Search results for: past karma
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- A Clear, Calm Lake… There are going to be influences coming in from your past karma that you can’t do anything about, but then there are going to be the things you can do through your present karma. Those are the things that make the difference between whether you suffer or not. And that’s what we’re training in. This is where we bring in the …
- Feed the Hungry Mind… The raw material comes from our past karma. These are the ingredients we work with. He’s teaching us that there are right ways and wrong ways to cook. It’s ironic that so many people think that the Buddha didn’t teach any “shoulds.” I sat in on a class one time when a teacher was explaining the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta. The first …
- The Energy to Be Generous… If you find that when your bad karma comes back at you and you respond in an unskillful way, that just adds more bad karma to the equation and puts you into a tailspin. So you’ve got to learn how to think: “Okay, this is not unbearable.” The fact that people say bad things, learn how to let it go right past. Don …
- Acceptance… We often hear that the Buddha taught that past karma totally shapes the present moment. You hear it again and again: what you’re experiencing now is the result of past karma, what you’re doing now will shape things in the future. But the Buddha actually attacked that view. He said instead that what you do right now can shape right now. He …
- Read the Breath… His first knowledge in the night was knowledge of his past lives. In other words, he looked at his personal narratives, his stories. Now, his stories went way back. Maybe we can’t remember our previous lives, but at least we can remember what we’ve done in the past as best we can. So if you’ve got a problem in life, the …
Meditations 11
Glossary
… Tendencies related to past kamma. Vinaya: The monastic discipline. Vipassana: Insight. Wat (Thai): Monastery.- Injustice… In other words, if you see there are areas where you can’t bring about a change for the better, then you just have to let those areas go, realizing the limitations of karma: Your own karma and the karma of other people sometimes puts up obstacles. When you can recognize those obstacles—when after you’ve tried to help you find that you …
- Pain… Your past karma throughout life may have an influence on where you may go, but your karma at the moment of death, where you’re making choices, will also have a huge impact. Which means you don’t just surrender to whatever. You try to see what you can do to further your practice even then. Virtue: You try to keep your mind at …
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The Karma of Questions
The Agendas of Mindfulness
… Bhāvanā is a type of karma—the intentional activity ultimately leading to the end of karma—but karma nonetheless. This point is underlined by another Pāli term for meditation: kammaṭṭhāna, the work at hand; and by a Thai idiom for meditation: “to make an effort.” These terms are worth keeping in mind, to counterbalance the common assumption that meditation is an exercise in inaction …Show one additional result in this book
- What Are You Taking into the Future?… Your relationship to the past and your relationship to the future get changed. The past is just a memory right now. It’s gone. The future’s not here yet. So when thoughts of past and future come in, remember they’re just thoughts. The reality of the karma that you’re creating right now: That’s what’s actually there in the present …
- Test Everything… A lot of it has to do with your past karma, the strength of your defilements. The stronger your defilements, the more painful the practice is going to be. You can take it as pretty certain that most of the people whose practice was going to be quick and easy were collected by the Buddha when he was alive. So here we are, left …
- Bigger than the World… In that way, any other influence that may come past doesn’t get a chance to come in. You don’t get carried away by thought worlds. You don’t get carried away by all the bubbles that the mind blows or that other people blow past you. Ajaan Chah has a nice image. He says it’s like being in a house where …
- The Culture of the Practice… Do you have to do that? Can you see the pain as something that’s past, past, past, going away, going away? How does that change your relationship to it? How does that change the relationship to how much you can endure? After all, those are the values you look for in this culture. You want people who have powers of endurance, people who …
- Driver’s Ed… Sometimes, when we hear the teaching on karma, it sounds like we’re simply on the receiving end of things we did in the past. But then, of course, that would mean, in the past, we were on the receiving end of things that we did before that. Infinite regress. There’d be no choice, no freedom of choice. There’d be no purpose …
- Remorse… The teaching on karma is not meant to explain the horrible things that happen to people or to justify meting out misery to them. It’s supposed to be used to explain how you can find a way out—so that whatever you did in the past, there’s a way out for you. Think of Angulimala. He killed 999 people and yet he …
- Alternative Conceptions… This path that we’re following, as the Buddha said, is a kind of karma: the karma that puts an end to karma. So it’s a kind of intention. And there’s attention, the way you look at things. You could look at things in terms of your self, or you can look at things in terms of four noble truths, which basically …
- Change Your Perceptions… The potentials for the present may come from past kamma, but because these potentials don’t get actualized until you contribute your present-moment karma—what you intend in the present moment, what you fabricate in the present moment—that gives you some freedom in how you’re choose to fashion things. Whether you’re going to choose to fashion a path or not …
- Strength in Humor… Now, you realize that there are limits to what you can do, because there’s that thing called karma. There’s not just present karma; there’s past karma as well, and past karma can’t be changed. Some things are beyond you, either in terms of what you can do, of what other people can accept, or of what help other people can …
- Pleasing to the Noble Ones… Part of the reason why they’re conducive to concentration is that if you’re not breaking the precepts, then when you look back on your actions during of the day—or during the past week, the past month, whatever—you realize you haven’t harmed anybody. You haven’t killed anything, you haven’t stolen anything, you haven’t had illicit sex, you …
- Stay with the Knowing… Then there’s the question of what your karma’s going to be. There are so many battles fought in the world that are totally useless. What happens, of course, is that people end up creating a lot of karma. Then they carry the karma with them, while whatever victory they won is left behind. It’s totally meaningless. Learn how to draw on …
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