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:
People who are doing wrong are just as deserving of our compassion as those who are being wronged. There’s no need to like or admire the people for whom you feel compassion. All you have to do is wish for them to be happy. Then you do what you can to alleviate the suffering that comes from past mistakes and to stop the mistaken behavior that causes suffering now and into the future. The more you can develop this attitude toward people you *know* have misbehaved or are misbehaving, the more you’ll be able to trust your intentions in any situation.

From: The Sublime Attitudes: A Study Guide on the Brahmaviharas by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Someone was saying today that she had trouble seeing that she deserved happiness. But the Buddha never talks about deserving happiness or not deserving happiness. He was here to put an end to suffering, whether deserved or not. We can think about lots of different ways we might deserve to suffer or other people might deserve to suffer, but that’s part of our views that are making us continue to suffer, *unnecessarily*. The opportunity to stop making yourself suffer is here. And in not placing the burden of suffering on yourself, you’re putting less of a burden on other people. You’re actually more able to help them.

From: Clinging, Addictions, Obsessions by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Contemplate what it means for us to be happy, for other people to be happy, and what it means to wish for people to be happy. You realize you’re wishing that people would change their ways if they’re being unskillful, that they’d understand the causes of true happiness and learn how to act on them.

That’s something you can wish for anybody, regardless of how horrible or despicable their actions have been in the past. The world would be a better place if everyone could find a true happiness inside: through generosity, virtue, meditation. When you can think in this way, you realize that goodwill [mettā] isn’t something that requires you put on rose-colored glasses or send out pink clouds or cotton-candy of nice thoughts. It’s extremely practical. It’s essential. It’s what allows you to live safely in the world.

From: Metta by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
I received a phone call this evening from someone who asked, “How do I stick with the breath throughout the day? Do I just not care about other people? Do I not take in what they’re saying?” I said, “No, that’s not the case at all.” When you’re with the breath, you’re giving yourself a solid place to stand as you take on your other responsibilities. And you’re actually more able to be sensitive to other people when the basis of your attention is your breath, rather than what it normally is: your moods, your preoccupations.

So you look for whatever opportunity there is to practice. There’s a common phrase that you try to bring your practice into your life. Actually, it should be the other way around. You try to bring your life into the practice. In other words, the practice is the container. Your awareness of the breath should be the container for the day.

And even when you can’t focus entirely on the breath, or give it your 100% attention, you can still make it the framework. Even though you’re aware of what’s going on outside and you’re responding to what’s going on outside, you can still be aware of the breath energy in the body. It may be too much to ask of yourself to be conscious of “in and out” in the breath, but you can be attuned to simply the general quality of the breath energy. That’s something you can sense immediately and deal with immediately, especially if you’ve been working in your formal meditation on how to breathe through tension in the body, breathe through blockages in the body, expand your awareness, expand the sense of the breath throughout the body. As you get better and better at that skill, it doesn’t take all that much to bring it into the rest of your life. And if you do it well, you find that, yes, it is a grounding. It does provide you with a good foundation.

That way, your breath is the container for the rest of your life, as it should be. After all, without the breath, you wouldn’t be dealing with anything at all, doing anything at all, having any contact with the outside world at all. You’d be dead. So spread your awareness around — a larger awareness, a larger sense of what you can do. And this is how you have goodwill for yourself. This is how you have compassion for yourself.

From: Harmlessness by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
There’s a sutta where the Buddha talks about different motivations for being generous. And the lowest one, of course, is, “I’ll get this back with interest.” But still that’s a good motivation. It’s better than saying, “I don’t see any need to be generous at all.” There’s too much of *that* out there. When people begin to realize that if they really want to have wealth that lasts for a while, if they want to have well-being that lasts for a while, they’ve got to share: That’s a meritorious motivation that should be encouraged.

As you work up the levels of motivation, you finally get to the ones where generosity is simply a natural expression of the mind. You say to yourself, “I give simply because it’s good to do this. The mind feels refreshed.” That, too, is a benefit you get from it.

So don’t look down on the idea that you’re going to *get* something out of this. Don’t think that it taints your merit or the goodness of your actions. It’s simply a matter of how refined you can make your sense of how you benefit from the generosity or how you benefit from the practice of virtue, how you benefit from the meditation. As your mind grows, it just gets more and more refined.

From: Don't Underestimate Merit by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
The third thing that we have to will is relinquishment, learning how to let go. This is where the perfections of renunciation and giving come in. Giving here means giving away not only material things, but also our unskillful desires, giving up our unskillful ways of holding onto things. Sometimes it comes naturally, easily, and sometimes it doesn’t. And again this is where you need to use your discernment, learning strategies to make you more and more inclined to give up things you have to give up, things that get in the way, the lesser pleasures that get in the way of greater happiness.

This is not a matter of just giving up things that are obviously unskillful. I did a survey once on the topic of relinquishment in books of American Buddhism. In the few cases where they actually talk about relinquishment, they focus on relinquishing unhealthy relationships and relinquishing your controlling mindset. We don’t really need the Buddha tell you relinquish those things. Your parents can tell you to relinquish unhealthy relationships. If you have a psychotherapist, the therapist will tell you to relinquish your controlling mindset. There are a lot of things that are really pleasurable, that society actually encourages you to look for, But the Buddha says, look, you’ve got to give them up as they lead to unhealthy attachments down the line. Your attachment to sensual pleasures and sensual desires: that’s the big one. Your attachment to thoughts about, plans about sensual pleasures. That’s what you have to learn how to renounce.

