Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Many people in the modern world come to Buddhism suffering from their conceptual framework. They’re raised in a materialist worldview whose basic concepts — that life comes from nothing and returns to nothing, with a brief chance to pursue pleasure in the interim — are pretty dismal. They believe that if they could free their minds from these concepts and simply dwell in the present with no thought of what happens at the end, they’d be happy. They’d be able to squeeze as much pleasure out of the present as they could before the inevitable hits. So they look for a way to be free of all concepts. When they come here, though, they run into concepts. They see the Buddha’s teachings on kamma and rebirth, and they say, “This is invalid; you can’t make presuppositions about these things. Nobody knows anything about what happens before we’re born. Nobody knows anything about what happens after we die. Doesn’t the Buddha say that you have to prove things before you can accept them? All we...

"Ajaan Suwat came from a very large peasant family, and large peasant families usually don’t have much to hand down to their children. He met a forest monk who said, “Hey look, it’s your actions that matter. And the fact that you’re poor now: You may have not been generous in the past, but you’ve got the opportunity now to practice the Dhamma.” So this quality of conviction is what sees us through. When things are going easy, the idea of having conviction doesn’t speak that much to us. But when things get hard: We look at our lives, we look at the people around us, the situation we’re in — and the last thing you need is something that teaches you to just give in. The teaching of karma is precisely what tells you not to give in. It places power in your hands." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Faith"

"There’s no wrong that goes unpunished, no good that goes unrewarded. That’s simply the way kamma is. Therefore, we don’t have to carry around ledger sheets — which person did this, which person did that — with the fear that if the ledger sheet disappears then that person’s not going to get the retribution he or she deserves. The principle of kamma takes care of that. But remember that it also takes care of you as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Story-telling Mind"

"[The Buddha] recommends having a sense of love for yourself, in the sense that you don’t want to act in any way that would cause you harm down the line. And if you really care about yourself, you’re also not going to cause harm to any other people at all, because if you can harm them, then there’s going to be trouble coming back. If your happiness depends on their misery, they’re not going to stand for it. Even if they can’t get you, your kamma will, at least to some extent." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "See Yourself as Active Verbs" (Meditations10)

"Even if we don’t get all the way to the ultimate skill of reaching the Deathless, the fact that we’ve trained ourselves to be more and more skillful leads the mind in the direction of less and less suffering. It inclines the mind in that direction. If you don’t make it all the way to the Deathless in this lifetime, your quest for skillfulness insures that your next lifetime will keep heading in that direction. You build up a momentum." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Anger" (Meditations2)

"It’s easy not to believe that the quality of your intention is going to determine the results of your actions, because you see a lot of people acting out of greed, hatred, and delusion, and yet they seem to be pretty happy, in the short term at least. So it is a matter of belief. And the Buddha’s proof simply is a pragmatic one: If you believe in your actions, you’ll act more skillfully." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Believe in Your Actions"

"Think about the dangers of our moods: They can induce us to do all kinds of unskillful things. If we get really depressed, we get apathetic. Nothing seems to matter — you lose any sense of concern for the results of your actions. When you get really happy and manic, you get complacent — and again you lose any concern for the results of your actions. You end up doing and saying things that can cause harm very easily. Then you’re stuck with the results." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "At Normalcy"