Search results for: "Kamma"
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- Rebirth & Not-Self… That wrong view would pull them down, even though they had good kamma in this lifetime. Conversely, there were people who had done bad things in this lifetime, but they developed good kamma after that, or else developed right view at the moment of death, and that pulled them up. So the moment of death is powerful. It showed the Buddha that kamma is …
- Bless Yourself… The Buddha never measured welfare in terms of material wealth as much as he did welfare in terms of having the treasure of good kamma. So when you’re thinking thoughts of goodwill for others, you ask yourself, “What can I do to help these people create good kamma and avoid bad kamma?” That’s an act of kindness and an act of goodwill …
- The Truth of Transcendence… A lot of us resist this teaching because as soon as we think about our past actions having results, we think about all the bad things we did and say, “Oops, they’re going to come and get me.” But that’s not how the Buddha introduced the topic of kamma. When he was talking about mundane right view or the principle of kamma …
- After-work Meditation… One is the reminder of the principle of kamma: that the things that have happened to you are not nearly as important as the things you do. What’s coming at you could be the result of old kamma, but that’s no reason to get down on yourself if it’s very negative. After all, everybody has negative kamma in the past. But …
- How to Change… On the large scale, that refers to bodily kamma, verbal kamma, and mental kamma as they give results in this lifetime and on into the next. But in the present moment, the three fabrications get boiled down to what leads to bodily, verbal, mental kamma on the large scale, and here the Buddha gives different definitions. Bodily fabrication is the in-and-out breathing …
- Unskillful Voices… Then there’s the teaching on kamma. Some people have trouble seeing the connection between the two, but for the Buddha they were very strongly connected. Remember the story of the night of his awakening. His first knowledge was remembering his past lives. The second knowledge was seeing that he wasn’t the only person with past lives. Everybody in the world dies and …
- Choices Now & at Death… As the Buddha said, that’s part of the complexity of kamma. There are some times when you do something bad in this lifetime but you don’t suffer in the next, and vice versa: You do good things in this lifetime and yet you suffer in the next, because the kamma you’re dealing with is not just the kamma in this lifetime …
- Truths of the Will… Often you may find that, given your past kamma, current circumstances are not all that good. But remember several things: One, past kamma is not totally determining what’s going to happen in the future; you make decisions from moment to moment. Two, what you see right now is not the sum total or running balance of your kamma account. Think of your past …
- Kamma & Rebirth… So the Buddha never tried to offer an empirical proof for his teaching on kamma or the teaching on rebirth. The people who claim that science has proven either of these, or that they have proven these principles to themselves in an empirical way, are not doing the Buddha’s teachings any favor. You can’t really prove these things empirically, and people who …
- Unskillful Habits… We’ve often found in the past that we get our way by being angry, but when we stop and look at it, we’re also creating a lot of kamma for ourselves, a lot of bad kamma. We have to stop and think for a while: Anger is not the positive thing we think is. We sometimes we say that injustice wouldn’t …
- Get Out of Yourself… He saw beings passing away and then being reborn in line with their kamma. That was his second knowledge. And although he saw the workings of kamma as very complex, there was the basic principle: You act on skillful intentions, there’s going to be a good destination. You act on unskillful intentions, there’s going to be a bad destination. Now, these can …
- Heedfulness & Confidence… But then there’s the reflection on kamma. And you understand that kamma’s not there just to punish you for your misdeeds. The principle of kamma also works to reward you for your skillful intentions. So we show respect for the training, as that other chant said. There’s training in virtue, concentration, discernment; or generosity, virtue and meditation. These skills provide us …
- A Tale of Two Kings… That’s why the Buddha places such an emphasis on kamma. He calls himself a kamma-vadin, which means someone who teaches action. There were people in his day who taught that human beings had no power of action. Either your actions were unreal or they might be real but they have no impact. What’s going to happen to you is something totally …
- When it’s Hard to Settle Down… But I noticed that when he was dealing with the problems that he was familiar with, the solution was always to think about them from a new angle, based on a combination of understanding kamma and understanding goodwill. The fact of kamma doesn’t mean that people suffer because they deserve to suffer. That’s not the right understanding of kamma at all. Kamma …
- Wise About Mistakes… So, when he teaches the principle of kamma, his attitude is that people do make mistakes, and there’s a healthy way to respond to them—and lots of unhealthy ways to respond to them. The unhealthy ways include saying that what you did doesn’t matter at all. That’s a way of sustaining a person’s self-image—your own or that …
- Mastering Causality… In other words, there’s the result of past kamma, there’s your present kamma, and there’s the result of present kamma. Those are the three things you’re experiencing at any given moment. Of course when we start out, it all tends to be mixed together. It’s just experience. We don’t see these patterns, we don’t see the component …
- The Five Strengths… Your present kamma—i.e., what you’re doing right now—makes a huge difference in how you experience the world. And it turns out that that’s the kamma that really matters; that’s the karma that’s totally under your control, the kind of kamma you can observe. As for what happened in the past, you may have some memories of it …
- The Broken Gong… There’s the raw material coming in from your past kamma. Any sights, sounds, smells, tastes, or tactile sensations that come your way, any ideas that come popping into the mind: They’re all the results of past kamma. The Buddha says to see it that way. But past kamma isn’t everything. How you put it together right now in the present is …
- Determined Goodwill… You have to reflect on how the principles of kamma work, which means you have to focus on the causes: For them to be happy, they’ll have to act skillfully. They’ll have to develop goodwill for others. At the same time, you have to reflect on how to maintain a good state of goodwill in your own mind. This is where you …
- In Training… He can’t teach you knowledge about kamma. Knowledge about kamma comes later, when you actually practice the skills of the training. But he can teach you ahead of time about right view—in other words, something you take on conviction because it makes sense. You don’t know for sure that it’s true, but you know that if you take it on …
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