The Quotable Thanissaro

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

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Often we hear that mindfulness is enough. Like the Beatles’ old song: All you need is love. The refrain in a lot of Buddhist circles is: All you need is mindfulness. Well why? What’s good about mindfulness? What is mindfulness? How does it function? You’ve got to have a view about these things.

This is why, when the Buddha identified the most important internal quality in the practice, he didn’t say mindfulness. He said appropriate attention, something we hardly ever hear of in Dhamma talks. “Attention” means how you frame the issue, how you frame the way you approach the present moment, how you look at things, the questions you ask. This attention can either be appropriate in terms of putting an end to suffering or inappropriate if it’s not effective at all, if it actually creates more suffering. And the appropriate way to attend to the present moment is the same way the Buddha did: getting a sense of your intentions and seeing where they’re skillful and where they are not.
From: Appropriate Attention by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:The Buddha's path is not the sort where you simply do as you're told — noting, noting, noting, or scanning, scanning, scanning without thinking. Those approaches are simply mindfulness exercises, but people tend to do them mindlessly — i.e., without asking any questions. Actual insight comes not by pummeling the mind with a technique but from posing the right questions in the mind. "What are these assumptions I'm carrying around here? How could I do this more efficiently? What am I doing that I'm not noticing? How can I learn how to notice it? How can I catch the mind as it's about to let go of its mindfulness?" This last point may sound impossible, but it's not. When you learn how to pose questions in the mind like this, and you enjoy trying to find the answers, it's going to bring progress along the path.
From: Joy in Effort by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:So even though in the beginning of the meditation it may seem that there’s a little fence around the mind, there are restrictions on the mind, it’s just for the purpose of getting things established. It’s like your hands cupped around the flame that you’re trying to light. Once the flame has caught hold of the kindling, then it begins to grow on its own and it grows larger and larger. So it’s not always going to be restrictive. In fact, when the sense of concentration gets solid and begins to spread out through the body you find that it’s much more expansive than your ordinary states of awareness. And it’s all right here.
From: A Quiet Spot by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:The Buddha says that an important part of staying with the breath, staying with the body in and of itself, is what he calls subduing greed and distress with reference to the world, or putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The “world” here has many meanings. You can think about the world outside. Or just the world of your six senses: sight, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, ideas. With anything that comes up in the mind, remind yourself: That’s just the memory of a sight or the memory of a sound or whatever. You don’t have to get worked up about these things. You’re not responsible for them right now. They don’t have to impinge on your awareness. You may have some responsibilities after you leave meditation, but there’s no need to weigh the mind down now. You don’t need to clutter it up now. And as I said, there’s no need to stash anything away.... So for the time being you have no responsibilities. For the time being you have no history. In fact, any thought that would remind you of who you are, that can go, too. The more you’re able to do this, the more the mind will gain from the meditation.
From: Free for the Time Being by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Many students interpret the teaching on not-self as the Buddha's answer to two of the most frequently-asked questions in the history of serious thought: "Who am I?" and "Do I have a true self?".... If the not-self teaching isn't meant to answer these questions, what question does it answer? A basic one: "What is skillful?".... In the areas where you need a healthy sense of self to act skillfully, it's wise to maintain that sense of self. But eventually.... you see that self-identification, even of the most refined sort, is harmful and stressful. You have to let it go.... So if you put the not-self teaching in its proper context.... you'll see that it's not a dead-end answer to a dead-end question. Instead, it's a cutting-edge tool for bringing about liberation.
From: Questions of Skill by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Because the attainment of stream-entry can make such an enormous difference in your life.... the question of the historical Buddha becomes irrelevant. If the genuine Deathless is not the historical Buddha's attainment, it's what a genuine Buddha would have attained.... As SN 22.87 quotes the Buddha as saying, "One who sees the Dhamma sees me," i.e., the aspect of the Buddha that really matters, the aspect signaling that total freedom, the total end of suffering, is an attainable goal.... Given that "dhamma" means both teaching and quality of mind, it stands to reason that truth of character is needed to measure the truth of the teaching.... The suttas say that the best things in life are available to those who are true.
From: ‘When you know for yourselves...’: The Authenticity of the Pali Suttas by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
perkele
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by perkele »

Hello dhammapal,

thank you for your dhamma quotes. They have been often helpful, just at the right time.

Sadhu! Sadhu! Sadhu!

_()_
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:But when you look inside for meaning, you find that there is a lot to learn, there is a lot to understand. Things do get accomplished. As you work on the path, you begin to see how the mind creates a thought world and you realize that you have the choice to go into that thought world or not. As you develop more and more mindfulness, more and more alertness, you understand these processes of the mind. Through understanding them, you can free yourself from them. You don't have to be their slave. The world that's a slave to craving: You don’t have to get into that world.
From: Giving Meaning to Life by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:An important part of mindfulness is to decondition yourself. The Buddha said, just look at the breath, look at the body in and of itself, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world — in other words, putting aside your old habits of thinking about the world out there. Put aside your old ways of using your eyes and ears and nose, tongue, body, and mind to focus on issues outside there in the world, to get your knowledge about the world, to figure out how to gain what you want out of the world — and of course getting complacent and careless when you get what you want, and upset when you don't, and trying to find new ways of getting it.

