Search results for: "Kamma"

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  2. Non-Reactive Judgment
     … Whatever happens to get done would have to depend entirely on your past good kamma. Your present kamma wouldn’t be contributing anything at all—and that wouldn’t get you very far. You need to have a provisional sense of “you” as being responsible for the path, along with the confidence that you are competent to do it and that you will benefit … 
  3. An Auspicious Day
     … This is how kamma applies to meditation practice. Mindfulness is there to remind you: These are the lessons you’ve learned from the past, either from what you’ve read or heard, or from what you’ve learned in your own practice. So this is why we’re in the present moment: because there’s work to be done right here, work we’ve … 
  4. What You Don’t Like About Yourself
     … That’s past kamma. You’ve also got the present intention to get the mind still: That’s your present kamma. And you’re going to build on that. Make up your mind that you’re going to breathe in a way that feels good. That’s your present intention. As for anything else that comes up, you’re going to let it go … 
  5. Equanimity Isn’t Everything
     … Once, when I was new to the practice and I was trying to think about kamma, I said to Ajaan Fuang: “You know, if everything in the present is conditioned by kamma in the past, that means there’s no choice that I have to make right now about whether I’m going to practice or not; it’s just going to happen. It … 
  6. The Second Noble Truth
     … Raw material comes in from your past kamma, but you don’t make it into present kamma. You simply see potentials from the past as they have become, and that’s it. You don’t get involved in the further becoming. There’s a sense of dispassion that comes when you see this. And because the delight and passion accompanying the craving are what … 
  7. Unsentimental Goodwill
     … Whether it comes easily or not, you want to remind yourself that you don’t want to harm anybody—partly because of the simple principle of kamma, that if you harm others, they’re going to harm you. Or as the Buddha pointed out in that story about King Pasenadi and his Queen Mallika: You will never find anyone in the world whom you … 
  8. The Graduated Discourse
     … The teachings on kamma told him that he must have had some bad kamma. Here he was, orphaned, poor, didn’t have much of a schooling. If he was going to find any happiness in life, he would have to change his ways. It was that turn-around that got him interested in practicing, and why, when he finally ordained as a monk at … 
  9. Forgiveness
     … What kind of kamma do you want to create? If the answer is “skillful kamma,” then one of the things you’ve got to learn how to do is not to get focused on how you’ve been wronged by other people. You don’t want to go around getting revenge because that just keeps the bad kammic cycle going on and on and … 
  10. Where Perceptions Can Take You
     … And remember, even in line with the principle of kamma, the Buddha never said that anyone deserved to suffer. If they could develop the proper skills, they could learn how not to suffer from past bad actions. The act of developing those skills makes the world a better place—as the Buddha said, they brighten the world like the moon when released from a … 
  11. Avoidance
     … Each question is a kind of kamma. To understand the kamma, you’ve got to look at the motivation behind the questions, and then when you’ve dispatched it you can get back to the practice. The act of dispatching it is an important part of the practice. This is what insight is all about: seeing how the mind hides from itself, how it … 
  12. A Rite of Passage
     … If that doesn’t work, you can try other ways of thinking about what’s happened to you in the past in terms of kamma. Think about the vast expanses of time during which kamma has gone back and forth, back and forth—you’ve been victim and victimizer who knows how many times: whatever helps give you a perspective on your thoughts and … 
  13. Respect for the Precepts
     … At the same time, what is this requirement to protect innocent people at all costs? Is it something you could practically carry out—to protect all the innocent people in the world? How can you do that? People have their kamma. You do your best to protect the innocent, but if it would require that you do something unskillful, you have to realize that … 
  14. Justice vs. Skillfulness
     … So the other senior monk came and asked Somdet Toh what was up, and Somdet Toh replied, “Well, obviously it’s his kamma from some previous lifetime. He had hit the other monk first at some point in time.” And, of course, that might have been after the other monk had hit the first monk first—so it goes back and forth, back and … 
  15. How to Be Alone
     … One of the basic principles of right view is the principle of kamma, and one of the principles of kamma is that we have freedom of choice in the present moment. Yet this is an area where the wrong views of our culture get in the way. We tend to think that our moods are our real self. We tend not to trust our … 
  16. A Better Place to Feed
     … If your processing skills are poor, then, no matter what good stuff is coming from your past kamma, you’re going to make a mess out of it, squeezing it into that little cup. So work on the skills. This is what we do as we meditate. As the Buddha said when he described the steps leading up to suffering, the first thing that … 
  17. Reinvest Your Noble Treasures
     … But given the principle of kamma, you can’t help that. When you give things up, you get things in return. The question is, what kind of trade do you want to make? The ideal one is the one mentioned in the Theragatha. I think it’s Venerable Supiya who he says, “I’ll make a trade: the aging for the ageless, the burning … 
  18. How to Use the Teaching on Kamma
    Years back, I gave a talk on karma to a group of people at a mindfulness meditation center. I explained that the way the Buddha taught karma is not deterministic or fatalistic, that the way he taught karma is very useful when you approach meditation as a skill. As he said, the things you experience in the present moment are a combination of two … 
  19. Questions in the Practice
     … In addition to not getting you anywhere, if you spend time pursuing them that’s unskillful kamma right there: wasting valuable time. The questions that the Buddha recommends focus on the Four Noble Truths, which are simply an extension of the questions on skill and lack of skill. In other words when you start asking the question of skill, it implies cause and effect … 
  20. Present Kamma
    There’s a nice breeze outside. And you’ve got your breeze inside, i.e., the breath, so pay attention to the inside breeze. The Buddha has us ask ourselves a question everyday: “Days and nights fly past, fly past. What am I becoming right now?” or “What am I doing right now?” If the Buddha were here to ask you that question, how … 
  21. Criticism
     … It’s a quality of heart that the Buddha calls ottappa, translated as “compunction.” It’s when you think of doing something and you know that it’s going to be unskillful and you realize, “I don’t want to have to deal with the results of something unskillful.” It’s basically a belief in the principle of kamma, combined with right resolve— that … 
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