The Quotable Thanissaro

A discussion on all aspects of Theravāda Buddhism
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:In order to learn how to let go of something, you've got to learn how to do it skillfully. This principle doesn't apply to sex, but it does apply to a lot of other things.
From: The Path of Questions by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:I once heard of a tennis pro whose game had gone into a slump. He tried everything he could imagine to get his game back: fired his trainer, got another trainer, tried different rackets. Then one day he realized he'd forgotten the number one lesson in tennis: Keep your eye on the ball.

The same sort of thing often happens in meditation. You start out with a very simple process and then it gradually grows more complicated. After a while you forget the first principles: i.e., stay with your breath. So try to spend the whole hour staying with the breath, no matter what.
From: A Private Matter by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:The desire for true happiness is nothing to feel ashamed about. In fact, the whole teaching of the Dhamma is based on that desire, recognizing that if you follow through with your desire for true happiness intelligently, if you really are careful about how you go about finding it, you'll actually find it and won't harm anyone in the process. It's a desire that should be respected.
From: Befriending the Breath by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:When you remind yourself of the happiness that comes from giving, the interest in gaining sensual pleasures and feeding on sensual pleasure gets lessened. When it's lessened, you find yourself less irritable, less bored, less restless, less uncertain. This is one of the many techniques available for dealing with the hindrances.
From: Barriers in the Heart by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:And as for the baggage we carry around: If we had to go back and straighten out all the horrible things we did in the past before we could gain Awakening, we'd never be done. But it turns out that when you simply learn to drop old habits, Awakening is possible. After all, the suffering you're experiencing right now is a combination of things coming from the past and things you're doing right now, including the way you're perceiving things right now.

A frequent image in meditation instructions is that all you have to do is turn on a light and the darkness goes away. No matter how many eons the darkness has reigned, all you have to do is turn on the light once and that's the end of the darkness. All you have to do is work on how you're perceiving things in the present moment - and when things finally click, you don't have to worry about what other people tell you, you don't have to worry about the world, you don't have to worry about the self, you don't have to worry about what you've done in the past, for you've learned a new habit, you've developed a new skill. And the development of that new skill changes everything.
From: Habits of Perception by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:You don’t want self-discipline just to be the ability to push yourself through drudgery. You want to be able to make the meditation as entertaining as possible, as interesting as possible, as enjoyable as possible, to bring as much enthusiasm as you can to a process which, without the enthusiasm, simply dries right up.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... alks_3.pdf
From: Overwhelmed by Freedom by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:See what you can do to keep yourself entertained with the breath, to gladden the mind. Become more proactive toward the pain, investigate it, be curious about it, instead of just passively suffering from it. Keeping a good humor helps to put you in a position of power. That's one attitude to ease the burden of endurance.
From: Endurance Made Easier by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:If you sit down and you feel yourself totally disinclined to meditate, don't just force yourself to do it. Remind yourself of the good reasons for why you're doing it. Think of ways to make it interesting, ways to make it entertaining. You can do all kinds of things with the breath.
From: In the Mood by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:You're here because you want to find true happiness. Whether other people approve or not, that's their business. When you think in this way, you can start making choices that really are in your true best interest without getting snagged on whether other people approve, whether it looks strange in their eyes, or you think it might look strange in their eyes. When you can cut through these eight ways of the world, you find that a lot of the obstacles to practice get cleared out of the way.
From: An Anthropologist from Mars by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Having the breath as a way of training yourself to be kind to yourself is an important aspect of developing goodwill: It helps you realize that you really do have a role in shaping your present experience, starting with the breath and then moving into other areas of the present. There's nobody forcing you to breathe in an uncomfortable way, or in a way that puts yourself to sleep, or in a way that gets you anxious and on edge. And yet we allow these things to happen because we're distracted, often about things that are really none of our business. But the breath is something that really is your responsibility. Nobody else can breathe for you. And nobody else can tell you what kind of breathing is going to be comfortable. You have to pay attention yourself.
From: Wisdom for Dummies by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:So pay attention: What are you putting into the system right now? This is the important thing to focus on. Whatever other people do to you, whatever arises in your body in terms of pains, illnesses, aging, death, or whatever: That's old kamma that you simply have to learn to take with good humor, with a sense of equanimity. As for what you're putting into the system right now, that's serious business. That's where your attention and efforts should be focused.
From: Skills to Take With You by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:The fact that trees and mountains are fabricated: That's their business, their issue. Our issue is the fabrications coming up in the mind: what they do to us, and what we do to them.
From: Standing Where the Buddha Stood by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:...any desire to compare your level of virtue or concentration with that of others is detrimental to the practice, and so appropriate attention focuses on turning attention away from questions that would involve comparing yourself with others. You’re here to cure your own unskillful mental qualities, so the question of whether you’re better than others is really none of your business.
From: The Middles of the Middle Way by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Be grateful to the people for the things, rather than being grateful to the things themselves. If you feel gratitude to your bed, then it is hard not to get attached to your bed and to think that the goodness lies in the thing. Whereas if you're grateful to the people the goodness lies in the action, the goodness lies in the intention. This helps you reflect that our society is held together not by good things but by good intentions.
<....>
Appreciation is for the things and gratitude is for the actions, because that focuses you on your own actions, what you're going to do in response. And that's how gratitude keeps you focused on the practice.
http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y200 ... Things.mp3
From: Gratitude to Things by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (7min mp3 audio)
With metta / dhammapal.
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Question: Is the word insight and awakening used interchangeably?
Thanissaro Bhikkhu: No. An insight is seeing any point where you're causing yourself unnecessary stress or suffering and you can drop it. And then there's certain levels of insight that would actually constitute Awakening where you actually have absolutely dropped that kind of unskillful action for good. You'll never pick it up again. That's an Awakening moment. Because the Awakening involves opening up to the Deathless.
http://www.audiodharma.org/teacher/16/
From: Iddhipada - The Bases for Success (Part 5) by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:…just keep tabs on the breath, all the way in, all the way out. This requires desire; it’s going to involve some attachment, and it’s going to involve deciding which thoughts to identify with and which ones not to identify with. In other words, you are going to be working on a sense of self here, all of which seems to fly in the face of what we’ve heard about the Buddha’s teachings, after all desire is bad, efforting is bad, attachment is bad, self is bad.

