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:As the Buddha says, you’ve been shaping your life in an unskillful way, but if you learn how to shape it in a better way, it turns into the path. You get more sophisticated about how you shape things. You get more sensitive, until you finally reach the point where you discover how not to fabricate anything at all. That’s difficult. It requires a real leap of the imagination that that could be a possibility, too. But you get there by learning from your experiments. And you keep experimenting because it’s fun. You learn a lot. It’s the learning that comes from experimentation and playing around that brings a real sense of accomplishment — a sense of accomplishment in finding a solid well-being and developing your discernment at the same time.
From: Supervised Play by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:What's interesting here is that when the Buddha presents this introduction to his teaching on kamma, he focuses on two types of good actions to stress their importance: gratitude to your parents and generosity. These things really do have merit; they really do have value. The fact that your parents gave birth to you was not just a set of impersonal processes that just happened to happen. It's not the case that you don't owe any debt of gratitude to your parents for having gone through all the pain of giving birth to you and then raising you once you were born. There really is a personal debt there. They made choices, sometimes difficult choices, that allowed for your survival. Generosity is one of the ways you pay off that debt, and it's also one of the valuable ways you interact well with other beings, benefiting both them and yourself in the process.
From: The Buddha's Shoulds by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:You have to ask yourself: "What do you really want out of life? What's your highest goal?" And then you have to look at the way you live. Is it in line with your highest goals or is it wandering off someplace else? Sometimes it wanders off because you don't have any clear idea about what your goals are. Other times you have a clear idea but you're not attentive to what you're doing: your mindfulness slips, you forget your goals and go wandering off after something else. And so the meditation is a good time to reflect on both of those issues.
From: Life Well Lived by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (mp3 audio)
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:I once knew a journalist in Bangkok who asked me why Buddhism focuses so much on suffering. He said, “I don’t have any suffering in my life. Why all the talk about suffering?” So I asked him if he had any stress in his life and he said, “Oh yeah, lots and lots of stress.” And he proceeded to tell me all the different things in his family and his work that were stressing him out.

So regardless of what you call it, suffering or stress, if you’re not an arahant, you’re suffering from it. And it’s good to recognize that everybody is suffering in the same way. There are differences in the particulars, but deep down inside everybody has that same sense of being burdened, being overcome: pushed in ways they’d rather not be pushed, weighed down in ways they’d rather not be weighed down.
http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writ ... 140119.pdf
From: The Particulars of Your Suffering by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote: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 (430 page pdf)
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:It might seem strange that the Buddha would be asking his listeners to bring right view to his teaching even before they had heard his teaching, but he was depending on the fact that all people have experienced stress, and all search for someone who knows a way to put an end to stress (AN 6:63, Chapter One). This is the primal search, beginning in early childhood, from which all other searches grow. The question embodied in this search — "Who knows a way or two to stop this pain?" — is probably the most earnest question we ask. In advising his listeners to bring right view to his teaching, the Buddha was simply recommending that they approach it from the viewpoint of this earnest, primal search, and not through the lens of less primal issues. For anyone sensitive to the problem of stress, this is not too much to ask.
From: Skill in Questions: How the Buddha Taught by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (430 page pdf)
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:The first step in being judicious is understanding what it means to judge in a helpful way. Think, not of a Supreme Court justice sitting on her bench, passing a final verdict of guilt or innocence, but of a piano teacher listening to you play. She's not passing a final verdict on your potential as a pianist. Instead, she's judging a work in progress: listening to your intention for the performance, listening to your execution of that intention, and then deciding whether it works. If it doesn't, she has to figure out if the problem is with the intention or the execution, make helpful suggestions, and then let you try again. She keeps this up until she's satisfied with your performance. The important principle is that she never directs her judgments at you as a person. Instead she has to stay focused on your actions, to keep looking for better ways to raise them to higher and higher standards.
From: The Power of Judgment by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:However, once the commentaries used the khandhas to define what a person is, they spawned many of the controversies that have plagued Buddhist thinking ever since: "If a person is just khandhas, then what gets reborn?" "If a person is just khandhas, and the khandhas are annihilated on reaching total nibbana, then isn't total nibbana the annihilation of the person?" "If a person is khandhas, and khandhas are interrelated with other khandhas, how can one person enter nibbana without dragging everyone else along?"

A large part of the history of Buddhist thought has been the story of ingenious but unsuccessful attempts to settle these questions. It's instructive to note, though, that the Pali canon never quotes the Buddha as trying to answer them. In fact, it never quotes him as trying to define what a person is at all. Instead, it quotes him as saying that to define yourself in any way is to limit yourself, and that the question, "What am I?" is best ignored. This suggests that he formulated the concept of the khandhas to answer other, different questions. If, as meditators, we want to make the best use of this concept, we should look at what those original questions were, and determine how they apply to our practice.

