The Quotable Thanissaro

A discussion on all aspects of Theravāda Buddhism
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
One of the things our culture lacks is a serious rite of passage: a time when you can go off, be by yourself, delve down inside. You start sorting out the things you learned as a child on your way to adulthood, trying to see which things you’re going to carry into adulthood and which you’re going to leave behind.

It’s almost as if our culture’s afraid to have people do that, for fear of what they might see. Our minds are so connected now through the media, and there’s a strong sense that if you’re not participating in the general culture, there’s something wrong with you. We have very little room for genuine dissent, very little room for real independence.

Meditation, though, is one activity that you can do that gives you some of that freedom, gives you some of that time to yourself.

In a lot of cultures, they want you to go out and have a vision quest and gain a vision — maybe of your totem animal or some symbol that the culture recognizes. The Buddha’s rite of passage is a lot more radical than that. It calls everything into question. In particular, he found an answer to the question that deals very deeply with our relationship to the society around us: To what extent does your personal happiness have to make way for the needs of society? To what extent is it really detrimental to society for people to go off and find happiness in their own ways? And to what extent does your personal happiness have to be in conflict with others’?

The Buddha found that it is possible to find a genuine happiness that doesn’t harm anybody. The fact that he gained awakening never harmed anybody, even though, when he came back to teach, a lot of his teachings were not pleasing to people who weren’t willing to change their ideas. So, it’s not the case that he came up with an answer that pleased everybody, but he came up with an answer that didn’t harm anyone. At the same time, it brought him to the ultimate happiness.

From: A Rite of Passage by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
We hear about awakened people who are extremely equanimous. But it’s not the case that the equanimity is the essence of their attainment. After all, the Buddha didn’t say nirvana is the ultimate equanimity. He said it’s the ultimate happiness. But the fact that awakened people have a basis for their happiness that doesn’t depend on conditions: That allows them to look at conditioned reality with a lot more equanimity. They’re not trying to feed on it anymore; they don’t need it for their happiness. So the equanimity is a byproduct.

From: Equanimity Isn't Everything by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
[The Buddha] talks about the goal just enough to make you understand that it’s worth pursuing: the ultimate happiness, the ultimate freedom, totally outside of any physical or mental location in space or time. As he says, if you hold to a perception that the goal might be accompanied by any kind of suffering or regret, drop that perception. Don’t listen to it. The deathless is totally satisfying and ends all your hungers. Once your hungers are satisfied, that solves all your other problems as well.

From: The Uses of Right Concentration by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Admirable friends can’t do the work for you. As [the Buddha] says, no one can purify you; you can’t purify anybody else. You don’t go to heaven because of other people’s good actions; you don’t go to hell because of other people’s bad actions. It’s your actions that determine that. So there is that sense in which you’re separate. And of course you’re the one who chooses your friends to begin with. So in that way, the separateness of our selves comes first.

From: A Separate Self by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
We’re here to master the skill of how to stay. That’s it. Doesn’t sound very exalted. Doesn’t sound very profound, but it’s an important skill to master. And your quest for something exalted or profound: You’ve got to recognize that as a disturbance in the present moment, too. Just let it go, let it go. You’ve got to just stay right here and maintain this sense of being balanced.

From: Stay by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Many of us come to meditation because we’ve got particular problems that cause suffering in our lives. Something’s wrong, something’s lacking, something’s eating away at our hearts. We have a sense that meditation might be able to do something for that. That’s a perfectly fine motivation for coming. And when the Buddha taught the four noble truths, suffering was the first thing he talked about.

Some people come with a particular problem that’s been eating away, but once that problem gets solved, they stop meditating. We see some of that. But there are other cases: As you take care of that particular problem, you see that there is a larger structure to the way we live our lives, the way we have bodies that age, grow ill and die. There are dangers out there, dangers in here. And the damage that those dangers can do doesn’t stop just in here. Even if it comes from in here, it can spread out. You begin to see there’s a larger issue that the practice can address.

