The Quotable Thanissaro

A discussion on all aspects of Theravāda Buddhism
SarathW
Posts: 21184
Joined: Mon Sep 10, 2012 2:49 am

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by SarathW »

Hi Retro
Ven Thanissaro said:
"we have an impermanent, interdependent self"
-----
The way I understand is we do not have an interdependent self. Am I missing something here. :juggling:
I agree that there is no unchanging everlasting entity.
“As the lamp consumes oil, the path realises Nibbana”
User avatar
retrofuturist
Posts: 27839
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:52 pm
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Contact:

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings SarathW,

Re-read the sentence, paying careful attention to the first four words.

:reading:

Metta,
Retro. :)
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
SarathW
Posts: 21184
Joined: Mon Sep 10, 2012 2:49 am

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by SarathW »

retrofuturist wrote:Greetings SarathW,

Re-read the sentence, paying careful attention to the first four words.

:reading:

Metta,
Retro. :)
Thank God it is my falult. :) I had a bad day yesterday.
Thanks my friend.
“As the lamp consumes oil, the path realises Nibbana”
dhammapal
Posts: 2636
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Even something as innocent as listening to the news: There's not only the bias of the particular newscaster but also a deeper bias that underlies all the news that you get through the media — which is that the most important things happening in the world right now are things that other people are doing someplace else. And that right there flies in the face of the Dhamma. The Buddha's teaching is that the most important thing in life is what you're doing right now. And you want to be skillful about it.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... alks_3.pdf
From: In the Land of Wrong View by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
User avatar
Kusala
Posts: 1144
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2011 11:02 am

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Kusala »


"If you read a lot books about the Dhamma, it can get pretty confusing after a while, for there are so many different takes on exactly what the Dhamma is. On top of that, there are people who will tell you it's all very complex, very subtle; only a very erudite scholar or subtle logician could figure it all out. With so many teachings, it's hard to figure out which ones to hold on to. Of course, some people will tell you can't hold onto anything at all. That makes it even more confusing and obscure.

So it's good to remember the Buddha taught the Dhamma in very simple terms. And all the teachings derived from a very few basic, very commonsensical principles. You might call it wisdom for dummies: the kind of wisdom that comes from looking at what's actually going on in your life, asking some very basic questions, and applying a few basic principles to solve your big problems.

When you use wisdom for dummies, it doesn't mean you're dumb. It means you recognize that you've been foolish and you want to wise up. As the Buddha once said, when you recognize your foolishness, you are to that extent wise. This may sound obvious, but when you think about it, you see that it teaches you some import things about wisdom. In fact, the realization that you've been foolish contains within itself many of the basic principles of the Dhamma.

To begin with, this kind of realization usually comes to you when you see you've made a mistake that could have been avoided. In recognizing that much, you recognize your actions do make a difference: Some actions are more skillful that others. In recognizing that the mistake came from your foolishness, you recognize the principle that your ideas and intentions played a role in your actions, and that you could have operated under other ideas and intentions. You could have been wiser--the mistake wasn't preordained--and you got something to learn. That right there is the beginning of wisdom."
"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;
He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;
He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "

--------------------------------------------
"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One,
Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation,
Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "
User avatar
Kusala
Posts: 1144
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2011 11:02 am

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Kusala »

"A lot of Buddhist texts, when they talk about the knowledge you gain from meditation, express it in the form of vision, something you see. You're working toward knowledge and vision, they say. The first experience of Awakening is the opening of the Dhamma Eye.

Full Awakening comes with knowledge and vision of things as they have come to be. But there are also passages that describe this knowledge as something sensed not through the inner eye, but through the body. All the teachings about jhana are concerned with gaining a sense of ease and wellbeing from the breath and then allowing it to permeate the whole body.

Some of the texts talk about 'touching' the various formless dimensions that can be accessed through jhana, touching them with your body. One of the texts says that those who practice jhana touch the deathless with the body. And one of the verses in the Dhammapada says you see the Dhamma with the body. The Sutta Nipata describes the Buddha as the All-Around Eye: His whole body was an organ of vision, an organ of sight."
"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;
He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;
He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "

--------------------------------------------
"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One,
Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation,
Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "
User avatar
Kusala
Posts: 1144
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2011 11:02 am

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Kusala »


"The Buddha treated his students like adults. If he had wanted to, he could have told them about all the amazing and wonderful things that he had learned during his awakening, and that they should simply obey him without question. But instead, he taught them how to question, how to think for themselves, how to gain awakening themselves. Even when he was teaching children he taught them adult things, or basically how to become adults. The Novice Questions, for instance, start out with the big harsh fact of life: that all beings subsist on food. This fact is also the main proof against the idea of intelligent design. If there were intelligent design, we could all live off the dew every morning, the rain every evening. We wouldn't have to harm anyone else in keeping our bodies going. But this is a fact of life: we have a body that need to be fed; we have to eat.

