Search results for: "Kamma"

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  2. Days Fly Past
     … This practice is what they call the kamma that leads to the end of kamma. You have to actively do this, you have to actively train the mind in this direction. It’s not simply a matter of going back to what might be assumed to be its original nature. There is always the question: Even if it had an original nature that you … 
  3. What You Sense Directly
    The Buddha said there are three kinds of kamma: bodily, verbal, and mental. In some passages, when he’s talking about the kind of kamma that leads to rebirth, he calls them bodily fabrication, verbal fabrication, and mental fabrication. But there are also passages in the Canon that talk about bodily, verbal, and mental fabrication in terms of what you experience as you meditate … 
  4. Approaching Painful Memories as a Meditator
     … I was mentioning this afternoon that the Buddha’s teachings on kamma can really be helpful in areas like this. And not only kamma, but also the immensity of his world view: vast amounts of time, vast amounts of space. He never took a stand on whether the world is infinite or not, eternal or not, but it’s long enough and big enough … 
  5. Right View
     … You can begin to identify which part of the practice is based on old kamma, which part is based on new kamma, which part is based on your present consciousness and all the other things that go along with it, and which part of it is watered by the sense of delight. So the trick here is that once you’ve learned how to … 
  6. The Samsaric Mud Fight
     … He went to Somdet Toh to question him about this: “Why did you keep insisting that the innocent monk had hit the other monk first?” And Somdet Toh said “Well, it’s kamma. If this monk had never hit that other monk, maybe in some other lifetime, he wouldn’t have been hit back.” The idea of settling scores makes sense if you have … 
  7. The Arrows of Emotion
     … That’s your kamma in the present moment, your new kamma. This is where training the mind can make a big difference, helping you to see how you’re shooting yourself. Again, it comes down to that old issue of seeing yourself do things that you know are not quite wise, but you don’t know how to act in a different way. Or … 
  8. Shaping the Present
     … Sometimes you hear about how your experience is shaped by past kamma. But actually, it’s not just your past kamma. If it were just your past kamma, you’d be doomed. You wouldn’t be able to do anything about it right now. Whatever you’ve done is done and you’d just have to sit here and simply receive the results. But … 
  9. Strength of Conviction
     … seeing the whole universe, with all the beings in the universe dying and then being reborn in line with their kamma. This is when he was able to begin to see a pattern. He had trusted in the principle of kamma up to that point—after all, if he hadn’t believed in the power of action, he wouldn’t have tried to find … 
  10. Skilled in Aims
     … You can be living a good life and the results of your good kamma will show, but they might get cut off or interrupted for a while if there’s a drop in your mind-state at the moment of death. And, conversely, you may have some bad kamma, but if you have a change of heart and the mind-state is lifted, you … 
  11. Friends with the Breath
     … And then develop thoughts of equanimity, realizing that ultimately each of us has his or her own kamma, his or her own actions, that we’re each responsible for our happiness and for our suffering. What this means is that you’ve got to work on your own kamma—which is what we’re doing as we’re meditating: working on skillful kamma, the … 
  12. Thoughts About Thinking
     … That thought gets you more and more inclined to think about all of the wrong things that could be done in the future as long as you stay in this cycle of death and rebirth and kamma and more kamma and more kamma. Maybe it’d be good to get out. How are you going to get out? Well, the exit is right here … 
  13. The Mind’s Ostinato
     … Because as the Buddha said, what he taught was kamma that leads to the end of kamma. The noble eightfold path is a path of action. Right view teaches you to look at everything in terms of actions, because then you can watch yourself act and see that certain actions are skillful, others are not. You can let go of the ones that are … 
  14. Inconstancy
     … We have raw materials coming in from past kamma, but we don’t experience them until they’re processed by kamma in the present moment. If our kamma in the present moment is unreliable, then even good things coming in from the past can turn into suffering. So as we meditate, we’re not only letting go of inconstant things outside, we’re also … 
  15. A Blameless Happiness
     … In addition to the general principle of not behaving in harmful ways on the external level, you have to look at your present kamma right now. You’ve got potentials for pleasure and pain in the body. You’ve got potentials for pleasure and pain in the mind, skillful and unskillful qualities in the mind. And it’s the way you attend to these … 
  16. Stay Tuned
     … The field here is your kamma. The fact that you’ve got a body sitting here right now, that’s a result of past kamma. The seed is your consciousness, your awareness. And for any seed to grow, of course, you’ve got to plant it in one place. You don’t move it around. Planting it here today, then digging it up tomorrow … 
  17. 1. The Entertaining Breath
     … This is one of the basic messages of the Buddha’s teaching on kamma, that the present moment is not totally fashioned by your past kamma. You have choices you can make in the present that have an immediate effect. You don’t have wait till your next lifetime to see their results. The effects can come immediately, which means each present moment has … 
  18. When Ill Will Is in Fashion
     … In other words, you believe in the principle of kamma, the principle of rebirth. These are precepts for the mind as you engage with other people. And remember, with the precepts, the important thing is your intentions. If you break a precept unintentionally, it doesn’t count as broken. It’s usually through greed or ill will or delusion that we break the precepts … 
  19. The Dead Snake Around Your Neck
     … It’s just the result of old kamma, but doesn’t create any new kamma. But if it’s not karmic, what are you doing? The way you look at things, the way you think about things, is going to incline your mind in their direction. If you have old ways of looking and don’t change them, your mind gets stuck in big … 
  20. Not-self Is a Value Judgment
     … And you want to ask yourself, “What choices will be for my long-term welfare and happiness?” When you start thinking of selfing and not-selfing as activities, you realize that they fit right in with the Buddha’s teachings on kamma. Basic wisdom around kamma starts with the question, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness … 
  21. Death Without Drama
     … But then we have our kamma. That’s what makes a difference. Now, for most us our kamma is that we want more, as in that other chant we did just now: The world is swept away, does not endure, offers no shelter, has nothing of its own, there’s no one in charge—and yet, we’re all slaves to craving. We want … 
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