Search results for: "Kamma"
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- Fear & Uncertainty… And if you have good kamma, okay, there will be something to support you, to catch you. If you don’t, who knows how far you’ll fall. Instead, the Buddha’s fearlessness is the fearlessness that can see death and danger, but can see past them. There’s that story of the shaman that Knut Rasmussen interviewed many decades ago up in the …
- A Separate Self… There was a person who came to see the Buddha one time and said basically that if someone has found the way, he shouldn’t go telling it to other people because everybody’s kamma is separate. The Buddha replied that that’s the same as saying that if someone has wealth he shouldn’t share it with other people. In saying that, you …
- A Refuge Bigger than the World… The Buddha keeps saying that these things happen in line with the Dhamma, in line with the principles of kamma. They don’t lie outside the principles, which means that the principles lie outside of them. If you hold by those principles, you’re safe. The nature of the world, as Ajaan Chah would say, is that it’s already broken. You get a …
- Goodwill & Gratitude… If all you can think about is, “I got where I am just because of me, without anybody else’s help,” on the one hand it’s just wrong, and two, it creates a very narrow mind, a mind that’s not likely to go out of its way for others—and a mind that’s not very likely to create any good kamma …
- On Idle Chatter… We don’t want to have the kamma of being an obstacle. This means: Practice right speech both inside and out. The more you practice it outside—in other words, being very careful about what you say, thinking about the consequences, thinking about where your speech is coming from—the easier it'll be to practice it inside. As you develop this habit of …
- Always Observe Your Mind… An important message was that rebirth was fueled by kamma. Where you’re reborn is determined by your actions. And your actions are very complex. There were cases that the Buddha saw where people had done good in this lifetime, but then they went to a bad destination, and there were other cases where they had done bad things in this lifetime but then …
- Resilience Plus… First, he has you think about the four qualities that make you an admirable friend, starting with conviction in the principle of kamma, that you’re not going to do anything harmful and you want to see what you can do to influence the other person to be inspired to act in that way. You think about your virtue, that you’re going to …
- A Post-goodness World?… Now that we live in a world where people no longer believe in kamma, no longer believe in rebirth, nobody’s going to believe in merit, so we need to find new ways of financing Buddhist institutions: the sort of reasoning that people who like to privatize things engage in. Merit is actually an integral part of the teaching. It’s not something that …
- Don’t Leak Out Your Ears & Eyes… You protect your kamma. You protect your concentration. So try to develop the sense of well-being inside and learn how to carry it around. Another image the Buddha gives is of a bowl of oil balanced on your head. With that sense of fullness, you don’t want it to spill. Let it stay balanced inside. So working with the energy in the …
- Dispassion & Delight… Usually it had to do with kamma. Ajaan Suwat pointed this out one time. As he noted, the Buddha talks about the aggregates being not-self, the sense-spheres being not-self—but then there’s that passage we chant again and again: “I am the owner of my actions.” I’m responsible for these things. As the Buddha himself put it, if we …
- Wilderness Lessons… There’s a lesson in kamma right there. Some of your actions are things that you can quickly recover from. Others leave deep scars for long periods of time. Another lesson in heedfulness. So look around and see what kind of lessons you can learn while you’re up there. Make it a Dhamma exploring trip, not just a picnic as I heard one …
- Admirable Friendship… Admirable people have conviction in the principle of kamma, they’re virtuous, they’re generous, and they’re discerning. There’s a well-known line from Dogen where he says, “When you walk through the mist, your robe gets wet without your even thinking about it.” That’s his description of living with a teacher. You pick up the teacher’s habits without thinking …
- Your Inner Ally… Your past kamma is serving up all kinds of things. Your choice is where you’re going to focus your attention and what you’re going to do with what you notice there. That’s your present karma, and that’s where your freedom lies. You do have freedom of choice. And the more skill you bring to this freedom, the more the freedom …
- Dealing with Limitations… And there are limitations on what you can do for other people given the limitations of their kamma as well. So you have to be able to call on this attitude of limitless equanimity whenever needed. To develop these four brahma-viharas in a limitless way, you need to fight off the limiting attitudes in your mind. The various forms of aversion—ill will …
- Go in Brightness… harmless in that it doesn’t intoxicate the mind, blameless in that you don’t create any bad kamma. Nobody gets harmed by your pursuit of pleasure inside. So you put aside thoughts of sensuality and focus simply on the sensation of the body as you feel it from within right now. Notice how the breath feels as it comes in and goes out …
- The Five Faculties Confirmed… knowledge of past lives, knowledge of how beings are reborn through their kamma, and then finally the liberation of the mind through the four noble truths. Based on that, we see that the Dhamma is well taught. Those who have followed the Dhamma have found awakening as well. That’s part of our conviction, too, which gives us the energy to say, “Well, if …
- Producing Experience… It brought in the teaching on kamma. We’re creating our lives. And even when the mind seems to be simply spinning its wheels, it’s not just idly spinning its wheels. It’s creating new states of being, new possibilities — some of which are good, some of which are not so good. You have to keep that principle always in mind as you …
- Self-starting… This teaching on kamma: We tend to think of it as being a teaching about past lives and future lives, and really irrelevant for our practice. But the whole thrust of the teaching is, “What are you doing right now?” Or as the Buddha says in one of his questions for daily reflection, “What have I become as days and nights fly past?” Look …
- Heedful, Attentive, Mindful… That’s misguided heedfulness because you end up with a lot of bad kamma. This is where attention comes in. Attention is not just a matter of paying attention to something, anything, in general. It’s how you phrase your question. The Buddha talks about appropriate and inappropriate attention. Appropriate attention is when you ask the right questions, particularly, “Where is there suffering? What …
- The Energy You Broadcast… Other thoughts will come in, the result of past kamma, but if you spend all your time getting engaged with those, you’ve thrown away your original intention. So you’ve got to hold to your original intention regardless, and use the energy of that intention to repel any thoughts that might come in. This is related to the Thai word for what they …
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