The Quotable Thanissaro

A discussion on all aspects of Theravāda Buddhism
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:That's why we're focused on the breath. We give the mind an intention: "Stay with the breath. Don't move. Don't go wandering off to other things." And we give it a further intention: "Try to breathe as comfortably as possible." That right there is an immediate exercise in the relationship between your actions and feelings of pleasure and pain. You want to develop that particular sensitivity as much as you can. What's important is the particular combination of the stillness of your focus and the point where you're focused, right at this issue of intention and its relationship to pleasure and pain. This is why breath meditation opens things up in the mind, for it's focused on the real issues.
From: The Treasure Hunt by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:One of the reasons we're so careless in the way we approach happiness is that we get serious about it only when there's a lot of pain. We focus on the pain. We've got to fix it. And there's a sense of desperation about trying to fix our pain, fix our sufferings.

Yet when things get easy, we get lazy. Complacent. All we want to do is just wallow in that sense of wellbeing. And of course wallowing in it is not a cause for more happiness. It just eats up what we already have.

So the trick is to learn how to develop a sense of wellbeing and then not to be heedless — to see what further good we can get out of that wellbeing.

Ajaan Lee gives an example. He says it's like having a tree that gives coconuts. If you want, you can eat up all the coconuts, but that's all you get — a stomach full of coconuts, and soon you're hungry again. But if you take some of the coconuts and plant them, you get more trees and then more trees because you're willing to take what you've got and invest some of it.

In the same way, when you meditate, you take what sense of wellbeing you have and invest some of it in creating more wellbeing.
From: Investing Your Happiness by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:The Buddha explicitly warns against taking on too many questions, particularly those that lead nowhere and tie us up in knots: "Who am I? Am I basically a good person? An unworthy person?" Instead, he tells us to focus on our intentions so that we can see how they shape our life, and to master the processes of cause and effect so that they can shape our life in increasingly better ways. This is the way every great artist or craftsman develops mastery and skill.
From: The Road to Nirvana is Paved with Skillful Intentions by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:"He showed me the brightness of the world." That's how my teacher, Ajaan Fuang, once characterized his debt to his teacher, Ajaan Lee. His words took me by surprise. I had only recently come to study with him, still fresh from a school where I had learned that serious Buddhists took a negative, pessimistic view of the world. Yet here was a man who had given his life to the practice of the Buddha's teachings, speaking of the world's brightness. Of course, by "brightness" he wasn't referring to the joys of the arts, food, travel, sports, family life, or any of the other sections of the Sunday newspaper. He was talking about a deeper happiness that comes from within.
From: Life Isn't Just Suffering by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Or you can recollect the Buddha and what a wonderful teacher he was.... He taught not because he wanted fame or recognition or approval from people. He taught because he had something good to share. It’s really hard to find a teacher like that. The fact we have that kind of teacher is something we should take joy in....

It’s all straightforward truth, all straightforward beneficial teaching. As the Buddha said, things he would teach were, one, true; two, beneficial; and three, timely. So even though he’s not here where we can see him in action, to see which teaching he would pull out for any particular situation, we can still apply his standards to learn from our own efforts.
From: Against Your Type by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:The first step in that solution is symbolized in the Siddhartha story by the prince's reaction to the fourth person he saw on his travels outside of the palace: the wandering forest contemplative. The emotion he felt at this point is termed pasada, another complex set of feelings usually translated as "clarity and serene confidence." It's what keeps samvega from turning into despair. In the prince's case, he gained a clear sense of his predicament and of the way out of it, leading to something beyond aging, illness, and death, at the same time feeling confident that the way would work.
From: Affirming the Truths of the Heart: The Buddhist Teachings on Samvega & Pasada by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:If none of these approaches to the breath work, switch the topic of your focus to a theme that you find pleasurable and inspiring, such as goodwill, generosity (thinking of the times you were generous of your own free will), gratitude (thinking of people who went out of their way to help you), or virtue (thinking of cases where you or someone you admire behaved in ways you find noble and inspiring). Allow yourself to think about that theme for a while without paying attention to the breath. When the mind feels refreshed, try to notice how you’re breathing while you’re with that theme. The breath will have found a comfortable rhythm on its own. That will give you some ideas about how to breathe comfortably.
From: With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:There are interests out there that would actually lose if there were peace, if there were no suffering. And they fight back. The more you try to cause a revolution in the world outside, the more these powers fight back at you, try to divert your attention from the real issue. If they can’t do that, then it’s out-and-out battle.

