Search results for: past karma

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  2. Goodwill in Action
     … He always thinks of people not so much as recipients of past karma but as active agents doing karma now in the present and on into the future. He gives everybody the dignity of having freedom of choice. It’s good to keep that principle in mind when you’re spreading thoughts of goodwill. When you’re spreading goodwill for yourself, it’s basically … 
  3. All Your Old Baggage
     … But remember that the important element is what you bring to the present moment as opposed to what you’re bringing from the past. And that way you find that things coming in from past karma—feelings of pain, pleasure—are not nearly as important as what you make out of them. It’s possible to take the potential for pleasant feeling and actually … 
  4. Goodwill All Around
     … Some people have karma that’s going to force them to suffer for awhile, or at least have bad circumstances. The issue of how they respond to those bad circumstances, that’s something they can do something about, perhaps in that way you can help them. In other words, our experience is not totally shaped by past actions, it’s also shaped by our … 
  5. The Power is in Your Hands
     … The Jains taught karma, but they taught that everything you experience comes from past karma. As the Buddha said, that teaches powerlessness, too. If everything comes from a creator god, again, you’re powerless. But with the four noble truths and their duties, the Buddha’s putting the power in your hands. So show some appreciation for that fact, and use it well.
  6. Breath Energies
     … Reflection on karma is often useful as well. There are certain issues in life where we feel that we’ve been unjustly treated, and it’s good to remember that karma has been going on for a long, long time. And the back and forth that we’ve had with one another has been so, so long and so complex that there’s really … 
  7. Where to Look in the Present
     … This is how the teaching on karma relates to the practice of meditation, because karma is all about intention: the way intention shapes your present moment and the way it shapes things on into the future. When you’re meditating, you’re primarily focused on the issue of how intention shapes the present moment and how your experience of the body changes simply through … 
  8. You Can Do It
     … I can’t remember all the qualities of the conduct and the knowledges, but they included knowledge of past lives, knowledge of beings dying and being reborn in line with their karma, and most importantly the knowledge of the ending of the effluents. As for consummation in conduct, that includes restraint of the senses, moderation in eating, wakefulness, being consummate in your virtue, working … 
  9. You’ve Got Work to Do
     … It has to do with karma, has to do with just the fact that this is the world we’re in. We’re in the human world. In this world there are going to be physical pains; that’s part of having a body. In this world there are going to be hurtful words, just by having to live with other people. The human … 
  10. A Valuable Gift
     … They’ve obviously got some good karma from the past, but how many people actually use their power well? There was an ajaan in Thailand who taught one time about the three types of merit: the merit that comes from generosity, the merit that comes from virtue, the merit that comes from meditating. He was talking to a lot of people who tended to … 
  11. The Origination of Suffering
     … People with pretty mixed karma can come here, and so you’re bound to meet up with all kinds. If you allow yourself to get upset about those things, you tend to forget: It’s you who are getting upset because you cling to things inside, you’re craving things inside. That’s where the problem is—which is why, when we come to … 
  12. To Practice Dying
     … I really am going to go to hell.” Don’t fall for that thought, because you’ve got good karma as well. This is why it’s important to remember the principle of karma, that we have lots of different karmic potentials. We don’t have to go with the bad ones. Try to nourish the good ones. You can do that even at … 
  13. How Right Mindfulness Leads to Right Concentration
     … past any anger you might be carrying around from the day. Remind yourself that however you’re going to deal with other people, you want to make sure that your goodwill comes first, so that you don’t act on ill will. If you act on ill will, your actions are going to be unskillful, and there you are, stuck with bad karma. So … 
  14. Making a Difference
     … And how are you going to find it? Through your actions, your karma. A lot of people have problems with the teachings on karma, but essentially this is what underlies the whole project we’re undertaking here. What we do is going to make a difference. We can’t be sure about the extent that what we do will make a difference in the … 
  15. The Karma of Self & Not-Self
     … And when you lose them, you get them back—as you have, many, many times in the past. What’s serious, he says, is loss of virtue and loss of your right view. These are areas where the world says, “Oh, those things are not important.” So you can see the Buddha’s values are very different from most people’s. He looked at … 
  16. A Friend to the World, A Friend to Yourself
     … You don’t know what kind of bad karma you may have in the past, so you’ve got to create as much good karma as you can right now. Here’s your chance to do something good for yourself and for the world around you. So you develop the kind of conviction that, yes, your actions do matter. That’s what conviction comes … 
  17. The Real World Isn’t for Real
     … So either you’re creating bad karma or you’re setting yourself up to create more bad karma in the future. And yet they say that they’re real. They may be real but they’re not really for real. If you want something that’s for real, you look to the Dhamma, because it’s not only real but also good.
  18. Protection from Remorse
     … Then develop the mind really well so that in case there are any bad actions in your past, you won’t be affected by them. In other words, the mind doesn’t have to be overcome by pains or whatever that come from your past bad actions. So it all depends on you training your mind. The Buddha gives a list of seven qualities … 
  19. Hunker Down
     … After all, we all have past kamma, good and bad, and a lot of the thoughts that appear in the mind come from our past actions, our past intentions. That doesn’t mean you’re responsible for them right now. What you’re responsible for right now is how you handle the situation. And as any good warrior knows, you don’t fight every … 
  20. Bedside Dhamma
     … One is that they’re afraid of losing the body; two, they’re afraid of losing the sensual pleasures they’ve had; and three, they may be thinking of some unskillful things—some cruel things even—that they’ve done in the past, and they’re afraid they’re going to meet up with punishment. Then the fourth reason is they haven’t seen … 
  21. Totally Secure
     … It’s not your karma, unless you make it your karma. You have the choice. So you just stay right here with the breathing. And watch out for when the mind starts leaving the breath, starts fabricating other thoughts, other worlds, fabricating the past, fabricating the future. This is one of the things the mind is really good at, fabrication. The Pali word is … 
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