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Karmic effects of thoughts
Bunks
Australia Veteran
What did the Buddha say about the effects of thoughts on our karma eg. let's imagine I am angry with someone but only verbalise what I'd like to say to them in my mind but never actually say it? The person is none the wiser...
Is there any karmic effect?
Is there any karmic effect?
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Being emotionally immature I often express my anger. Bad crustacean!
If you can stay with the anger, in the arising, you will understand how these situations are 'our greatest teachers'.
I may know the cure but still suffer the disease . . .
Incidentally the more practice, the less arising . . .
There is a karmic cure and hope for us all . . . :wave:
Dhammapada - The Pairs: First two.
Very often, you might think a negative thought, and follow that with a mental reproach.
That's a good thing.. and better than someone telling you - "Hey dude, you shouldn't have done that"....
The Vipakka is subtle and ephemeral.
This is why taming the mind is the hardest challenge of all. Because it pre-empts everything.
it is the source of our kamma.
hope this helps
all the best
I am wondering if it would be better to verbalize what you would say (and then reflect on it), or to suppress this verbalization and just feel the energy of the anger... Maybe both are useful.
For metta meditation to have good karmic effect, you don't have to actually go and feed homeless people or something. You just have to think right thoughts.
Holding "right view" or "wrong view" both have karmic effects. Both of which are an act of thinking. So it would follow that just the act of thinking can have karmic effects.
:scratch:
Won't your intention/starting line still be anger ?
Verbalising in your mind, is confirming the emotion/thought, no?
Of course, anger brings effects and usually negative ones.
it means there is craving
craving is the cause of suffering (Second Noble Truth)
if there is cause then there is effect (suffering-First Noble Truth) too
to get rid of suffering (Third Noble Truth)
one must follow the Path (Noble Eight-fold Path)
in this case, instead of getting angry, practice loving-kindness for everyone
I still catch myself doing this sometimes but I feel I'm making progress because I'm catching myself.
When these thoughts come up, it's like when I'm meditating and I catch my mind wandering. Thich Nhat Hanh calls these "Oops" moments and says they are very beneficial. When we find ourselves slipping, we can call it progress because of the awareness within the finding.
I understand you asked what Buddha said but @Federica answered that pretty handily.
Q: Do bad thoughts in itself lead to bad karma?
A: Thoughts themselves have very little karmic trace, which however grows accumulatively
when repeated, or even more when solidified into (verbal or internal silent) speech, and even
furthermore when acted out into physical real world action.
Of course our thoughts affect our karma. They create endless ripples somewhere in our consciousness. These are samskaras, i.e., mental entanglements that help form the makeup of our character. The impact of our mental characteristics on our actions is not to be taken lightly.
This concept of karma as "work" constitutes the core of Karma Yoga, which is to work for work's sake without anxiety about the results. Now, thought is work, also, and a very great work it is, too; no reasonable person would argue that mathematicians and professors are sitting on their duffs doing nothing while they are working in the realm of ideas both practical and theoretical. Likewise, while we are doing our physical work on the physical plane, our minds are also working with us. All that we "do" is work, is energy. Therefore, the feat of keeping a calm and quiet and charitable mind in the midst of a rude and sometimes confrontational world is a very great feat indeed. Our thoughts lay the best groundwork for what our work really means; what others think is their own problem.
Because all that we do is work, all that we are is work. Therefore, we carry our karma with us where'er we go —arguably in this life and the next and so on. The teachers of humankind point out that our life is what we do and we carry the responsibility for our actions with us; these actions don't fade away into the past completely, as the ripples from a thrown stone would do on a small puddle. Nay, the karmic pond is unending, or that is what the pandits would say, anyway.
In Buddhist thought, people are reincarnated along with past karma. The way I understand it, vortexes of energy —or even entanglements of energy, "samskaras"— whirl into future time with us. (Indeed, ultimately everything that exists is samskaras —entanglements of things— be they atoms, molecules, cells...)
So, I'd say that the karmic effects of thoughts, which are themselves karmic, are inscrutable. We are what we think, to a very large degree, and should guard our thoughts and our words.
But I hope that the conclusion from that isn't that the negative thoughts should be suppressed(not that it's even pissible for any length of time). They seem to not be significant in their own right but rather come from some root that we are barely conscious of , if at all. Seeing that root clearly, understanding it is what I strive for.
When I meditate and I am able to move out of my head, interesting things happen: it's as if something shifts and I can perceive the impersonal energy driving the thoughts. And when it becomes impersonal, a new degree of freedom often emerges, together with acceptance and compassion. Maybe that is what is meant by non-self?
Bad 'mind' gives 'bad' body and vica versa