The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.
20 December 2025
Q: How does the Law of kamma work and how can we prove its validity?
Than Ajahn: Well, it’s hard to prove the Law of kamma because the one who does the kamma is invincible. The one who does the kamma is the mind, not the body. The mind tells the body what to do. To go rob a bank or to give food to somebody, this is kamma.
Robbing a bank is bad kamma. Giving food to people is good kamma. So the one who reaps the consequence of the kamma is not the body. The one who reaps the consequence of the kamma is the mind. And what is the consequence of kamma? It’s feeling good or feeling bad.
If you rob a bank, you’ll feel bad because you have to try to stay away from the cops. You don’t want to get caught, you have worry and anxiety. But if you give food to people who need your help, you’ll feel good and happy.
This is the result or the consequence of kamma. It’s in your mind, not with the body.
But sometimes the body also has to reap the consequence of the kamma, as the collateral consequence. Like if you rob a bank, you might get caught and your body will have to stay in jail so your body is locked up and your mind feels bad.
Actually we have to look at the mind itself, the feeling appears after we do certain actions. If we do something good, we’ll feel good. If we do something bad, we’ll feel bad.
That’s the Law of kamma. It concerns the mind, not the body.
And this also affects the mind after death because the mind doesn’t die with the body.
The mind continues on as a spiritual being. If it’s in a happy state, we call it ‘heaven,’ if it’s sad, in turmoil or anxiety, we call it ‘hell’. It’s a state of mind after the body dies. You have to prove this yourself, you cannot prove it to other people. There is no instrument to measure your mind. You can have instrument to measure your body but you can only measure your mind by yourself, by the way you feel whether you feel good or you feel bad, you are sad or you are happy.
And this is usually the consequence of the actions that you do.
“Dhamma in English, Jul 7, 2024.”
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Q: I heard that kamma is just ‘cause and effect,’ so, if there is no ‘self’, there is no ‘I’ and we are just the physical bodies. As such, who is doing the wrong act?
Than Ajahn: Well, kamma deals with the mind. The mind is the one that is doing the action. But the mind itself is not a ‘self.’ A ‘self’ is a concept created by the mind. So the one who is doing the action is the mind and the one who bears the consequences of the action is the mind. When you do good kamma, the mind feels happy. If you do bad kamma, the mind feels unhappy.
So it’s the mind who is being subjected to the Law of kamma, not the body. The body is only an instrument of the mind.
Let me give you an example. If a driver drives a car, the driver and the car are two separate entities. The driver is the one who drives the car and the car is just an instrument used by the driver. When the driver drives the car and the car hits somebody, it’s not the car that has to pay the price, right? It’s the driver. So, it’s the same way, when the mind does something through the body, the mind is the one who bears the consequences.
If the mind does bad kamma, the mind will feel bad. If the mind does good kamma, the mind will feel good.
The body doesn’t know anything. The body is only like a car.
But the question you asked is not really important.
What you want to know is how to make your mind happy. Once your mind is happy, you understand that all the things that you don’t understand will become clear to you after you have studied the mind and know how to make your mind happy. And when you are happy, if you don’t know anything, it doesn’t matter because what you know or what you don’t know doesn’t matter as long as you are happy.
“Dhamma in English, Jan 12, 2019.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.