Search results for: past karma

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  2. Sanity for the Holidays
    In the past, we used to have people coming into the monastery at this time of year to escape the holidays. Here there’s no mention of the holidays, no mention of Christmas, almost nothing to remind you that there is such a thing. No Christmas carols, no Santa Claus. People found that more than just refreshing. It was an island of sanity. This … 
  3. Cleaning up Your Personal Environment
     … The type that comes from influences from your past karma, the type that comes from other people’s actions: That’s suffering outside of you. But there’s also the suffering that you’re creating by pulling these things in through your craving, through your ignorance. Ignorance is the source of the suffering that really does weigh down the mind. You want to make … 
  4. Fighting Attitude
     … For example, equanimity in the sense of reflecting on karma: that if you get involved in wishing ill to other people, what kind of karma is that for you? Where is it going to take you? Does it take you someplace you want to go? Well, not really. If their karma really is bad, it’ll take care of itself. You don’t have … 
  5. Book search result icon Beyond Desire & Passion 2. An Affirmation of Power
     … Contrary to a popular misconception, it wasn’t the case that everyone in the Buddha’s time believed in the power of karma, or action. Most of the alternative teachings of the time actually taught that karma was either unreal or powerless. The brahmans, for instance, taught that members of other castes were powerless to perform the rituals and sacraments needed to ensure well … 
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  6. A Good Narrative
     … As for the setbacks that inevitably come, we can chalk them up to past karma. But they don’t mean the end of anything. We’ve got the news this morning that a young monk I knew had die of a freak accident over in Thailand. He’d been ordained only five years and showed a lot of promise. He’d encountered a lot … 
  7. From Dependence to Independence
     … You’ve got results of past karma coming in, you’ve got your present karma, and together they create a complex system. As the Buddha said, if you try to trace back all patterns of cause and effect even in just your own actions, you’d go crazy, to say nothing of all the actions that are happening in the world. So it’s … 
  8. The Five Strengths
     … Or if you think that everything is determined by past karma, that gets in the way as well. 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 … 
  9. Samvega
     … In the five recollections, the reflection on karma is the reflection that offers hope. There is a way out of the suffering of aging, illness, and death. Under the sublime attitudes we have pretty much the same passage, but in that context, the reflection on karma is for equanimity. So put those ideas together: Equanimity is what offers us hope. We can watch what … 
  10. The Power of Focus
     … You’re not creating any bad karma, you’re not creating states of the mind that will tempt you to look past or override your precepts. And in that way, you’re safe in all ways, safe all-around.
  11. Reflecting on the Requisites
    We used to have traveling salesmen coming past Wat Dhammasathit. They’d drive down the road in their trucks with their wares in the back and a loudspeaker on the top. Most of them didn’t have very fancy spiels. The man who sold salt would just say, “Salt, Salt, Salt,” as he drove down the road. The man who sold those big water … 
  12. Cooking with Kamma
     … in another lifetime, other lifetimes in the past. It’s like those seeds of the chaparral plants that can lie dormant for many, many years and then give rise to a plant only when the conditions are right. So when you look at kamma coming up—and it’s coming up all the time, your past kamma—you see it right here as you … 
  13. Food for the Mind
     … its own foolishness, its own stupidity, its own dishonesty in the past. That’s another reason why it’s so important that the mind gets nourished from the practice of concentration. The Buddha actually talks about five qualities of mind that nourish its strength. First is conviction in the principle of karma—in other words, that what you do is going to bear results … 
  14. An Auspicious Day
     … After all, we have no idea when death will come, and where our karma’s going to take us afterwards. We try to do our best to make skillful choices here in this lifetime, but there are some possibilities of unskillful choices we’ve made in the past that might get in the way. So you want to do your best as soon as … 
  15. Patterns to Happiness
     … If there’s the question of deserving happiness, or not deserving happiness, remember that the Buddha never uses the word “deserve.” No matter how bad your past karma is, he never says that people deserve to suffer. When someone does a particular kind of action, that particular kind of action will lead to a certain kind of results. But that doesn’t mean that … 
  16. Respect for Concentration
     … Try to keep this going as you go through the day so that whenever the opportunity comes or the necessity comes up that you have to speak or engage with other people, you’re coming from a good place—so that the karma that comes from that interaction is good karma, and your words and deeds can be a gift to the people you … 
  17. Defilements at the Door
     … The fact that they’re coming to the door comes from the past karma you’ve committed, either in this lifetime or previous lifetimes, but your question in the present moment is: Are you going to let them in? Then you examine them, “Why do they keep coming? Where are they coming from?” It’s when you hold them in check like this that … 
  18. Trust in the Power of the Mind
     … You don’t know if the Buddha’s right or wrong about things like rebirth or karma. But you do know that they’re good things to believe, in the sense that they affirm your power to shape your life in a good way. Think about that reflection we chant regularly: “I’m subject to aging, illness, death, separation from all that is dear … 
  19. Subduing Greed & Distress
     … Or think in terms of karma: What you’ve done in the past was done in the past; there’s nothing much you can do about it. But you can put the mind in good shape right now, so that when bad things come in from the past, you’re much more prepared to deal with them. As the Buddha said, if your mind … 
  20. Effort against the Hindrances
     … If you can get past your interest in your own thoughts, and the way you tend to side with the hindrances, then it’s easier to put in the effort to fight them. In other words, base your persistence, which is the second base for success, on the first base: the desire to actually get the mind into concentration and to get past these … 
  21. Insight from Developing Concentration
     … They come from past karma but they’re also involved with your present karma, what you’re doing right now, what you choose to pay attention to or not pay attention to. You start seeing where their allure is. Again, a lot of the allure has to do with what you are and are not paying attention to. You see this in sexual fantasies … 
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