Search results for: past karma
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- Large-hearted Equanimity… Think of that phrase we have, purisa-damma-sārathi, “the trainer of people fit to be trained.” There are a lot of people who are not fit to be trained, either because of their past karma or their present karma. The Buddha himself found that the reasons why some people would find awakening listening to his Dhamma talks, and a lot of people would …
- Customs of the Noble Ones… It’s a kind of karma, your karma in the present moment, which as the Buddha pointed out is the important aspect of karma that’s going to determine whether you’re going to suffer from things or not. So here’s a preliminary rule to take on: If you find that by looking at things in a certain way gives rise to lust …
- Benefitting from Admirable Friendship… You don’t take their things, you take their examples, because in that way you pick up their good karma, too. The same principle goes inside: If you’ve got a thought coming in, ask yourself, “Where is this thought going? Where is it coming from? Do I want to ride along with it?” Most of us are like a person who stands by …
- Doing Meditation… He said, “If they’re really genuine insights, you won’t forget them.” If you tried to memorize them, you’d be cluttering up your mind with all sorts of past insights, things that were useful at one point in the past but may not necessarily be useful in the future. But if you develop this quality of sensitivity, this quality of openness throughout …
- Worldly Narratives… Then there’s the whole issue of karma: What did you do in order to maintain those things before they left you? That’s what you’ll be left with: the results of your actions, the imprint that they leave on the mind and the worlds they create for you. Here in the West, we tend to have trouble with the Buddha’s teachings …
- The Fangs of Conceit… To begin with, there’s karma There’ve been some unfortunate, unskillful actions in your past. But there have also been some skillful ones. If there weren’t any skillful ones, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be a human being. So you’ve got some potentials. Where do you use these potentials most wisely? In taking apart this problem of why …
- Lessons in Fabrication… The important thing is that you keep in mind the principle that what you experience right now is partly due to past karma, but not totally due to past karma. In other words, there is some wiggle-room, you might say, in the present moment. All too often, we hear the Buddha’s teachings boiled down to one word: “let-go,” or “accept.” But …
Non-Reactive Judgment
… Whatever happens to get done would have to depend entirely on your past good karma. Your present karma wouldn’t be contributing anything at all—and that wouldn’t get you very far. You need to have a provisional sense of you as being responsible for the path, along with the confidence that you are competent to do it and that you will benefit …- Guardian Meditations… ask them first, “Do you deserve to suffer?” Everybody he met had karma that could induce them to suffer, but they didn’t have to suffer from it. That’s what the teaching was all about. You don’t have to suffer. And again, he didn’t hold people’s past against them. This is the way out. That should be the attitude you …
- Remembering Luang Lung… Someone once had said to him, “You’ve probably got a lot of good karma from your past lifetimes with amulets, which is why so many good amulets come to you.” And he said, “No, it’s not past lifetimes. It’s this lifetime.” As for that money he gained from the lottery, the other half he spent on a trip around the world …
- Three Weapons… Getting the mind to settle down, you can see more clearly where the mind creates its problems—problems that it doesn’t have to create at all—and you can learn how to undo them, untangle them, get past them. So those are your weapons: learning, seclusion, discernment. And as with any weapons. they can be very helpful, but if you misuse them you …
- Antidotes to Craving… At the moment of death, of course, you’ll be pulled back to pleasures of the past. There can be a lot of nostalgia. You miss this, you miss that—this person, that situation. And it’s painful. As the Buddha said, you’ve got to see the drawbacks of sensuality. You could come back and have those pleasures again. But many times, the …
- Samvega… The first is that if you know that your mind has wandered off into something unskillful, you just replace it with something more skillful—as when you’re focused on the breath and you suddenly find yourself thinking about memories of the past, problems in the monastery, problems in the world outside. Those aren’t the issue right now. The issue right now is …
- Not Getting What You Want… There are certain potentials that come in from your past karma, but they’re just potentials. His image is of a field planted full of seeds, and certain seeds are beginning to sprout. It’s the seeds that you water—i.e., you pay attention to them: Those are the ones that will sprout first—and the act of paying attention is part of …
- Occupy Your Body… Sometimes old memories are buried in here, but you’re given the tools to work with them—tools that are related not only to the concentration, but also to the teachings on karma. If you come up against something that’s unpleasant from the past, you have to remind yourself that there was some karma involved. You don’t have to go into all …
- Judging Your Meditation… Now, because you’re judging actions, you have to remember the principle of karma. Some of the things you’re experiencing right now are the result of present actions, and some are the result of past actions. They don’t come with little labels saying this is the result of what you did yesterday afternoon, or this is the result of what you did …
- Mental Balance… On top of that, the Buddha notices that when you develop unlimited goodwill, unlimited compassion, appreciation, equanimity, if you’ve got any past bad karma, the effects, if they hit you when your mind is in expanded state like that, won’t be nearly as strong. He makes a comparison a large salt crystal in water. If you put the salt crystal into a …
- The Buddha’s Vipassana… The question is, “What causes it to arise? And what’s the nourishment? What’s the oomph that spurs it into action?” Some things arise simply through the past karma. If you don’t take them on, they arise and just pass away like little blips. But if you take them on, suddenly they become your present karma, and that’s what you want …
- Hold on to Right View… Other people had gotten that knowledge in the past, but they’d gotten waylaid by the question of, well, given all these changes, what is it that stays the same? Who is it that gets reborn? But he saw that the question was not the who, it was, what was the action, and how do actions give results? Other meditators in the past had …
- The Buddha’s Wisdom… The Buddha identifies these as voices coming from the past—your past karma. Ajaan Lee talks about them as being, sometimes, other consciousnesses in your body. Why are there other consciousnesses in your body? Well, there are little beings in your body. Some you can see; some you can’t see. But they, too, would be a manifestation of past karma. Or you can …
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