So you need allies. It’s the same in the mind. If you are going to create a revolution in the mind where the mind can actually function without causing any harm to itself or other people, you need allies in the fight. This is why we meditate. This is why we develop right concentration. This is our main ally. In the comparison they have of the different qualities on the path, concentration is your food. It’s what gives your nourishment.
From: The Balance of Power by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Thus the scholastic attempt to identify such terms as the aggregates as dealing in ultimate realities — while other, more personal terms, deal only in conventional truths — is clearly misguided. All language, in the face of the experience of unbinding, is a matter of convention... The second reason for regarding the scholastic approach as misguided can be seen in all the evidence we have cited that the Buddha was not trying to build a systematic description of reality — or ultimate realities — as a whole. Thus to try to create one out of the raw materials of his words is a misapplication of his teaching — a form of inappropriate attention that distracts from the actual practice of his teachings, and one he would not condone.
From: Skill in Questions: How the Buddha Taught by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:...you can use the sensitivity you've developed in the meditation — along with the understanding of the Dhamma you've developed by reading and listening, gaining a perspective on the whole issue of suffering and the end of suffering — and apply them directly to your own, immediate sufferings. The Buddha wasn't talking about suffering in the abstract; he was talking about the sufferings lodged right here in each person's heart, right here in your heart, right now. And the tools he offered are meant to come here into the heart, to the particular sufferings in the heart, where they can make all the difference.
From: Close to the Heart by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:So basically you’re in charge of your world. You’re not a monad totally independent from influences from outside, but the choices you make are the ones that shape your life. If you make wise choices, generous choices, you protect yourself and you protect other people. On the surface it may sound selfish. Here you are trying to make sure your little world is okay, but the only way you can make sure your little world is okay is to act in a way that you’re not harming anybody else.... And not just harmless in the sense that you’re not going to hurt other people, but also that you’re going to positively do good by practicing generosity as an important part of the path. This is how the Buddha’s message is empowering. You can create a happy life by acting in ways that are noble and good.
From: In Charge of Your World by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:So as we practice, there are skillful attachments, there is skillful clinging. You’re trying to hold to right view, because that’s the kind of view that helps cut through all the things that focus our attention away from what we’re doing and from the results of what we’re doing. We hold to the precepts, we hold to the practice of concentration, because the precepts make life a lot easier, and concentration — when you can get the mind really, really still, with a sense of well-being and ease — really helps in seeing what’s going on in the mind. The well-being and ease are important, because they put you in the right mood for noticing what you doing that’s not skillful, and admitting it frankly with a good sense of humor, so that you can let those unskillful actions go in a good-natured way. Meanwhile, you hold on to the idea you are capable of doing this. You’re responsible for the choices you’re making. That’s the raft.
From: The Riddle of "I Am" by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:This is one of the reasons why we do walking meditation: to learn how to maintain that sense of balance and stillness even though the body is moving. And then from there you can add other activities on top of that. But always think of this as your foundation. It’s not just one more ball to keep in the air as you’re juggling all kinds of things. It’s the spot where you’re standing as you juggle. In other words, it’s an essential foundation for everything else you want to do.
From: A Gift of Stillness by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Some people think they can short circuit the process of attachment to the body by going straight to their sense of self, thinking that by cutting out the sense of self they won't have to work on contemplation of the body because the work they're doing goes deeper, straight to the root. But attachment is like a vine: You can't find the root until you take hold of the nearest branch and trace it back. You can't really get to the root of your attachment to self until you've looked at where your most blatant day-to-day, moment-to-moment attachment is: right here at the body. The least little thing happens to your body and you can't stand it. A little bit of hunger, a little bit of thirst, too much heat, too much cold sets you running off. A little bit of illness and you go running for medicine. If that's not attachment, what is?...

We're not bad-mouthing the body, we're just looking at it for what it is. Ultimately we want to learn how to use it simply as a tool without attachment, but to counteract the attachment you've got to go very far in the other direction to counteract all the hype, all the slick advertising slogans you've used to sell yourself on the body: about how important it is, how essential it is, all the good things that come from looking after it very carefully, doing all the yoga, giving it exercise, eating all the right foods. You can do those things and yet still it's going to age, grow ill, and die.... Then the desire for an ideal body,... You see how deluded and futile it is. This is not to encourage you not to take care of the body, but simply to watch out for any delusion that gets built up around it, so that when aging, illness, and death come you're more prepared.
From: Contemplation of the Body by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:If, in your pursuit of the Buddhist path, your self-respect outweighs your respect for the truth of causality or the insights of others, you'll find it hard to take criticism or to laugh at your own foolishness. This will make it impossible for you to learn. If, on the other hand, your respect for your teachers outweighs your self-respect or your respect for the truth, you can open yourself to charlatans and close yourself to the truth that the canon says 'is to be seen by the wise for themselves.'
From: Opening the Door to the Dhamma: Respect in Buddhist Thought & Practice by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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