Now we want to use our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind for other purposes, just to see the processes of the senses as they happen, in and of themselves. Look at them in a way that highlights the movements of the mind, how the mind makes a choice, and how it enforces that choice, how it justifies that choice to itself.

All these processes are going on all the time, but we usually don't look at them because our attention is focused somewhere else far away. So stay right here at the breath, because this is a great place to observe all these other things.
From: Questioning & Conviction by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Then there will be part of the mind that says, "I don't want to think about the Dhamma right now because it means I've been acting unskillfully in the past, and it just hurts too much to think about that." That's where the Buddha recommends developing the right attitude toward your past mistakes. It's not inevitable that you're going to have to suffer a lot from your past mistakes. As the Buddha said, if you can develop an attitude of limitless goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, that'll mitigate the results of your past bad actions.

<snip>

So when you've lowered the walls, you can see back into the past and ahead into the future. You can start seeing the connections between actions and their results."
From: How to Feed Mindfulness by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Kusala »

The Hunger of the Mind

"The human world is not an easy place to live in. That's because we're
all feeding. And it's not just physical food. We feed off emotional food, relationships,
power, status, wealth. In fact, the hunger of the body is almost nothing compared to the hunger of the mind.
As the Buddha once said, even if it rained gold coins we'd never have enough for our
sensual desires: the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations we'd like to feed off of.

And with each person's mind being so hungry, it's inevitable there's
going to be a lot of conflict as our unlimited desires meet up with the
limited source of food. The Buddha's image of the world was of a puddle
of water that was shrinking, and there were fish fighting over the last
bit of water, pushing one another out of the way for that last gulp of
water before it all dries up.

So what do you do? You've got the choice: You can just continue
feeding, feeding, feeding, or you can step back and look at your hunger.
This is one of the purposes of meditation: to give you a place to step
back, to give you better food - food that comes from inside, rather than
from outside. Food that you don't have to fight off anybody or you
don't have to go harming anyone else to get."
"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
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:This need to remember is one of the reasons why we have to study the texts at least to some extent. A couple of months back I was asked to give a talk on the topic of whether it really is necessary to know anything about what the Buddha said if you’re going to meditate. If you think of mindfulness simply as being aware, there’s not that much that you would need to study. Your awareness is right here, it’s happening all the time, so what else do you need to know? But when you realize that mindfulness means keeping something in mind, you realize that you need to study some to know what things are the right things to keep in mind while you practice.
From: The Message of Mindfulness by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:There's the phrase in the description of jhana, "secluded from sensuality." Some people interpret that as meaning totally cut off from any input from the physical senses. Some interpret it as meaning secluded from sensual pleasures, so that you have to meditate in a place that's unpleasant or a place that's very boring. But neither of those interpretations is what the Buddha means. Sensuality, in his sense of the word, is your passion for your sensual thoughts and plans; the extent to which you love to obsess about those things. So in being secluded from sensuality you're not trying to close off any contact with outside senses and you're not trying to put yourself in a dull, boring place. You're trying to develop a more internal seclusion: If you see any sensual passion coming up, you sidestep it. You put it aside.
From: Right Concentration by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:The Buddha tends to avoid talking about metaphysical issues, but kamma is the one big metaphysical issue he talks about a lot. The nature of action, what action does, when it gives its results, the fact that action is real, that it gives results both immediately and over time: These are metaphysical issues. And the reason the Buddha focuses on these and not on other issues is because the nature of action is important for understanding why we suffer and how we can stop suffering. There’s the kamma that leads to suffering; there’s the kamma that leads to its end.
From: Becoming by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:The question remains: how does this strategy of skillful renunciation and skillful indulgence translate into everyday practice? People who ordain as monastics take vows of celibacy and are expected to work constantly at renouncing sensual passion, but for many people this is not a viable option. The Buddha thus recommended that his lay followers observe day-long periods of temporary renunciation. Four days out of each month — traditionally on the new-, full-, and half-moon days — they can take the eight precepts, which add the following observances to the standard five: celibacy, no food after noon, no watching of shows, no listening to music, no use of perfumes and cosmetics, and no use of luxurious seats and beds. The purpose of these added precepts is to place reasonable restraints on all five of the senses. The day is then devoted to listening to the Dhamma, to clarify Right View; and to practicing meditation, to strengthen Right Concentration. Although the modern work-week can make the lunar scheduling of these day-long retreats impractical, there are ways they can be integrated into weekends or other days off from work. In this way, anyone interested can, at regular intervals, trade the cares and complexities of everyday life for the chance to master renunciation as a skill integral to the serious pursuit of happiness in the truest sense of the word. And isn't that an intelligent trade?
From: Trading Candy for Gold: Renunciation as a Skill by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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