Search results for: past karma
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- The Treasure of Equanimity… Our experience of pleasure and pain is shaped by our actions, past and present. Traditionally, this chant is one way of developing equanimity, although it’s useful to note that there’s a passage in the Canon where the Buddha talks about ways of dealing with aversion, and one way is to develop equanimity. Another is to reflect on the principle of karma – that …
- A Genius about Your own Mind… Because the mind finds it so easy to slip off to the past and the future, it’s quite an accomplishment to stay right here continually with the breath coming in and going out. So whatever skills can get you here, either by taking an interest in the mind in the present or by taking an interest in the breath in the present, you …
- Over-informed… The question again was, “What’s the best use of this knowledge for putting an end to suffering?” He realized that it was in the lessons he had learned having to do with the power of karma in the present moment. So he focused back on the present moment. “What am I doing right now?” “How do I understand what I’m doing right …
- Elephant Training… You can look for what you’re doing and then change it because experience is not totally a given from your past karma. Some of the things you’re experiencing in the present moment are actually the result of your intentions in the present moment. It’s a combination of both. As the mind gets more trained – as you learn how to keep it …
- Values… Imagine someone who’s seen eons and eons of past lifetimes, seeing the whole universe full of beings dying and being reborn based on their karma. And from that perspective, he said: You lose your relatives, you’re going to get them back. You lose your wealth, you’re going to get it back again—and again and again. And you’re going to …
- Watching Over Time… It was this realization that made the Buddha realize further that the principle of karma really does work. If it were impossible to develop skills, then we wouldn’t really know, when we act, whether we’re really acting through our own will, or if something is acting through us, or really, if there’s action happening anyway at all, or if it’s …
- To Have a Purpose… It was only in the second watch of the night—when he gained knowledge into seeing how all beings die and then are reborn in line with their karma—that he saw the larger pattern. But even then, the larger pattern for most beings is just going around and around and around. It was in the third watch of the night that he found …
Four Noble Truths
A True Teacher
… Conviction, here, means conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, and particularly in the principle of kamma (karma) that the Buddha discovered in the course of his awakening: that your experience of pleasure and pain comes from your own actions, either present or past. Virtue means abstaining from five forms of harm: killing living beings, stealing, engaging in illicit sex, telling lies, and taking intoxicants …
Breath vs. Distraction
… A lot of those drawbacks have to do with karma. As the Buddha said, the things that your mind tends to go to bend the mind in their direction, and you find yourself acting under those influences. All too often, the mind’s excuse is, “Well, nobody knows what I’m thinking, and it doesn’t have any impact on the world outside, so …- Teachings to Rahula… Don’t think that the teaching on karma means that you do something now and you reap the results only in the next lifetime. You spit into the wind right now, it’s going to come right back at you right now. You put your finger into the fire right now, it’s going to burn right now. But not everything shows its results …
- The Questions of Suffering… You’ve got a potential coming in from past karma—a potential for a feeling, a potential for a perception, and so forth—and you take that and form it into an actual experience, an actual aggregate. There’s an element of intention in each one, which means you can do things with these aggregates by changing your intentions. You don’t just accept …
- Alone at Death, but Not Lonely… What’s going on here? What are the decisions that are being made? As the Buddha said, we shape our experience out of the raw material that comes from our past karma. But it’s the skill with which we shape it that makes all the difference. It’s because we have a lack of skill—that’s one of the meanings of avijjā …
- A Questioning Attitude… For some reason this issue has come up quite a lot in the past two months. There was even a Dhamma teacher who went over to Burma a couple months back, took along his latest Dhamma book, and went to see a psychic. He wanted the psychic to hold his book to see what message she could get from it. And she told him …
- Intelligence of the Heart… mindfulness in remembering things that you’ve done, so that when something comes up in the present moment, you can think, “Oh, yes, that’s the result of this action that I did back in the past.” The discernment is basically the ability to see distinctions and also see relationships between distinct things. So mindfulness provides a larger context, as you remember contexts for …
- Willing to Question Yourself… All the while you’re sitting here meditating, just let the Dhamma come past you. If there’s any point that’s relevant to what you’re doing right now, it’ll stick in your mind. You don’t want the Dhamma talk to get in the way of your concentration. If you pick up something that strikes you as relevant to what you …
- Noble Treasures… The other implication, of course, relates to his insight into karma in the course of the awakening—that there really is a continuity from one life to the next, and it’s through your actions. You can’t say, “Well, I was born in America this lifetime and I want to be born in America the next lifetime.” That’s not for sure. You …
- Interdependence & Death… One evening he came back and said, “You know, the number of people who die and hang around their bodies is awfully high.” I could only imagine what he saw as he was walking past what he would call the “body shops.” They’d have these pavilions, about twenty pavilions altogether, where they’d have a coffin and a place where people would sit …
- Pleasure on the Path… The given is the potential that come from your past karma, but there’s also what you contribute right now. The impact it’s going to have on the mind is totally dependent on what you can do with it now. So we want to learn some skills for dealing with pleasures and pains so that neither of them overwhelms the mind. This principle …
- Not-self as a Raft… It’s a perception we’ve used many times in the past. You think of doing a particular action, but you say to yourself, “No, that’s beneath me.” That’s not-self. Or you think of a possible course of action and you realize it wouldn’t be worth it. So you say, “Nope, I’m not going to go there.” Not-self …
- Relationships… As for any other thoughts that may come by, just let them go past. You don’t have to get involved with them. You don’t have to straighten them out. You don’t have to remember them no matter how wonderful or fantastic or useful they may seem. At the moment, they’re of no use. Just let them go. Let them go …
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