An important step is learning to see the rewards of renunciation. It’s not going to leave you deprived. It really is restful to the mind. It really gives peace to the mind. There’s a famous story about the monk, a former king, sitting in the forest exclaiming, “What bliss! What bliss!” And it turns out he’s not pining after the joys he felt when he was a king before he became a monk. He’s exclaiming over how blissful he is now that he can sit under the tree without having to worry about all the people who wanted to kill him when he was a king, all the people who wanted to take away his pleasures and wealth. That’s one of the pleasures of renunciation, that sense of freedom, and nobody’s going to try to steal that from you. And as the monk said to the Buddha, his mind was now like a wild deer: It was free. You’ve got to learn how to think in those ways when the desire for sensuality really gets strong, to see that when you can renounce it, you’re free.

And again you have to will that. It doesn’t come naturally. As the Buddha once said, even *he* didn’t find it easy to will renunciation. His mind didn’t leap up at the idea. But his desire for a deathless happiness was strong enough and he coupled it with the discernment that could help him find ways of reasoning with his mind, find tactics for giving the mind pleasures that didn’t have to depend on sensuality — primarily the pleasure of jhana, the pleasure of concentration. When you have an alternative source of pleasure like that, you realize that you’re trading candy for gold. But the ability to make that trade is something you have to will.

From: The Will to Awaken by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
When greed, anger, and delusion come into the mind, they usually barge in with a lot of force and expect to push you right over. So one thing you have to do is to ask, “Well, why? Why should we follow that? Why should we want instant gratification?” And there will be an “of course-ness” to their answer the first time around. “Of course you want it this way. Of course you want it that way.” “Well why?” If you’re persistent in being block-headed like this, all the defilements will start revealing themselves. You’ll see how shabby they are. You’ll be able to get around them more easily.

From: Training the Whole Mind by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
This is the normal way of the human race. If you don’t like unkind speech, hurtful speech, untrue speech, find some other place to be born. But for the time being, you’re here right now. So just take this as something normal. When you see it outside as normal, your mind can stay normal as well.

That’s how your goodness doesn’t get shattered, doesn’t get wounded by these things. You can still make up your mind, “I’m going to do good in this world, regardless of what other people say.” As long as you know for sure that it’s good, stick with it. Don’t let other people’s opinions get in the way. After all, the goodness you do will be yours. The words they say are theirs, so leave them as theirs, and things are a lot more peaceful in the world.

From: Hurtful Words by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Spread thoughts of goodwill [mettā], reminding yourself that you’re coming from a good place and you see no need for anybody to suffer. What would you get out of their suffering, especially if you’re coming from a position of well-being? Most of the time, if we want to see other people suffer, it’s because we’re suffering. “As long as I’m suffering, let’s see everybody else suffer as well”: That attitude simply leads to more suffering. Focus on whatever sense of ease and well-being you’ve already experienced, and be willing to share it with others. This doesn’t deplete your well-being; it augments it. If you can maintain that attitude of well-being, then when you come to meditate again, there’s not a lot of garbage to clear out of the mind. You simply think thoughts of goodwill to everybody, connect up with that initial intention, and you’re back where you were.

From: How to Leave Meditation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
As the Buddha said, “You don’t go to heaven or hell because of other people’s actions. You go because of your own actions.” Those can take you to heaven; they can take you to hell. So why are you taking yourself to hell? And why are you upset with what other people are doing, which really has nothing to do, really, with you? It’s your actions that make all the difference.

From: Look at Yourself by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Knowing that most of your ordinary worries and cares are rendered pretty meaningless by death, then live your life from that perspective. Say the good things you will have wished you had said, do the good things you will have wished you had done.

If you stop and think about this, you’ll see that you will have wished you’d spent more time training the mind. When you’re dealing with other people, you will have wished you had said the kind thing, the helpful thing, the appropriate thing, something that wasn’t worried about what you could get out of that person, or what you wanted that person to be, but simply expressing your concern, expressing your compassion, and looking at your own mind, what you wished to have done. You’ll have seen that the skills you develop as a meditator — being mindful, being alert, having a sense of restraint — proved to be really useful. And you would wish you had done it more.

From: You're Already Dead by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll be able to find some way for realizing that the sensual desire you’re feeling has drawbacks that far outweigh the gratification, and that you’d be much better off focusing on the breath to let the mind gain a sense of inner peace and calm instead.

From: The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
If the breath feels comfortable, learn to maintain it. It’s okay to be attached to the breath when it’s comfortable. Desire can also be a good thing, when you learn how to be skillful in what you desire. We tend to think that the Buddha said desire serves no other purpose than to cause suffering, but that isn’t true. Skillful desire, the desire to be skillful, to let go of unskillful mental states, to develop skillful ones, is actually a part of the path. It comes under the factor of right effort.

From: Don't Listen to This Talk by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
When the Buddha pointed out the causes of suffering, he said they’re inside. Sartre said that “Hell is other people,” but no, hell is yourself. Yet it doesn’t have to be. Your self doesn’t have to be hell. The things you do in the mind can switch around and they can become your genuine friends. Your admirable friends.

From: Tending the Flame by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Reflect on the fact that if you want everything to go the way you like, you’re in the wrong realm. You’d have to be in heaven. But here you’re in the human realm. Human history is filled with people doing disagreeable things. So drop the perception that you or your loved ones are being especially victimized. Mistreatment is a common thing, and anger is not going to help you deal with it effectively. You’ve got to clear your head if you want your response to injustice to have a good effect. So try to develop some equanimity around the fact that injustice is universal, and then see what you can do most effectively in response to this particular instance of it.

From: With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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