When we eat, there's suffering, even if we're very strict vegetarians. The farmers who have to clear the fields and plant the food, the animals who die when the fields are cleared, the people who have to transport the food once it's grown: A lot of work and misery goes into that. So when the Buddha introduced the topic of causality to children, he started with a harsh fact of life. This is your prime experience of causality: Feeding goes on all the time. Without it, life couldn't last.

When he taught his young son, Rahula, about truthfulness, the teaching was also pretty harsh. If you feel no shame in telling a lie, he said, your goodness is empty. It's thrown away. You can't be trusted. Then he taught Rahula to apply truthfulness in looking at his actions, to learn from his actions. That is basically what it means to become an adult. When you do something, you notice what actually happens as a result, and then you learn from it. If your actions harmed yourself or others, you resolve not to repeat that mistake. Then you remember to apply that lesson to your next action, and then the next. That's what mindfulness is for: to remember these lessons. As the Buddha says, this is how your purify your thoughts, words, and deeds."
"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;
He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;
He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "

--------------------------------------------
"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One,
Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation,
Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "
User avatar
Kusala
Posts: 1144
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2011 11:02 am

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Kusala »

"People sometimes complain that the Buddha focuses an awful lot on suffering. That's because he has a cure. If you had a cure for suffering, wouldn't you want to talk about it too? The people who are afraid to talk about suffering: they're the ones who don't have a cure. They always try to cover things up, pretend it's not really that bad a situation: 'This is the ordinary life that everybody lives, this is as good as it gets - so you might as well enjoy it, make the best of it.' That's desperation.

The Buddha wasn't desperate. He was coming from a position of total freedom. He said, 'Look, if you really sit down and with the proper tools and the proper approach try to discern suffering, get to the point where you really comprehend it, and let go, you've solved all your problems in life.'

So, who's pessimistic and who's optimistic? We might say that the Buddha's realistic, but realistic in a way that sees through all the problems the mind creates for itself. Once the mind isn't creating any more problems for itself, you're free to go wherever you like.

At that point, the Buddha said, he had nothing more to teach. This is the basic issue: suffering and the end of suffering. Once you comprehend both sides of the Buddha's teachings, what suffering is and how it can be brought to an end, and you directly experience the end of suffering, you've finished the Buddha's teachings. As they say: 'The Holy Life is completed. The task is done.' There's nothing left for you to do. At that point you can live out the rest of your life in total freedom."
"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;
He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;
He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "

--------------------------------------------
"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One,
Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation,
Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "
User avatar
Kusala
Posts: 1144
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2011 11:02 am

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Kusala »

"People often think that the Buddha gave desire bad press, but he actually gave it a central role in the path. It's right there in right effort: Generate desire to give rise to skillful qualities, generate desire to abandon unskillful ones. In other words, the best way to do this is to get yourself to want to do it, so that it's not just a mechanical process of following somebody's orders. You have to find ways of encouraging yourself and inspiring yourself on the path.

That's how you develop your wisdom, how you develop your discernment, motivating yourself to realize that this really is a worthwhile project to pursue. Even though lots of people might say, 'What could you possibly learn just by focusing on the breath?' you realize that staying focused here exercises your mindfulness, your concentration, your discernment, all the qualities you're going to need to solve this problem of suffering. These are the qualities that allow you to test the Buddha's claim that by solving the problem of suffering, you solve the biggest problem in life. You actually arrive at the deathless, a happiness that doesn't change, that lies outside of space and time.

It's quite a claim, but can you think about what life would be like if there were no happiness lying outside space and time. Whatever you gained, you'd have to lose it; you'd gain it again, you'd lose it again. What real satisfaction is there in that? But here's the Buddha, someone who seems reasonable, claiming that it is possible to find a happiness that doesn't have to depend on conditions. And it's up to you to decide: Do you want to make the effort to explore that possibility?"
"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;
He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;
He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "

--------------------------------------------
"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One,
Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation,
Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "
binocular
Posts: 8292
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2009 11:13 pm

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by binocular »

Kusala -

Thank you for your contributions.
Could you also provide the source for each passage?
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
User avatar
Anagarika
Posts: 915
Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2011 11:25 pm

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Anagarika »

See image from today: http://www.buddhasoup.com/?p=298

At Wat Metta, San Diego, California, USA today.

Ajahn Geoff spoke of a monk in Ajahn Chah's sangha that had his mood ruined by a gossiping monk with whom the monk had taken a walk. Returning to the temple in a bad mood, the monk passed Ajahn Chah, who, for the first time, smiled at him and said in English, "Good morning." The monk then felt elated and decided that he would massage Ajahn Chah's feet that morning while the other monks were chanting.

The monk was then at Ajahn Chah's feet, massaging his teacher's soles, and listening to the other monks chanting in Pali in the background. The monk remarked to Ajahn Chah that he had never felt so happy.

Ajahn Chah then booted him with his free foot, in the monk's chest. "D not let the circumstances of life and the actions of others determine your state of mind." To summarize, Ajahn Geoff then spoke of how we can use meditation to settle the mind, and free if of the tendency to let the statements and actions of others to determine our mood.

