Search results for: past karma
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- Cut the Currents… What’s going to appear at that time, what options will be available to you, will depend on the good karma or bad karma you’ve done in the past. But if you can train the mind so that it doesn’t go flowing out, no matter what, then you’re safe. So, what are these flows? The first one is sensuality. And by …
- Issues of Control… You’re dealing with things coming in from your past karma. These are the potentials you can try to develop here in the present moment. But past karma doesn’t cover everything. You’re also making some choices right now. As the Buddha says, you fabricate these potentials for form, feeling, etc., for the sake of something, and then you have the actual experience …
- Skills to Make You Free… After all, the Buddha said the path we’re following is the path of actions that leads to the end of action, a path of karma that leads to the end of karma. So these skills we’re developing here help us in a lot of ways. What they basically come down to is: Whatever your past, you can be here in the present …
- In Search of What’s Skillful… The next question was, what’s the skillful thing to do with this knowledge? He realized that the important insight was insight into action, insight into karma, that karma was based on intentions, and intentions in turn were based on views. The quality of the intentions on which they acted was what led to good rebirths, mixed rebirths, or bad rebirths. The next question …
Awareness Itself
Visions and Signs
… When they’d report their visions to Ajaan Fuang, he’d warn them, “You aren’t still wrapped up in the past, are you? You’re foolish if you are. You’ve been born and died countless aeons. If you took the bones of all your past bodies and piled them up, they’d be taller than Mount Sumeru. The water in all the …Show 2 additional results in this book- Right Now… maybe some time in the past or what they’re planning to do in the future. But it’s not what you’re doing right now. But when you think about it: What else shapes your life as consistently as your actions? When you’re asked to believe in karma, this is what you’re asked to believe: that what you’re doing is …
- Perceptions Around PainThere’s a passage in the Canon where the Buddha’s reporting a conversation he had with some Jains who claimed that through their austerities, they were burning off old karma. The proof that it was burning off was the pain they were feeling. So he asked them: Have you ever noticed that when you don’t do your austerities, there’s no pain …
- The Solvent for Sticky Narratives… putting it in the context of karma and rebirth. And although we in the West tend to dismiss karma and rebirth as part of the cultural baggage of the Buddha’s teachings, it’s an essential part: a treasure inside. The Buddha didn’t simply pick up an idea that was universally accepted in his time. It was actually hotly debated. There were those …
- True Happiness Starts with Giving… The argument was that everything you do is predetermined by either the stars, or some creator, or your past karma, so that when you actually give something, you didn’t have any choice in the matter, which means there’s no virtue in it. Another argument was that people, when they die, just disappear or are annihilated. So if we’re going to be …
- Potentials Past & Present… It takes you to more and more refined states inside to the point where you find something that’s not shaped by karma—either past or present. That’s when you find the truth that doesn’t change. So when you find the mind thinking back into the past with regret, remind yourself: If things in the past were really good, they wouldn’t …
- Outside of Your Thoughts… Just think of it as your past karma showing itself—good, bad, indifferent. You can give it meaning if you want, but you don’t have to. You have that choice in the present moment. In fact, you have a lot of choices in the present moment. But for the time being, you’re going to choose one thing, to settle in right here …
- Mindful All the Way… One of the Buddha’s discoveries about karma is that you can do a lot of good karma in this lifetime and then have a change of heart, either afterwards or right at the moment of death. You’re no longer confident in the goodness you’ve done. You no longer believe the teachings of the Buddha. That change of heart can pull you …
- Empathetic Joy… As the Buddha said, if you can make your mind large and immeasurable, then the results of your bad past karma hardly make a dent. And empathetic joy is one of the most expansive of the group, because what you’re being asked to do is to be happy for other people’s happiness. You don’t have to think about all the suffering …
- Noble Contentment, Noble Discontent… This is what the Buddha’s teachings on karma are all about. We tend to miss this because we misunderstand karma. We think it’s all about what you did in the past. But for the Buddha, the important karma is what you’re doing right now—what you do with the raw material of the present moment, how you shape it. Given that …
Thoughts About Thinking
… Everybody’s done wrong things in the past. It’s not just you. 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 karma and more karma and more karma. Maybe it’d be good to get out …- Getting the Most Out of the Present… He also says that it’s very unskillful to think that “My past karma is going to come and get me sometime.” Karma is a lot more fluid than that. The best you can do is to remind yourself that was a mistake: “I don’t want to repeat it.” Then spread lots of goodwill: goodwill for yourself, goodwill for the people you’ve …
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The Truth of Rebirth
3 : Rebirth & Action
… Knowledge about karma played a role in the second and third. In the first knowledge, he recollected many eons of his own previous lives: “When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of recollecting my past lives. I recollected my manifold past lives, i.e., one birth, two …Show 2 additional results in this book
- How the Tree Leans… The things that appear in the mind are the results of your past karma. But what you choose to focus on, what you choose to feed on, what you choose to encourage: That’s your present karma. All too often, a thought comes into the mind and we treat it like a little package—a potential present. What’s in here? We open it …
- The Skills of Merit… How does that happen? After all, each person has his or her own karma. But you basically say that you’re happy to share yours with her. If she knows about what you’re doing and approves, that’s her goodness. That’s her merit. That’s her good karma. That’s how merit gets dedicated. But it all comes from the mind. We …
- Lessons from the Buddha’s Awakening… knowledge of his past lifetimes, knowledge of how beings are born after they die in line with their karma, and then knowledge of how to put an end to effluents—in other words, how to get rid of the defilements of the mind that keep you bound to this process of samsara. It was the result of that last knowledge that he, the Buddha …
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