Search results for: "Kamma"
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- The Practice is Wherever There’s Mindfulness… knowledge of his previous lifetimes, knowledge of how all beings in the universe die and are reborn in line with their kamma, and then finally, what kind of action takes us beyond birth, aging, illness, and death entirely. These knowledges, too, were the result of his own actions. The Buddha was able to do this and, as he said, it was because of qualities …
- Rooted in Desire… As the Buddha said, the workings of kamma are really complex. Sometimes an action may not date just from your last previous lifetime, but from lifetimes before that. How would you ever track that connection down? What you can track down is what you’re doing right now. And as I said, in dependent co-arising, what you’re doing right now—the fabrications …
- Determined on Goodwill… You can’t have ill will for them, because if you do, then your own actions are going to create bad kamma. So you have to bring discernment to this, remembering what goodwill means: Not, “May you be happy doing whatever you’re doing,” but, “May you act in skillful ways and avoid unskillful ways.” Try to keep that thought in mind. As you …
- Three Virtues for the Mind… When we see things happen in the world where people do a lot of good things and yet they seem to suffer, and that seems to disprove the teachings on kamma, the Buddha would simply say that sometimes actions take a long time to show their results. In the case of someone who behaves unskillfully but prospers either now or in the next life …
- Goodwill as Restraint… But at the very least you can say, “Okay, I’m just not going to get involved for the time being.” And remember that everybody has his or her own kamma. But there’s another kind of restraint as well. And that has to do with remembering that you’ve done wrong to somebody and you want to resolve not to do it again …
- Five Steps to Insight… You have to regard them as the result of past kamma. You’re just going to ignore them. There will come a point in the meditation where you try to understand why the mind comes up with these thoughts, but in the meantime, just think, “I’m not going to get involved. That’s not any of my business.” In some cases, they’ll …
- Goodwill Without Limits… They’re creating bad kamma with those good results. You have to feel sorry for them. Then there’s equanimity for the times when you can’t make a change in other people’s behavior, or there are things in your own mind that you can’t change yet. You’re equanimous about them, but that doesn’t mean you give up on them …
- Choiceful Awareness… They’re basic not because they’re simple but because they’re important, like the basic principle of kamma: that our lives are being shaped by the choices we make. We’d rather go straight to choiceless awareness, where everything is already okay and nothing has to be done. Now, it is true that at the moment of awakening the mind is not making …
- The Treasure of Equanimity… What that means in terms of your life is conviction in the principle of kamma: that our actions are what make the difference between finding true happiness and not. The second noble treasure is virtue, not wanting to do anything that would be harmful, learning how to restrain yourself from doing things that would be harmful to yourself or others. Here it’s interesting …
- Because the Mind Is Purposeful… We start with raw material—the potentials coming in from our past kamma. And then, for the sake of having an experience of the present moment, we put these things together. Notice that for the sake of: This fabrication, these processes of intention, aim at something. They’re motivated by desire, and although we may hear a lot of negative things about desire in …
- Don’t Underestimate Merit… At the same time, you’re looking after your own welfare because you don’t create the kind of kamma that will come back and bite you. Other people benefit; you benefit, too. In fact, when the Buddha talks about helping other people, it’s basically getting them to observe the precepts as well. After all, they are agents and they’re going to …
- A Heart & Mind of Goodwill… But then the kamma of having hit them may last for a long time, even into future lifetimes. To think in this way about happiness, that’s the head part, realizing the practical principle that if your happiness depends on someone else’s suffering, it’s not going to last. Then there’s the heart part. When you learn how to empathize with others …
- Wisdom as a Tool… The Buddha’s teachings on kamma contain a riddle. Our experiences depend to some extent on the past, but we also have this ability to choose in the present moment. We have a certain amount of freedom in our choices. But what is that freedom? Why is it there? How can we make the most use of it? That’s where you want to …
- Admirable Friendship, Inside & Out… They have conviction in the principle of kamma, they’re virtuous, they’re generous, and they’re discerning. You try to become a friend with people like that, and you try to emulate their qualities. You ask them about their conviction, their generosity, their virtue, their discernment, and then you try to follow their example. Most difficult, of course, is the discernment. You find …
- Taking Risks… His teachingd on kamma, his teaching on rebirth, his teaching on the nature of how our sense of self is made: Some people find them immediately appealing, some people find them off-putting. And the Buddha himself could offer no empirical proof that these teachings were true. He said that if you put them into practice you will ultimately prove these things for yourself …
- Culture Shock… conviction in the Buddha’s Awakening, conviction in the principle of kamma. The Buddha was a human being; he did it through his own actions. You’re a human being; you can do it through yours. This also requires having a single-minded focus, a single-minded respect for your desire for a really single, totally unadulterated happiness — a happiness that doesn’t keep …
- The Graduated Discourse… We talk about the graduated discourse leading from mundane right view—the principle of kamma, the goodness of generosity—and then taking you to transcendent right view: the four noble truths. But it’s also doing more. It’s developing other factors in the path as well. You have a sense of well-being. But you also have a sense of heedfulness, the dangers …
- Imagining Freedom… He defines kamma as intention only once in the Canon. His definition of sensuality occurs only once in the Canon. His definition of the world occurs only twice. His definition of the two kinds of nibbana, the nibbana experienced while you’re alive, and the nibbana experienced at death: That occurs only once. It doesn’t mean, simply because the occurrences are so few …
- Developed in Body & Mind… After ranging around previous lifetimes, seeing all the beings in the universe dying and being reborn in line with their kamma, he realized that the best use to make of all that extensive knowledge was to bring it back into the present moment: What were his intentions right now? What were his views right now? He anchored the mind to the breath to keep …
- Only Natural… those terms, but that’s often what our emotions present us with—either you give in to the emotion and act on it and then you’re going to have bad kamma, or you fight it off and bottle it up and it turns into cancer. Those are the options they give us. So you’ve got to question those options. There must be …
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