Search results for: "Kamma"
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- Work & Play… This helps you become more sensitive to exactly what that difference between past and present kamma is: What in your present experience is coming from the past—intentions and choices you had and made in the past—and what’s coming from your intentions right now? Where is your intention right now? Where is your present attachment? As you develop the different forms of …
- Wild Horses… So maybe he’s right about rebirth; maybe he’s right about the effects of kamma over the long-term. This doesn’t totally resolve your doubts, but it moves you in the right direction. So try to replace fear of death with fear of being unskillful. I heard someone the other night talk about how if you strive and strive and strive in …
- Up for the Challenge… They have a phrase in Thai, taam yathakam, which means going in line with your old kamma. And the phrase usually describes things going downhill. So what we need to do is develop strengths in mind, and realize that there will be choices that have to be made. We’ll have to make distinctions between what’s a wise choice and what’s a …
- Insight Is a Judgment Call… It becomes your kamma now. It becomes a habit, a quality of the mind. The same with virtue, when you really put virtue into practice by following the precepts: Try to make it an absolute promise to yourself that you’re going to stick to these precepts. You catch yourself about to do things that you used to do and you used to think …
- The Wisdom of Merit… Right there the Buddha’s teaching us some important things about kamma, that we have the freedom of choice, but that we also have to be careful because our actions have results both in the present moment and down the line. So even just the way he teaches the development of merit is teaching some of the important lessons about wisdom. And in the …
- Breath vs. Distraction… And a lot of this has to do with kamma. As the Buddha said, the thoughts that your mind tends to go to bend the mind in their direction, and you find yourself acting under their influence. All too often, the mind’s excuse is, “Well, nobody knows what I’m thinking, and it doesn’t have any impact on the world outside, so …
- Heedful of Death… It has to do with their past kamma, things that suddenly pop up at that moment. And because the mind is weak and feels threatened, it’ll just latch on because it’s not used to not latching on to anything. When your awareness can’t stay with the body, it’s going to grab at anything at all if it hasn’t been …
- Self-Control… Most people live their lives in line with what the texts call yatha kamma, which means in line with your past actions. Your past actions push you in particular way and you just keep going along with the flow. Whatever comes up in your life, you let yourself get swayed by it. Good things come up, you’re in a good mood. Bad things …
- Infinity… You could do bad things in this lifetime and go to a good destination next time, either because you had a fund of good kamma from the past, or you changed your ways and refrained from harmful actions, or developed right view at death. But the basic principle still held. Just because you escaped a bad destination for some bad actions in this lifetime …
- Training Your Inner Critic… After all, your kamma is not going to be measured by whether you were successful in business or in whatever occupation you had. You’re going to be measured by how you held to the standards of skillful conduct, i.e., harmless conduct. That’s going to shape your future. The noble ones want to see you shaping your future in a skillful way …
- Self-Reliance… The principle of kamma can get very complex, but it comes out of this basic observation that some results come right away, other results take time. So as you learn to be judicious, learn how to use your powers of judgment, you get a better and better sense of which things you can pass judgment on immediately, which other things take time, which other …
- Into the Light of Consciousness… In other words, three different levels of kamma: bodily, verbal, mental. These are then discussed in terms of the role they play in taking you to a future destination after you die. Now, there’s a monk scholar who stated that these two levels of fabrication are totally unrelated, and that when we discuss the three levels of fabrication in dependent co-arising, the …
- Outside the Box… The purpose of the teaching at that point, when you’re talking about kamma, is to try to induce people to do skillful things. If you say, “Everything you do is going to lead to pain,” why bother trying to be skillful? So these perceptions are not always useful. It’s through trial and error that you figure out where they’re best used …
- Part I : Basic Instructions… We’re not totally passive, and also not totally subject to the results of past kamma. We have some choices. The more skilled we are, the more we can do with those choices. It’s like being a cook. A really skilled cook can go into a kitchen with just about anything, and come out with a really good dish to eat. Even if …
- The Breath All the Way… Sometimes the arising of these things comes from past kamma, but then it’s up to you to decide whether you want to go with them or not. That decision is your present kamma. It’s like somebody driving up in a car and saying, “Okay, jump in, let’s go.” You actually have the choice to jump in or not jump in, and …
- Bases of Success… Then, at the end of the chanting, we had the chant on equanimity, which is also a way of thinking about kamma as it relates to all beings. It’s for the sake of realizing that there are a lot of things in the world over which you can have no control. If you get worked up about them, you’re wasting your energy …
- Not What You Are, What You Do… And then there’s equanimity for the things that you can’t change, the bad habits you aren’t able to fully eradicate, or the problems that come in from past kamma that you can’t alter. The purpose of equanimity is to keep you focused on the things you can change, so that you don’t waste energy focusing on the things you …
- Seeing Distinctions… So how do we learn about intentions? And why they’re so important? Well, intention, of course, is kamma. It’s what shapes our present moment: intentions from the past, intentions in the present. So we focus the mind on holding to one intention because the best way to get to know intentions is try to keep one going. Then you’ll detect all …
- Right Resolve in Real Life… So even though people are aiming their words at you, you have to learn how to sidestep them and see the words as their kamma, as having nothing to do with you, even though they’re saying your name over and over and over again. Just remind yourself that they’re aiming at their concept of you, and they’re not aiming directly at …
- The Best of a Bad Situation… This is what the teaching on the power of kamma is all about. So that no matter what the situation you know how to find happiness. It’s like being a good cook. A good cook can walk into the kitchen and no matter what food is there in the kitchen can make something really good out of it. So this should be our …
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