"Be mindful of speech, yours and that of others. Speech must be examined as to its truth and its benefit."

Thanissaro Bhikkhu started the pre-alms meal talk with chanting in Pali with a large community of Thai and farang today. He then told the above teaching in English, and then told the same teaching in perfect Thai....Amazing.
User avatar
Kusala
Posts: 1144
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2011 11:02 am

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Kusala »

Intelligent Design http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writ ... Design.pdf

"If you look at Buddhist history, you see that wherever the Dhamma goes, people find all kinds of ways of trying to divert the teaching to other purposes, forgetting that its original purpose was the most compassionate: showing the way out of suffering. Our imagination is so tied up with the normal way of using connectedness or interdependence that it really has trouble negotiating that compassionate use.

This is why the path is so hard: It goes against the grain. If anything calls into question the idea of an intelligent designer or a compassionate designer, it's the fact that the quest for the end to suffering, the quest for true and lasting happiness, goes so much against the grain of the human mind. Keep that in mind as you practice. And because the path requires working with tools that normally fit into another purpose - the survival of the body - it's very easy for us to get off track.

You have to keep in mind the fact that deep down inside your deepest desire is a desire for happiness, a happiness that's not going to change on you, a happiness that's not going to leave you in a lurch, a happiness that doesn't have to involve other suffering. That was the desire the Buddha respected within himself, and respected within other people as well."
"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;
He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;
He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "

--------------------------------------------
"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One,
Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation,
Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "
dhammapal
Posts: 2636
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Ajaan Maha Boowa makes the point that when the defilements are named in the books they come in nice, neat lists, but when they come up in your mind they don't follow the lists. They don't come in the proper order. They come all pell-mell, so you have to be ready to deal with them pell-mell, whatever the order they come in. As in that question the king of Thailand once asked Luang Puu Dune: "Which defilement do you have to deal with first?" Luang Puu's answer was, "Whichever one arises first." Sometimes there are going to be subtle ones and sometimes blatant ones. They don't line up neatly.

So, again, it's good to have names for the defilements to get a sense of what you might be dealing with, but be prepared for the fact that a lot of what's going to happen in your mind won't quite be the way it's described in the books. Ajaan Lee once commented that the ways of the mind are so many that no book on earth could possibly cover them all. But fortunately there are certain basic patterns you learn from, and you try applying them. Then when you've run through your list of skills and patterns, and you find that things are still not working, you've got to use your ingenuity and try new approaches.
From: What's Not on the Map by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
User avatar
Kusala
Posts: 1144
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2011 11:02 am

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Kusala »

Equanimity Isn't Apathy http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writ ... Apathy.pdf

"Look at the Buddha. Even after his Awakening, he spent 45 years establishing the teaching, the Dhamma and the Vinaya. It took a lot of work. And he didn't do it with a apathetic attitude, thinking, 'I don't care whether it works or not.' He put in a lot of effort into making it a teaching that would last. He noticed that some people would take the teaching and use it to a good purpose, but didn't let himself get elated about that. There were people who listened but then didn't really put it to any good use. He knew how not to get depressed about that.

He had established mindfulness in such a way that he did what needed to be done. Of course, he preferred to do a good job of teaching. But as for the results that came, how other people took the teaching, that's where he developed the mind that was like earth, water, fire, and wind. He did his best, but as far as other people would take what he did, he learned how to put that aside. So apathy has no place in the teaching..."
"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;
He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;
He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "

--------------------------------------------
"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One,
Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation,
Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "
User avatar
Kusala
Posts: 1144
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2011 11:02 am

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Kusala »

Get Real http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writ ... 20Real.pdf

"When the texts describe the insight that leads to the first stage of Awakening, they express it as seeing this: All that's subject to origination is subject to cessation. That's an insight both into change and into casual connections underlying change. The Pali word for 'origination', samudaya, refers to the way things arise together with their causes. As you go deeper into the meditation, this insight grows deeper and becomes more all-encompassing, but it starts with precisely this act of adjusting: changing your perceptions and intentions a little bit here, a little bit there, seeing what feeling results, and trying to be observant as possible, as sensitive as possible, to what's really happening, to what's connected with what.

This is why you're told not to force the breath, but to allow it to come in and go out comfortably and then to monitor it to see what feels best. Learn to listen to things as they come into being. This was characteristic of the Buddha as he sought Awakening: to see things as they come into being. He didn't try blindly to force things in line with a lot of preconceived notions. He was more of an explorer, trying different approaches and seeing what results came about. Ultimately he found what worked best in the sense of putting an end to all suffering and then recommended that method for us to follow. He set out all the basic principles but left the details for us to observe for ourselves in our laboratory right here: the body sitting here, breathing in and out."
"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;
He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;
He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "

--------------------------------------------
"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One,
Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation,
Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "
Post Reply