Search results for: past karma
- Page 2
- Working Around Past Karma
- The Anatomy of the Present… That intention is your present karma. What’s coming in through your senses comes from your past karma. Sensory contact comes after intention in the list, which means that your present karma is actually prior to your past karma as you experience it. There’s another passage where the Buddha equates that past karma with your experience of the world. We know the world …
- The Skill of Not Suffering… Because regardless of the fact that we can’t do anything about our past karma, we’re constantly creating present karma, so try to be always creating good karma in the present. This distinction between past karma and present karma also relates to suffering. There are two kinds of suffering. There’s the suffering that comes from the simple fact that you’re in …
- The River of Karma… It’s the same with bad actions from the past. If your mind is expansive, then the results of those actions are going to be mitigated by the good karma you’re creating in the present moment. The good state of mind you’re creating: That is a kind of karma. This is an important principle to keep in mind, that when you attain …
- Your Karma Comes First… It’s good in the past, good in the present, good in the future. In other words, you think of times when you’ve been virtuous in the past and been generous in the past, and the mind gets a sense of well-being. As you’re in the process of being virtuous, in the process of being generous, meditating, the mind is light …
First Things First
Did the Buddha Teach Free Will?
… the results of past intentions—your old karma; present intentions; and the results of present intentions. Your present intentions are the determining factor as to whether the mind does or doesn’t suffer in any given moment. They’re also the factor where freedom can come into the mixture. Past karma is a given, providing the raw material that your present karma can shape …Show 3 additional results in this book- Karma & Gratitude… And it’s because of the nature of karma that you do. There were people who taught that whatever people do is totally determined by, say, the stars or some creator god or their past karma. In other words, people don’t have choices. So when your parents had you, they had no choice in the matter. When they raised you, they had no …
- Equanimity & Karma… Of course, that requires that you understand the teaching on karma, and especially that an important part of karma is our freedom of choice. What you’re experiencing right now is a combination of three things: choices you made in the past, sending their results into the present moment—and there are lots of those; then there are the choices you’re making right …
- Feeding your Attack Dogs… a combination of past karma and present karma. While you’re here, you want to watch out for the past karma. While you’re here, you want to watch out for the present karma. Where does that past karma come from? All too often when we think about past karma, we think about previous lifetimes where you don’t know who you were, or …
- The Karma of Narratives… And so we can apply thoughts of karma to the narratives we bring along with us. As you sort through them, on the one hand you can look at the content of the stories in terms of karma. The problem with the principle on karma is that there’s a lot that we don’t know about our past actions, so we have to …
- An Issue of Control… Some people thought that karma was deterministic: Something you’d done in the past was going to totally shape what you’re experiencing right now. Others would say it’s all irrelevant; what you’re doing has no impact on anything. But from the Buddha’s point of view, things that come in from the past have an influence, but you have choices in …
- The Sublime Attitudes… Maybe the results of their past bad karma are simply coming faster than the results of your past bad karma, and you may someday be in a similar place to where they are — or even worse. So you can’t be complacent. And the teaching on karma is not designed to make you complacent. If anything, just the opposite: It’s meant to make …Show 4 additional results in this book
- What You Don’t Like About Yourself… And so in the rush to replace things, sometimes we grab onto some bad raw materials from our past karma and we have some knee jerk reactions, some old habits—the way we put things together that cause a lot of trouble. So the first thing is to learn how to put the present moment together in a better way. This is one of …
-
Head & Heart Together
Head & Heart Together
… The skillful karma of developing these attitudes in the present is so expansive that whatever results of past bad actions may arise, you hardly notice them. A proper understanding of karma also helps to correct the false idea that if people are suffering they deserve to suffer, so you might as well just leave them alone. When you catch yourself thinking in those terms …Show 3 additional results in this book
- Light Merit… Even though you may have some past bad karma that’s ripening right now, you don’t have to suffer from it. What kind of past bad karma might you have? Well, there are pains in your body. The body, as the Buddha said, is old karma. You’re carrying a lot of old karma around you right here: the aches and pains from …
- Present Kamma… When people talk about karma, all too often they’re focusing on past karma, thinking about what they did in the past. Either you know something specific you did in the past, or you just throw everything back on the general principle of past karma. When things go poorly you say, “Oh that’s my past bad karma.” When things go well, “Oh that …
- A Happy Tradition… In many cases there were people whose karma was such that they were going to die soon. But he’d teach them how to become awakened anyhow. Even his foremost disciple, Ven. Moggallana, had some pretty bad karma in his past that was going to follow him all the way into this lifetime. But again, the Buddha taught him how to become awakened, so …
- Karma & the Sublime Attitudes… that they have some actions in their past that lead to suffering. Yet they may have lots of other actions that lead in the opposite direction, to happiness, which may not be showing their results yet. But maybe, if you give them some help, those good actions may start showing their results. Sometimes the teaching on karma is said to be hard-hearted. If …
- The Larger View… There are some people who say the teaching on karma is hardhearted: You see someone suffering and you say, well, there must be some karma back there that’s causing this suffering. But that attitude is hardhearted only if you reserve your compassion for people who are totally pure. After all, you have your own past bad karma. Why should your compassion be limited …
- How the Dhamma Protects… At the same time, the Buddha said that limitless goodwill actually helps protect you from bad karma for the past. He says it weakens the karma. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. But the power of goodwill weakens the bad karma from the past so that it doesn’t have so much of an impact on the mind. But still, that’s …
- Load next page...
