Search results for: past karma

  1. Page 22
  2. Asalha Puja – Completeness
     … No matter how much your past karma may weigh on you, you always have the choice to do the skillful thing in the present moment. First, of course, that requires getting more sensitive to what the skillful thing would be. Then, once you see it, you make the choice: “Okay, I’m going to go for what’s skillful,” regardless of what you might … 
  3. Protection from Fools
     … There will be things coming in from the past, past karma, but it’s how you deal with those things in the present moment: That’s what makes all the difference. So the skills you need to learn are skills to be learned right here. The place to stand to watch things is right here. The breath provides the space you can use to … 
  4. In Earnest
     … On the one hand, there’s the clinging in the image of the field of karma. Every plant that grows in the field of your karma comes from the seed of consciousness and is watered by your clinging and craving. It’s feeding off of that water. And it’s feeding off of the soil of your actions. As for fire, it feeds, too … 
  5. Letting Go
     … A thought will appear, and that’s a result of your past karma. Your present karma is to decide whether or not to get involved with it. For the time being, with anything else that comes up that’s not related to the breath, you can just say, “Let go.” Don’t get involved. Stop that particular activity. You’ll find that the mind … 
  6. The Power of Human Effort
     … We fabricate it out of potentials that come from our past karma, yet our present actions play a huge role in shaping the way we experience things. Most often, we do it out of ignorance, which is why we suffer. But if you bring knowledge to these fabrications, they can bring an end to suffering. So it’s all about action, starting from things … 
  7. Relating to Kamma
     … But I’m free enough to learn from past mistakes so I don’t have to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.” Part of the emotional problem around kamma is that it seems to be aimed at explaining why people are miserable and blaming them for their misery. But that’s never how the Buddha taught kamma, though. When he first … 
  8. To Take Danger in Stride
     … And a lot of those choices are based on what we’ve seen in the past. Sometimes things in the past can give us guidance as to what we’re facing right now, sometimes not. So we’re always taking a chance but we try to minimize the chances. At the very least, approach every situation with an attitude of goodwill so that if … 
  9. Responsible Happiness
     … Then you have the results of past actions. Those are already done. You can’t go back and change them, but you can make sure that what you’re doing right now is skillful. In other words, it doesn’t harm anybody. You’re not harming yourself. You’re not harming others. You’re not getting them to do harm. That’s an important … 
  10. Reflect on What You’re Doing
     … We hear about the teaching on karma, and all too often we’re taught that your actions in some past lifetime lead to what you are right now, and your present actions will lead to what you will be in the future. But the Buddha himself attacked that idea. He said if your present moment were entirely shaped by your past actions, then if … 
  11. Mindfulness of Death
     … As for fear of things that you’ve done in the past that you might be punished for, the Buddha said the best way to deal with that kind of fear is, one, to remember that just because you’ve done something bad in the past doesn’t mean you have to go to a bad place after you die. Have a change of … 
  12. A Game of Chess
     … There’s an element of past karma there, but there’s also our present karma. The breath is the factor that fabricates your experience of your body. There’s an intentional element in how you breathe, so learn how to take advantage of that. Breathe in a way that’s comfortable; breathe in a way that you can stay focused on. And that simple … 
  13. Directing & Not Directing the Mind
     … Thinking about the past: What does that get you? You can’t go back to the past and change it. You can’t go back and live there. I heard someone say a while back that one of his ways of trying to get the mind to have a sense of well-being was to think of how healthy he used to be. I … 
  14. Reliable Action
     … All the work we do—not only developing the jhanas, but also seeing past lives, and seeing how karma effects the way people are born and pass away and then born again: Those are just footprints, scratch marks, tusk marks. The actual elephant is when you discover that this practice really does lead to the deathless. Then you know for sure that the Buddha … 
  15. Count Yourself Lucky
     … So regardless of what raw material your past karma keeps popping up in the present moment, as long as you’re not in the hell of totally unpleasant sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, ideas, and as long as you’re not in the heaven of totally pleasant sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas, you’re in a good position to practice … 
  16. Metta Metacognition
     … I feel that.” You have to realize that the way you deal with these different voices is going to be really important, because basically they’re the voices of past karma: ideas you’ve had in the past, ways you’ve sought for happiness in the past—which worked to some extent, at least enough to satisfy you at the time. It may not … 
  17. Page search result icon Infinity
     … You could do bad things in this lifetime and go to a good destination next time, either because you had a fund of good karma from the past, or you changed your ways, refrained from harmful actions, or developed right view at death. But the basic principle held. Just because you escaped a bad destination for some bad actions in this lifetime didn’t … 
  18. Your Desire to Practice
     … back to the old pleasures that you’d known in the past, that you’ve lost and you want them again. This is why it’s useful to think of the Buddha’s perspective in that second knowledge: seeing beings in the world dying and being reborn in line with their karma again and again and again. And their world is not going anywhere … 
  19. The Languages of Right View
     … There’s the language of karma, which talks about actions, people who do actions, people who receive the results of actions, the worlds they live in, and the worlds they create. And then there’s the language of the four noble truths, which doesn’t talk about worlds or people at all. It talks simply about actions and whether they lead to suffering or … 
  20. Take the Buddha Seriously
     … You begin to realize that the feelings are there, not just willy-nilly, and they’re not totally the result of past karma. They’re based on what you’re doing right now. So you turn to look more and more at your own actions right now. Realize you’ve got bodily fabrication with the breath, verbal fabrication with the way you’re talking … 
  21. The Brahmaviharas on the Path
     … There’s a passage where he talks about reflecting on the fact that you’ve made mistakes in the past. You’ve broken the precepts, harmed other people. The proper attitude to have toward that, he says, is to realize that you can’t go back and undo the mistake, and sitting there stewing about it is not going to help, either. So you … 
  22. Load next page...