But the Buddha never said those things; he was a lot more specific. He didn’t deal in such broad generalizations. There are skillful and unskillful desires, skillful and unskillful attachments. A skillful sense of self and an unskillful sense of self, or many skillful and unskillful senses of self. And so it’s important as we learn how to practice to be specific, make these distinctions. Because otherwise, it becomes impossible to practice…
https://www.facebook.com/groups/102608566443956/ (302 members)
http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y201 ... hments.mp3
From: Skillful Attachments by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:The same way with true friends: If they've helped you.... you show them gratitude because that's one of the most important lessons you can give to other people. It reminds them that there's something good in life, something that really should be valued, because it's so rare. That's friendship on the outside.
From: Cherish Your Friends by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta /dhammapal.
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Training in gratitude shows how powerful perception can be, for it requires developing a particular set of perceptions about life and the world. If you perceive help as demeaning, then gratitude itself feels demeaning; but if you perceive help as an expression of trust - the other person wouldn't want to help you unless he or she felt you would use the help well - then gratitude feels ennobling, an aid to self-esteem. Similarly, if you perceive life as a competition, it's hard to trust the motives of those who help you, and you resent the need to repay their help as a gratuitous burden. If, however, you perceive that the goodness in life is the result of cooperation, then the give and take of kindness and gratitude become a much more pleasant exchange."
From: The Lessons of Gratitude by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
binocular
Posts: 8292
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2009 11:13 pm

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by binocular »

Thank you for posting this!
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:When things grow very still and balanced in terms of these four properties, with this mist of potential sensations that can go in any direction, you can also focus on the space between the points. Realize that the space is boundless. It goes through the body and out in all directions. Just think that: "infinite space." Stay with the sensation of infinite space that comes along with the perception. The potential for it is always there; it's simply that the perception arouses it. It's a very pleasant state to get in. Things seem a lot less solid, a lot less oppressive. You don't feel so trapped in the body.
From: The Six Properties by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:A fully awakened person feels sympathy for others and seeks their well-being, experiencing a sense of satisfaction when they respond to his/her teachings, but otherwise he/she stays equanimous, untroubled, mindful, and alert. This passage shows that the even-mindedness of a fully awakened person is an attitude not of cold indifference, but rather of mental imperturbability. Such a person has found true happiness and would like others to share that happiness as well, but that happiness is not dependent on how others respond. This is the ideal state of mind for a person who truly works for the benefit of the world.
From: Wings to Awakening (Part III) by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
With metta / dhammapal.
Post Reply