Search results for: "Kamma"
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- Pissing on Palaces… You take your kamma; you take the qualities of mind you’ve developed. So you need to make sure that you’ve got some good qualities to take with you. What we’re living for as meditators is to develop the qualities—in some cases they’re called the noble treasures—of conviction, virtue, a sense of shame and compunction over the idea of …
- Inner Refuge Through Inner Strength… The first is conviction—conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, the three knowledges he gained on the night of his awakening, and most importantly the knowledge he gained about kamma: that actions have results, and that the results depend on the intentions inspiring the action and the skill with which you carry it out. And you really do have the choice—you have the …
- The Economy of Goodness… In fact, the Buddha talks about your good kamma as being like wealth, noble wealth: the kind of wealth that fire can’t burn, floods can’t wash away, nobody can steal. It’s yours. Even as you leave this lifetime, it goes with you. In some ways, it actually goes before you, prepares the way. So it’s good to think about that …
- The Buddha’s Basic Therapy… For example, there’s the “blaming the victim” attitude toward kamma, saying, “Well, people are suffering right now, and the fact that they’re suffering means they deserved it.” That’s not the case; the Buddha never talks about anybody deserving anything. It’s just that there’s action and then there are results. The actual pleasure or pain, happiness or suffering, that we …
- The Practice of Right View… The things we intentionally do with our body, with our words, and with our thoughts all count as kamma and they all have results. There’s no such thing as idle thinking. It may be idle in its intent, but it actually has an impact on the mind. It’s something you’re doing, and it leaves kammic traces. Just as the Buddha discouraged …
- To Be Debt Free… The Thais have the concept of what they call your kamma-debt collectors, the people you’ve harmed in the past. And as Ajaan Lee points out, we’re in debt to all those whose flesh we’ve eaten and to all the farmers who’ve provided us with vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. We’re in debt to our parents for having raised …
- The Noble Eightfold Path to the Deathless… There’s mundane right view, which talks about the basic principle of kamma and how it relates to rebirth. Then there’s transcendent right view, which is the four noble truths. That, too, is an explanation of action. Actions of craving lead to the result, which is suffering. Actions of the noble eightfold path lead to the result, which is the end of suffering …
- See Yourself as Active Verbs… Even if they can’t get you, your kamma will, at least to some extent. Identify yourself with the thoughts in the mind that say, “I want to find a happiness that’s harmless; I want to find a happiness that’s reliable,” and have a sense that you can do this, that you can depend on yourself. You can develop the qualities. You …
- Clearing a Space… Discernment needs the strength that comes from concentration, that comes from mindfulness and alertness, that comes from your conviction in the principles of kamma. All the five strengths—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment—have to work together. Otherwise your discernment will just start analyzing things and get further and further away from what’s actually happening in the mind. That’s not the kind …
- All Three Functions of Mindfulness… Even the ones who get the gulp of water die anyhow, and because they harm one another, there’s kamma that goes with that. That’s the way it is in the world. And it’s not just fish. This is the way human beings live. So, when a thought comes up to the mind and pulls you away from the practice, pulls you …
- To Escape the Prison of Time… The second was knowledge of how beings, after their death, are reborn in line with their kamma. And the third was the knowledge of how to put an end to the effluents, in other words, the currents of defilement that come flowing out of the mind and that lead to more becoming and more suffering. Those are the three knowledges that he found most …
- Staying Power… For example, with anger—the normal ways that people deal with anger are either to express the anger, which creates bad kamma, or to bottle it up. Of course, what happens to bottled anger? It ferments and then it explodes the bottle. And even before it explodes the bottle, people can sense that there’s a radioactive bottle in you, which if you’re …
- Strong Through Commitment… You’ve got some raw material coming in from your past kamma and then you engage in this process of fabrication to turn that material into something that’s coherent, that you can actually use. The problem is, if you do this with ignorance, you put things together in a pretty bad way. So a lot of the Buddha’s teachings are specific instructions …
- A Well-Thatched Roof… You’re not creating any bad kamma with anybody. You’re not creating any unskillful mental states. There may be a slight attachment to the pleasure of concentration, even a strong attachment, but it’s a healthy attachment. You sometimes hear warnings about the dangers of concentration, but the danger of concentration lies in wrong concentration: concentration devoid of mindfulness, concentration devoid of alertness …
- Training the Mind to Train the Mind… To get past those thoughts, you can remind yourself of the principle of kamma: We’re the heirs of our actions. What that means is that if you try to trace back who was really at fault, you find that the fault keeps going back, back, and back. When we develop notions of fairness, they usually come down to the fact that there was …
- Generating Desire… That’s part of the way kamma works: If you purify your mind, those who support you will reap great rewards. The Buddha also talks of developing a warrior’s sense of pride and honor in your ability to master the practice. Monks, he says, are like five different kinds of warriors. There’s the warrior who sees the dust of the approaching army …
- Mental Stirrings… That’s the kamma, and that’s the problem. The stirring is not the problem. The problem is what you do with it. You end up creating suffering for yourself, weighing yourself down. And when you weigh yourself down, you weigh down other people around you as well. The question is, how do you see these things? Simply by trying to stay with the …
- Breath, Tranquility, & Insight… What you’re doing here is that you’re using fabrication to settle the mind down in freedom and, in the process, you’re getting more sensitive to the process of fabrication, seeing how much your experience of the present moment really does depend on your present intentions, how you shape things from the raw material that’s coming in from your past kamma …
- Fear & Anger… Certain mental processes still survive—and you want them to survive and arrive in good shape, i.e., carrying lots of good kamma with them. So you don’t want to die in the midst of doing something unskillful. Sometimes when we’re discussing the precepts, people will bring up situations such as, “What if someone is going to kill you if you don …
- Fear of Death… The principle of kamma, which sometimes sounds deterministic, is actually a very fluid and complex process, one with room for making changes in the present moment. One of the things you can do to counteract the harmful effects from unskillful things you’ve done in the past is to develop an attitude of goodwill for all beings without limit. The Buddha calls it an …
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