Search results for: past karma
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- The Brightness of Life… But that term, “going along with the flow,” corresponds to what in Thai they called yathakam, which means simply flowing along in whatever direction your past karma flows—and it tends to flow down. So we do come into the present moment with an agenda: We want to figure out where the problem is and what the solution is. That book I was reading …
- Goodwill Is Respect… Is there a path of practice that can take you past these things? Is there a course of action? He found that there was. So the desire for the end of aging, etc., is to be encouraged if it gets you to practice in line with that path, that course of action. He also showed that if you want to get past pain, distress …
- The Web of Pain… There are things coming from your past karma. When there’s a disease in the body, you can’t simply wish it away. But you can learn to relate to it in a very different way, a way that doesn’t add to the pain and stress already there. So this process of playing with your perceptions or manipulating your perceptions is a very …
- Limitless Compassion, Limited Resources… You see people who are enjoying the fruits of their past good karma, yet they’re abusing their good fortune. And you can’t stop them. There are people you want to help but you have only so much energy. So that’s why you have to develop equanimity along with all the other brahmaviharas. It may seem strange. On the one hand, you …
- Coming into the Present… It’s because the Buddha discovered synchronic causality that he realized that we’re not a victim of past fate, our old karma, orsome primary cause or ground of bein, or first mover. There are decisions that are being made freely in the present moment all the time that are having an impact in the present moment, too. If you learn how to get …
- Taking Charge… If you look back at your past, there are many actions that point in different directions. The story could head off in all kinds of directions from here. And so with each choice, you’re deciding which parts of your past are relevant, which parts get stitched into the overall story, and which parts are just extra bits and pieces left over. So what …
Happiness as a Skill : The Practice of Puñña
… In other words, the karma of virtue and vice, both inner and outer, is much stronger than the karma of generosity, so there’s no truth to the idea that the puñña of generosity can buy your way out of the results of a life of corruption or crime. A better way to compensate for any past misdeeds would be to recognize them as …- The Buddha’s Universal Solvent… all because of our karma—the intentions we act on—and the views we hold in mind. That insight began to dissolve a lot of the stories: the stories where you’ve been the victim of something or of somebody’s actions. Well, you have to accept the fact that you’ve probably victimized other people in the past: not necessarily the person who …
- Goodwill Without Limits… That then becomes your karma. So remember, you’re not doing it for them. You’re doing it primarily for yourself. The question of whether they deserve your goodwill or don’t deserve your goodwill shouldn’t come into the equation. Questions of deserving don’t matter right here, because if you’re going to be skillful only to people you feel deserve your …
- Time & Place… When you’re talking about karma, you talk about the three kinds of feeling: pleasant, painful, neither pleasant nor painful.” That’s because when you’re talking about karma, the question is what to do: What would be the skillful thing to do? What would be the skillful thing not to do? If the Buddha taught that all actions lead to pain, what impetus …
- The Fabrication of Pain… A lot of things that bother us in life are not simply “givens.” We’ve taken some raw material from our past karma and have shaped it into something oppressive. That’s the kind of pain that the Buddha is focusing on—the pain that comes from craving. And it’s endowed with wrong view, wrong resolve, all the way down to wrong concentration …
- How to Straighten Out the World… There’s no future breath you can watch, there’s no past breath you can watch. If you’re with the breath, you know you’re in the present. So keep the breath in mind: That’s mindfulness. Then watch the breath as it’s coming in, as it’s going out: That’s alertness. You also need alertness to make sure that your …
- The Prison Break… As for things from the past, they’re gone. You should be facing forward as to what you can do right now, because what you’re experiencing right now is not totally shaped by the past. Some things are coming in from your past karma, but you have the choice to decide which potentials you’re going to focus on, how you’re going …
- Fighting Spirit… that you didn’t have any choice in the present moment in terms of the pleasure or pain that you experience—either because pleasure or pain were determined totally by your past karma, or because it was determined by some creator or some other impersonal force; or because everything was totally random; that you had no idea of how to connect cause and effect …
- Your Ancestral Territory… What did the Dhamma teach that other people have been able to use to get past suffering? My sufferings, even though they may be modern American sufferings, are at the basis no different from the sufferings and the defilements of people in that time. They were able to find their way out. Why can’t I?” And you approach every problem with the brahma …
- Stop Shooting Yourself… This connects with that teaching on not suffering from your past karma, by developing a limitless mind like the water in a river. You could put a big lump of salt into the river, and as long as the river is clean, the fact that there’s so much water means you can still drink the water. Not like the water in a cup …
- A Good Place to Stay… After all, their actions are their karma. They have the perfect right to do anything, think anything, and say anything they want. They may hold you in contempt, but they’ve got the right to do that. Whether it’s right or not, you don’t have to settle that issue. Remind yourself that you don’t have to make your mind depend on …
- Occupy Your Space… Other thoughts will come in, sounds will come past, but you don’t have to pay them any mind. If a sense of light appears or a vision of your own body, don’t pay these things any mind. If there’s a vision of white light, you can bring it into the body, because it’s soothing, refreshing. But the main principle is …
- Solidly Here… But he never says that about karma. There’s the passage we chant regularly: “We’re the owners of our actions.” This is something we really are responsible for. Our actions right now are to get the mind to settle down so that we can look at our other actions clearly. Whatever comes up in the mind: It might be a great insight, it …
- What to Keep in Mind… It helps you recognize what’s skillful and what’s not, and t helps you remember whatever experience you’ve had in giving rise to skillful thoughts in the past, whatever times you’ve gotten good results, whatever times you’ve gotten bad results from trying to maintain something skillful or trying to get rid of something unskillful. Because this is a skill. There …
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