from? They come from a mind that’s well rested, a mind that has a good sense of well-being here in the present moment. So when you’re working on the present here, you’re helping to get the future covered as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Housecleaning"

"You not only protect yourself as you’re sitting here meditating, but you also develop the skills you’re going to need as you approach death. At that point, what you’re facing in the future is going to be very worrisome: the fact that you’re going to leave this body and you don’t know where you’re going to go. It’s all too easy to start thinking about the unskillful things you’ve done in the past, which is precisely the wrong time to be thinking about those things. You may not have someone hovering around you to remind you of the good you’ve done, so you’ve got to learn how to hover around yourself, to remind yourself of how to pull out of this particular hindrance so that it has less and less power over the mind. Even as the body is weak, make sure that your habitual reaction to thoughts of worry is quick, skillful, and strong." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Restlessness & Anxiety" (Meditations11)

"Keep coming back to the breath. And sometimes you may wonder, “When do we finish with the breath and move on?” But that’s based on a wrong idea of what progress means. Progress means seeing one thing very carefully — more and more carefully all the time, more and more precisely. Fortunately, when you’re focusing on the breath right here in the present moment, all the things you need to understand for gaining release are all right here as well. You’re at the most important point in your world when you’re focused right here, because everything comes out of this. The other things you’re aware of come into your senses because of your past karma. And where was your past karma made? Well, it was made right here in a past version of the present moment. And that’s gone. There’s nothing you can do to bring it back. What’s really important is what you’re doing right now. So you don’t have to worry about other things, other places. Just stay right here. And get really familiar right here....

"As for what other people are thinking or saying or doing, just remember: They can never take you to hell. If you’re going to go to hell, it’s through your own doing. They can’t take you to heaven, either. If you are going to heaven, it’s through your own doing. And you don’t have to worry about heaven and hell in the afterlife. Right here and now, you can see it. Other people can do horrible things, but it’s only when you let what they’re doing get into your mind, and then you start doing horrible things along with them: That’s when it really gets bad. At the same time, no matter how good other people may be, you can always be worried about how much longer that goodness is going to last. Sometimes, the better the person is, the more you’re worried: “It can’t last. So I’m just going to have to hold on to them.” The issue isn’t what other people are doing, it’s how you’re managing your own mind. This is why you have to give importance, give weight to this ability to stay centered r...

"Where do you go next? Well, you don’t have to worry about that right now. As long as you’ve been doing good things in your life, you go to a good place. Where do the good things come from? They come from a mind that’s well rested, a mind that has a good sense of well-being here in the present moment. So when you’re working on the present here, you’re helping to get the future covered as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Housecleaning"

"So try to sensitize yourself throughout your life to the choices you’re making. And realize that your happiness depends on making skillful choices, a process that you can learn. If your life has been unskillful up to this point, and you’ve got lots of burdens and issues in your life, you can make choices to deal with those burdens skillfully. You can make a choice, change your habits. That’s the good part of this process of fabrication: Nothing is ever permanently engraved in stone. After all, even stone washes away and disintegrates. But in the meantime, because there is this constant process of fabrication, you can focus on the present moment. You don’t have to worry about first causes or what happened way back in the past. Just notice what you’re doing right now, how you’re reacting to and shaping the raw material of life right now. Learn to do it more and more skillfully. And you find that it can take you a lot further than you might imagine." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "...

"You can ask yourself, “If I were to die and were looking back at my life, looking back at today, what would I wish I had done today? What would I wish I’d said today?” Knowing that most of your ordinary worries and cares are rendered pretty meaningless by death, then live your life from that perspective. Say the good things you will have wished you had said, do the good things you will have wished you had done." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "You're Already Dead"

"If you’re serious about doing what’s skillful — trying to be compassionate, trying to have integrity in your actions, respecting everyone’s desire for happiness — then this ability to think of death is not all that scary. It lifts your fears, living your life with that perspective. You can ask yourself, “If I were to die and were looking back at my life, looking back at today, what would I wish I had done today? What would I wish I’d said today?” Knowing that most of your ordinary worries and cares are rendered pretty meaningless by death, then live your life from that perspective. Say the good things you will have wished you had said, do the good things you will have wished you had done. If you stop and think about this, you’ll see that you will have wished you’d spent more time training the mind. When you’re dealing with other people, you will have wished you had said the kind thing, the helpful thing, the appropriate thing, something that wasn’t worried about what you could g...

"The Buddha’s cousin, Mahānāma asks the Buddha for instructions on how to advise a wise person who is about to die. The Buddha replies that if the dying person is plagued by worries about his family, he should be reminded that his worries at this point cannot help his family, so he should let those worries go. If he is fixated on human sensual pleasures, he should be told that human sensual pleasures are no match for the pleasures of the sensual heavens, so he should focus his mind on those heavens instead. If he’s fixated on the pleasures of the sensual heavens, he should be told that even those are inferior to the pleasures of the Brahmā world, and he should instead focus his thoughts there. If the dying person is fixated on the Brahmā world, he should be told that even the Brahmā world is “inconstant, impermanent, and included in self-identification.” In other worlds, the Brahmā worlds are unstable...." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sublime Attitudes: A Study Guide on th...