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:So reflection on bodies inside and out is meant to be an equalizer and to give you a sense of samvega. Not to say that the body is bad — just that it’s not the sort of thing you want if you’re looking for something beautiful.
From: Bodies & Minds Outside by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:We may want to come here just to tune out and relax for a bit. But for meditation to be genuinely relaxing with a sense of clarity, wellbeing, and strength requires work. It’s like visiting the gym. If you want to come away feeling strong, you have to be willing to exercise. Here, the work or exercise is directed thought and evaluation around the breath. Establish a beachhead in the body, an area of the body where you feel at ease and confident. Then learn how to expand from there, listening to the needs of the body.
http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writ ... 140119.pdf
From: Concentration Work by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:It's the steady progress that makes all the difference, that turns out to be the winner in the end. So sacrifice whatever attitudes get in the way of looking at the issues staring you right in the face, because those are the genuine article. They're right here. They're not abstractions. We can sit around and think about Dhamma abstractions from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, but the problems in the mind aren't composed of abstractions. They're not composed of memories. They're composed of movements in the mind right now. Look at what the mind is doing, how it moves. Can you change the way it moves?
From: The Stairway Up by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:We may want to come here just to tune out and relax for a bit. But for meditation to be genuinely relaxing with a sense of clarity, wellbeing, and strength requires work. It’s like visiting the gym. If you want to come away feeling strong, you have to be willing to exercise. Here, the work or exercise is directed thought and evaluation around the breath. Establish a beachhead in the body, an area of the body where you feel at ease and confident. Then learn how to expand from there, listening to the needs of the body.
http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writ ... 140119.pdf
From: Concentration Work by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:This is why simply stating, "I don't know," is not an adequate response to the questions of rebirth and the efficacy of karma.... It's like having money: Regardless of what you do with it — spending it, investing it, or just stashing it away — you're making an implicit wager on how to get the best use of it now and into the future. Your investment strategy can't stop with, "I don't know." If you have any wisdom at all, you have to consider future possibilities and take your chances with what seems to be the safest and most productive use of the resources you've got.
From: The Truth of Rebirth: And Why it Matters for Buddhist Practice by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:I’ve been counseling some people in a Dharma study program. And their experience with retreats up to this point had been that you go in, you don’t talk to anybody, and you go home. So as you’re sitting there in the retreat hall meditating, everybody else looks so calm and still, and yet you’re fighting with your hindrances, with your defilements. You seem to be the only person who is suffering that way.

But when these people come on a study retreat, they get a chance to talk with one another and they discover that everybody goes through the same thing. Everybody has the same problems. And instead of being discouraging, it’s actually encouraging. You realize that even though things may take a lot longer than you had hoped, the fact that they take long doesn’t mean it’s hopeless. It’s the common pattern throughout the world. When you see the larger pattern and understand it, you’re in a much better position to focus on the present moment with the right attitude, with the right sense of balance.
From: Goodwill First & Last by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:There’s a popular misconception that awakening is like a neurotic breakthrough. You go through a really bad dark night of the soul and all of the sudden the light opens and everything dark falls away. Although there are few accounts of awakening in the Theragatha and Therigatha that depict people going through really bad periods before reaching awakening, the general picture in the Canon is one of bringing the mind into balance. That’s what the gladdening and steadying are all about. When you find the mind’s energy level is low, you’ve got to bring it back up to the proper level. If it’s too high, you bring it back down.
From: Balance & Release by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:This is a path whose fruits are not limited only to the person who tastes the noble fruits. It requires that you be generous, that you be virtuous, that you develop thoughts of goodwill and compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity, where they’re appropriate. And that spreads the goodness around.
From: Noble Standards by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:If you're used to thinking of yourself as smart, it's useful to live in a set of circumstances where other people don't think that you're smart.... The way to do this is to identify yourself as someone always willing to learn. That provides you with a wider range of places where you can stay, a wider range of groups you can live with, and a wider range of ways you can look at yourself and the situations you're in. The wider your range of skills, the easier it is to survive. Your survival doesn't have to depend on other people recognizing the fact that you're smart, or even your thinking you're smart.
From: Always Willing to Learn by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:...then let your conscious awareness spread to fill the entire body, from the head down to the toes, so that you're like a spider sitting in the middle of a web: It's sitting in one spot, but it's sensitive to the entire web. Keep your awareness expanded like this — you have to work at this, for its tendency will be to shrink to a single spot — and think of the breath coming in & out your entire body, through every pore. Let your awareness simply stay right there for a while — there's no where else you have to go, nothing else you have to think about... And then gently come out of meditation.
From: Basic Breath Meditation Instructions by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:So patience, in order to be part of the path, has to be coupled with curiosity. Patience acts as a kind of a ballast, keeping the mind grounded, giving a solidity to what you’re doing, and preventing curiosity from the zipping away too fast, saying this must be this, and that must be that, making sure that you go through the steps. Once you find something else, then you try to test it, to see if it really works. Curiosity is what keeps patience from getting dead. The two qualities go together. You sit with things for a while so you can watch them carefully.
From: Patience & Curiosity by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Life is not a TV show, where you passively watch whatever’s going to happen, and the show will go on whether you watch it or not. It’s more like an interactive video game. Only when you participate can the game progress. Some things you can’t change in the game, such as the ground rules, but some things you can.... There are some things you can’t change in your situation, but there are a lot that you can. Sometimes you make one choice in the interactive game and it changes the whole plot. Other times it can simply dispose of one or two of the bad guys. But at least you can play an active role. You can get the mind into a position where it’s able to practice, able to turn around and look inside and see that the real cause that makes your pains burdensome is what you’re doing right now.
From: Shoot Your Pains with Wisdom by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:So life in the monastery is like improv. Improv requires you to be very alert, which of course is an excellent practice for the meditation. Learn how to read the situation around you, and it helps in your skill in reading the situation inside.

Because the same principle happens in the mind. Defilements in your mind don’t come in line with any score. They come willy-nilly. Some days there are a lot; some days there are not that many. You have to be up for whatever the situation requires. This is what right effort is all about. Some issues come up in the mind that require a lot of effort and a lot of thought. Others require just that you watch, and they go away on their own. So you have to learn a sensitivity to what needs to be done inside. Remember that the practice of meditation is not a military exercise or a mechanical exercise. It’s improv. So the two skills should help each other along — learning how to improvise inside, and learning how to improvise outside. That’s what leads to harmony.
From: Harmony Improv by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:In the context of the training the Buddha recommends to Rahula (MN61), this luminosity refers to the mind’s ability to see when its actions are defiled, and to train itself to act in ways that are undefiled and pure. In other words, the image of luminosity is not a statement of the innate goodness or purity of the mind. After all, as the Buddha states in AN 4:199, the idea that “I am good” expresses as much craving for identity as the idea that “I am bad.” Instead, the luminosity of the mind is simply its ability to perceive affliction, to see how that affliction is related to its actions, and — when it’s willing — to stop engaging in actions that cause affliction. If the mind were dark, it wouldn’t be able to do any of these things.
http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writ ... 130911.pdf
From: On Denying Defilement by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:...when things aren’t going all that well in the meditation, it’s still a lot better than most of the things that people do in their lives. It’s a good, beneficial use of your time.
From: Judicious vs. Judgmental by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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