Do bad thoughts create bad karma?

[RiceMonk]

I think what I wrote above makes my status quite clear. I was just asking a simple question. Here it is again so you don't have to move your eyes too far. You're welcome.

Do you know Vinnaya well? I seem to recall reading in one of the books somewhere (perhaps the Suttavibhanga) that if a monk wishes to reprimand another monk they should do it privately and not in front of other monks. Have you ever read that and if so do you happen to know where it is exactly? I have a friend who ordained and as he knew I once ordained he asked me if I knew exactly where that particular rule was. Thank you Bhante.

[perkele]

Bhante, and RiceMonk, if I may interfere:

I think there were some misunderstandings. I will try to translate some things according to how I interpreted them:

First quote:

Urr, yes. You say so yourself below. Perhaps I should have gone into more detail but I have a beginner's mind when it comes to instruction you see which is commendable making it impossible to criticise me or else my feelings will get hurt.

The second sentence seems a bit convoluted and grammatically unclear, maybe not a native English speaker, could easily be read as challenging/combative in some way, but I think it was just meant as something like:

Urr, yes. I thought you said so yourself below. But I have beginner's mind, so please elaborate to correct if I have interpreted that wrong. It won't hurt me.

Second quote:

Do you know Vinnaya well? I seem to recall reading in one of the books somewhere (perhaps the Suttavibhanga) that if a monk wishes to reprimand another monk they should do it privately and not in front of other monks. Have you ever read that and if so do you happen to know where it is exactly? I have a friend who ordained and as he knew I once ordained he asked me if I knew exactly where that particular rule was. Thank you Bhante.

Without any other apparent connection to what was discussed before, and combined with a misinterpretation of the previous quote this might have been easily misunderstood as:

Don't you know that according to Vinaya, a monk should not admonish another monk in front of others? (And that's what you just did, because I'm a monk)

I think RiceMonk's words can be taken to mean that he is actually no longer a monk, but had been ordained once, and he is just kindly asking about a (possibly non-existent) Vinaya rule.


Not totally sure but quite confident that my interpretations are correct, I find the possible misinterpretations easily understandable. So may there be forgiveness and a bit of humor.

This quote here,

Here it is again so you don't have to move your eyes too far. You're welcome.

,
I would interpret as being snarky.



On the topic of mental kamma:

Kamma just means action - it's the fruit of the action which you should be concerned about. In other words thoughts are just thoughts you can choose to act upon them or not.

Are you sure about that?

Urr, yes. You say so yourself below. ...

/.../

Kamma means action by body, speech, or mind. Mental kamma also has consequences. Thoughts of ill-will that arise spontaneously, e.g. when one meets with an enemy or someone who was aggressive in the past, arise spontaneously due to conditions. It is only the training in moral habit that prevents us acting upon those thoughts with harsh words or aggressive physical actions. Your body language will show your aggressive mental state too.

Bhante Pesala did not say that thoughts are inconsequential when not acted upon. (The example of unintended expression of thought in body language was as an illustration for that.) Nor did the Buddha, as far as I can tell.

I think that the great power of mental kamma in comparison to the other two "derived" kinds of kamma was even stressed in some sutta, where the Buddha, to illustrate how mental kamma is the most powerful, tells a story about how some ascetics who were offended by someone turned a city or a lush forest into a heap of ashes just through the power of their thoughts (mental kamma). Or something like that.

So, according to that story, related by the Buddha, if I remember it correctly, there can be even much stronger consequences of mental kamma than just the unintended expression in body language.

Therefore, please don't be offended by each other.

[cappuccino]

to illustrate how mental kamma is the most powerful, tells a story about how some ascetics who were offended by someone turned a city or a lush forest into a heap of ashes just through the power of their thoughts

Star Trek: The Next Generation
Season 3 | Episode 3

[Zom]

1. First of all I want to know if bad thoughts that are unacted upon create bad karma?

No. Most unwholesome thoughts do not create kamma, unless you produce them intentionally, like: "Let me think something bad" -) In most cases this is not the case, so no kamma is created. Anyway, if we take 3-fold kamma, we'll see that the main definition of purely mental kamma is arriving to certain VIEWS. This is really important and I guess this is what is meant my mental kamma - intentional production of views, their construction, arrival to them. And for this very reason Buddha says that mental kamma is the heaviest. That being so, people rarely create mental kamma. Most of time they create verbal and bodily kamma.

[cappuccino]

you don't want to hide from the afterlife