Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Which sense of well-being are you going to choose: the well-being built on the shaky ground of already being a good person, or the well-being of having the attitude that you’re always willing to learn? The first attitude is the one to drop. The second attitude is the one that offers hope, that’s based on a much more solid foundation, for there’s always the possibility to keep learning and learning and learning. When you’re dealing with difficult things from the past, have the attitude that, “At least I’m going to learn from this.” That shifts the foundation onto something much more solid." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Self Esteem" (Meditations3)

"You’re not here just stuck in a bad situation where there’s nothing you can do about it. Even though there may be limitations on what you can do, you always have the opportunity to do the skillful thing, say the skillful thing, think something skillful. And that will be your food down the line. Even though the refreshment and the nourishment and the rapture may not be coming immediately, the simple fact that you’re convinced that there will be something good coming down the line gives you energy right there. Because the mind is not like the body. The body can’t feed off of anticipation but the mind can . And that’s what gives it the strength to keep going. So conviction is an important way of nourishing the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Feeding Off the Future"

"So keep your meditation a private affair. After all, the suffering you’re causing yourself is a private affair, something nobody else can see. Even when we live together day in and day out, each of us is making a lot of decisions that nobody else here will know. We may see some of the outside effects, but the actual experience of suffering — your suffering, your pain: You’re the only person who can feel it. And you’re the only person who can know which little decisions you make from moment to moment to moment. That’s what you want to learn how to observe. So try to develop your inner sensitivity as much as you can, so that you can make sure your decisions are going in the right direction. The intentional element here is to try to minimize suffering as much as possible." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Private Matter" (Meditations4)

"As the Buddha said, appropriate attention [yoniso manasikāra] is one of the most important factors for inducing Awakening. There are lots of other things you could focus on in the present moment. But the Dhamma points you to this question of cause and effect, skillful and unskillful. As for other things, you can let them pass, let them pass, because they’re not the issue. This principle applies to any problem. If you clutter up your mind with too many facts — with no clear sense of which facts are really crucial to solving the problem and which ones are not — the fact that you’re keeping track of so many things actually obscures the problem. So you don’t want to focus on too much in the present moment." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Don't Listen to This Talk"

"Ajaan Fuang once said that it’s a good thing most of us can’t remember our past lives because we could very easily get fixated on all the wrong that was done to us, all the issues that never got settled. And we might want to go back and settle some old scores. Of course, there’d be no end to that. After all, the people whose scores got settled would probably want to settle some scores with us, because the other part of potentially remembering your past lives is remembering all the wrongs you did, the ways you harmed people, that you’d be ashamed to think about now. But just the thought of that possibility leaves us with an important lesson. No scores are fully settled. Things don’t come to closure. This is the nature of samsara: It just keeps wandering on and on and on. No story comes to an end. We watch plays, read books, where events come to a satisfying closure, and part of us would like to see that in our own lives as well. But one of the facts you have to accep...

"Often we think of the teaching on karma as something deterministic or fatalistic. “I’ve got to suffer because of my past karma,” or, “This had to happen because of past karma.” That puts your whole life out of your control. But when you start playing with the breath, you begin to realize that a lot of the shaping of your present experiences is something you’re doing right now. You improvise it. You cook it up fresh every moment. That puts an element of freedom into your life. What we’re doing as we meditate is to explore this freedom we have right here in the present moment to see how far it goes. As the Buddha said, when you explore this area, that’s when you start learning how to put an end to suffering. That’s the best use of your freedom." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Right Learning"

"We do have the power to exert control over our intentions right now. And our intentions do shape our experience of the world around us, the world inside us, at least to some extent: enough to make the difference between suffering and not suffering. What we’re experiencing right now is the result of past intentions, plus our current intentions, plus the results of our current intentions. Even though we may not have absolute control over things, and will ultimately have to let them all go, we do have some control over our actions now. And you want to make the most of that fact." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Limits of Control"