Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

Question: Is it valid to send mettā to a person no longer in this world, one to whom I felt resentment and who had resentment toward me? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: This is a very good practice to do. It’s one way of bringing your own mind to some peace. You have to remember that when people die, they don’t go out of existence. They get born again. So, they’re always there someplace for you to spread mettā to. Now, whether that person rejoices in your mettā or not, that’s that person’s business. But if you can spread goodwill to someone you used to resent, that takes a huge burden off of your mind. ~ Good Heart, Good Mind: The Practice of the Ten Perfections

"The way the Buddha teaches mindfulness of death, it makes sense only in the context of his explanation of what happens at death. If it were the case that death were the end of everything, mindfulness of death would mean doing everything you can to survive physically and squeezing as much enjoyment as you could out of whatever time is available. The attitude of “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die”: That’s how some people think about death. But as the Buddha pointed out, a basic principle of mundane right view is that here is the next world, and it’s built by your karma, built by your actions. And as he explained further in transcendent right view, your state of mind is going to be very, very, important at the moment of death. You want to be able to see your clingings, see your cravings. If you can learn how not to ride with them at all, so much the better. But if you find that you can’t manage that, at least keep yourself, as the texts say, “rightly directed.” Have...

“And what is the stress [dukkha] of not getting what is wanted? In beings subject to birth, the wish arises, ‘O, may we not be subject to birth, and may birth not come to us.' But this is not to be achieved by wishing. This is the stress of not getting what is wanted." ~ the Buddha, The Great Establishing of Mindfulness Discourse: The Four Noble Truths, transl. Thanissaro

Mid-September 2001: "A lot of people have been asking recently about how karma has played out in recent events. The Buddha generally discourages trying to trace back exactly what people did that caused them to die in this or that way. He said that if you tried to trace that back you’d go crazy, for the issues of karma are so complex. The basic principle is simple: Whatever was done with a skillful intention gets a pleasant result, whatever was done with an unskillful intention gives an unpleasant result. And there’s a correspondence between a particular type of unskillful action and a particular type of unskillful result. But the precise details — “What exactly did these people do? Did they do it all together? Did they do it separately?” — no one can trace those back. What the Buddha did teach, though, is to focus on what’s the most skillful thing we can do now, given the situation. That’s where the emphasis should lie." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "For the Good of the World...

"If you meet up with the results of some past bad kamma — suppose somebody does something bad to you — it doesn’t mean that your past kamma compelled them to do something bad. It’s simply that your past kamma left the opening. They saw the opening and they took it. And of course, that becomes their kamma now. The fact that you had that past bad kamma: There are unskillful ways and skillful ways that you can think about it. The unskillful way would be to think, “Well, this person was simply carrying out the dictates of kamma. So the person’s not responsible or is actually doing something good.” That’s unskillful. There’s no excuse for that person’s behavior, because the person did choose to take that opening. The skillful way is to say, “Well, I must have some past bad kamma, so I’ll learn how to take it in stride and not get too worked up about it. And I’ll take it as an incentive to try to be more skillful in the future.” As for times when someone does something really nice to y...

"As the Buddha said, when you see people who have no good habits at all — the things they say, the things they do, the things they think are all corrupt — the attitude you should develop toward those people is the same as when you’re going across the desert and you see somebody lying on the roadside, sick, without any help. At the very least, you would want somebody to come and find that person and help them, even if you can’t do it yourself. That’s the attitude you should have. Because when you’re wishing for other people’s happiness, one, you want it to be true happiness. And two, you realize that happiness, especially true happiness, has to come from understanding. People, to be happy, have to understand the causes of true happiness and be able to act on those causes. You’re not saying, “Well, may this person who’s killing and stealing, etc., be happy killing and stealing.” You’re saying to yourself, “May they see the light, realize that the killing and stealing doesn’t lead t...

"The Thais have an expression for understanding karma, what they call the “rhythm”of things. The teaching on karma doesn’t say that you have a single karma account, that the karma ripening right now is the sum total of all your past karma. Instead, it says that specific actions will bear fruit at specific times. If someone is experiencing bad karma right now that doesn’t mean that all they have is a load of nothing but bad karma. It means that a particular unskillful action is bearing fruit right now. That person may also have other good actions in his or her past that have not yet borne fruit. So you can’t judge the total karmic past of people by their position in life, by their current level of happiness and pain. The teaching on karma is not meant to be used that way. You can’t look at somebody and immediately gauge their karma account. What is does mean is that there’s a rhythm to life. Sometimes you’re experiencing the fruit of bad karma, sometimes the fruit of good past karm...