The canon depicts the Buddha as saying that he taught only two topics: suffering and the end of suffering (SN 22.86). A survey of the Pali discourses shows him using the concept of the khandhas to answer the primary questions related to those topics: What is suffering? How is it caused? What can be done to bring those causes to an end?
From: Five Piles of Bricks: The Khandhas as Burden & Path by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:So have a strong sense that your actions really do make a difference. The fact that we’re meditating here does make a difference. Every aspect of the path makes a difference. Because after all, we do start out with a difference: There is pleasure and there is pain. And there’s a lot of needless pain in the world. If we don’t do something about our unskillful actions we’re going to be adding more unnecessary pain to the world. And we’ll never reach the ultimate happiness that the Buddha said is a possibility for human beings.
From: Making a Difference by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (save as a pdf file)
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:The four noble truths are not just truths about something; they're ways of looking, categories you can apply to anything going on in the mind. You can watch all the crazy thoughts in the mind and, if you do it from the perspective of the four noble truths, knowledge can arise. Learn to find what in the mind you can rely on as a path factor that will give you the strength you need to withstand the negative factors. The ability not to get discouraged by events comes down to your ability to keep talking to yourself with the right tone of voice, saying the right things to yourself. That's what right view is all about. Remind yourself that no matter how bad things get or how long the dry stretches seem to last, it's not the end. The possibility for knowledge is always there. This is one of the amazing things about the mind: It's always aware. There's always that potential for knowledge, for understanding. Sometimes it may seem weak, but it's there, and you can encourage it.

That's how, when things get bad, you can become your own best counselor, your own best advisor, so that when things crash, not everything gets demolished. Your determination not to keep on suffering: That'll see you through.
From: When Things Aren't Going Well by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Stay with the whole body as you breathe in, the whole body as you breathe out, and then work to maintain that sense of wholeness. In the beginning you’ll find that the work may seem to be too strenuous because you’re not doing it very efficiently. Just notice what needs to be done, what doesn’t need to be done in order to maintain that whole-body awareness until you find that you can maintain it with ease. You’ll find that there may be slips. You’re working with trial and error here. You’re working on a skill. Try to think back to whatever manual skills you’ve developed — carpentry, sports, cooking skills, whatever — and the attitude you had to foster to help master the skill. If there’s a mistake, you don’t let yourself get upset by the mistake. Just start all over again.
From: The Basic Medicine by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:So the things you learn are not all generalities. We’re here to develop a skill and a skill requires that you read the situation. Then you apply what’s appropriate in line with the particulars of the situation, in terms of what works, what gets the kind of results you need.
So keep these points in mind: that you’re here not only to remember the teachings and then force them on the mind. You’re trying to gain a range of skills to apply them in the mind and see what works and what doesn’t work.
<snip>
The only way you can develop discernment is by being sensitive. And “sensitive” here doesn’t mean that you have sensitive feelings that are easily hurt. It means being sensitive to what’s actually going on, sensitive to what you’re doing, and sensitive to how it connects with the results. This is why we have to develop concentration. It’s the steadiness of our gaze that allows us to see the connection between what we did and the results when they come up. Sometimes they’re immediate. Sometimes they’re not. But it’s only when you learn how to develop that sensitivity to cause and effect that you’re going to gain the genuine discernment that leads to release.
From: The Wise, Experienced Cook by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:So as you try to exercise restraint in these ways, it teaches you lots of lessons. On the one hand, it teaches you that you are more in control of your environment than you thought, simply by the way you look or listen or smell things, the way you go about tasting things, touching things, thinking about things. These activities can have a huge impact. And you can be more skillful in this impact on the mind if you exercise some restraint.... We’re here to find a way out. And the way out is by looking into the mind. How do you shape things? When you go about looking and listening, thinking, what are you looking for? Can you look and listen in a different way? When you frame things in this way, it’s really empowering.
From: Two Things to Keep in Mind by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:There’s a Pali term raga, which is usually translated as passion, and there’s its opposite viraga, dispassion. And there are areas where raga is a good thing: passion for the Dhamma is a good thing; the desire to practice; the desire to attain the results of the practice. Having a passion for these things is actually a passion that the Buddha encouraged. Otherwise raga is something that you’ve got to watch out for as a major cause of suffering. And its an important stage of the practice, an important attainment to be able to develop viraga: first there’s dispassion for sensual things, sensual pleasures – although it’s actually dispassion for sensual desires – we’re in love with our sensual desires more than we are with the actual pleasures.
From: Passion, Dispassion, Compassion by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (mp3 audio)
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Ajaan Fuang would have people get in touch with their breath. He'd use a few analogies and similes, and then he'd listen to the words they used to describe their own experience of meditation, when the breath felt "sticky,"' when it felt "solid" or "dense," when it felt "full." And then he'd use their vocabulary to teach them further. For instance, one of his students would talk about the "delicious breath," so Ajaan Fuang would start his instructions to that student by saying, "Get in touch with the delicious breath." In this way, the meditation is not something imposed from outside.
From: A Private Matter by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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