From: Don't Underestimate Merit by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
The five aggregates [khandhas] are form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness. These five categories cover the entire range of experience that can be adequately described [DN15]:

"Form" [rūpa] covers all physical phenomena, both within one's own body and without. The remaining four [aggregates] cover all mental events.
"Feeling" [vedanā] covers feelings of pleasure, pain, and neither-pleasure-nor-pain, regardless of whether they are based on physical or mental sensations.
"Perception" [sañña] denotes the mental act of applying labels or names to physical or mental events.
"Fabrications" [saṅkhāra] here covers the verbal and mental processes of concocting thoughts, questions, urges, or intentions in the mind.
"Consciousness" [viññāṇa] covers the act of consciousness at any of the six senses: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and intellect.

From: The Wings to Awakening by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Sometimes you hear people say that because there’s something beautiful out there, of course it’s giving rise to greed. But actually, all too often the greed was out looking for something to aggravate it first. Or you hear somebody say something and it, as they say in Thai, gets stuck in your ear in the wrong way and you’ll be angry about it for a long time. You tell yourself, “Well it’s because that person said such and such a thing that I’m angry.” But all too often you’ve got your ears cocked in such a way that you’re going to get angry about whatever comes in. In other words, the mind is often looking for trouble. That’s what you want to look for. The problem is not so much the things outside, it’s what’s coming from within.

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.

From: Two Things to Keep in Mind by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
There is no need to know the entire sequence of factors [of dependent co-arising] in order to put an end to suffering and stress. A person merely needs to focus on a particular factor or relationship within the sequence — whichever is easiest to focus on — and to apply knowledge in terms of the four noble truths to that spot. This is why the Buddha, in teaching the way to the end of suffering and stress, did not have to explain the entire sequence every time to every student. He could focus simply on whichever factor or set of factors was most transparent to the student, recommend a relevant meditative practice, and that would be enough for the student to bring suffering to an end.

From: The Shape of Suffering: A Study of Dependent Co-arising by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »


Question: I’ve come to meditation to help me bear the atrocities of the world. What is awakening? Is it a moment of conscience when one embraces all the sorrows of the world, and in that case means hello to all sorrows or is it on the contrary a state of total forgetfulness and egotism, in that case it would be hello to guilt? So, which is it?

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Neither. Remember the image of feeding. Ordinarily, we feed on the world, both physically and mentally, in order to gain happiness and maintain our identity as beings. But when you gain full awakening, the mind no longer needs to feed because it already has enough in terms of its own happiness. When you’ve reached that state, you can engage in the world without having to feed on it. You can help those whom you can help, and you don’t have to suffer in cases where you can’t help. In this way, you’re neither embracing the sorrows of the world nor are you running away from them. Instead you have a different relationship to the world entirely. You bring gifts to the world without needing to ask anything from it.

From: The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

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. If you can train yourself so that the mind isn’t overcome by pleasure, isn’t overcome by pain — in other words, you don’t let these feelings get in the way of your seeing what’s actually going on — then again, the mind is immune, or at least the results of your past mistakes will be mitigated.

From: How to Feed Mindfulness by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
The [Pali] Canon questions the underlying assumption — which we’ve inherited not only from the Transcendentalists and Romantics, but also from their Enlightenment forebears — that human culture is evolving ever upwards. The early discourses present the opposite picture, that human life is getting worse as a sphere for Dhamma practice, and it’s easy to point out features of modern life that confirm this picture. To begin with, Dhamma practice is a skill, requiring the attitudes and mental abilities developed by physical skills, and yet we are a society whose physical skills are fast eroding away. Thus the mental virtues nurtured by physical skills have atrophied. At the same time, the social hierarchy required by skills — in which students apprentice themselves to a master — has mostly disappeared, so we’ve unlearned the attitudes needed to live in hierarchy in a healthy and productive way. We like to think that we’re shaping the Dhamma with our highest cultural ideals, but some of our lower ways are actually dominating the shape of Western Dhamma: The sense of neurotic entitlement produced by the culture of consumerism is a case in point, as are the hype of the mass media and the demands of the mass-market for a Dhamma that sells.

From: The Buddha via the Bible: How Western Buddhists Read the Pali Canon by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
When you’re not getting happiness from your surroundings, when things outside are not pleasing, they help to force the issue: There’s no pleasure out there? Well, look inside for your happiness. This is where the fourth custom comes in: that you take delight in developing and delight in abandoning — i.e., developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones. The delight reminds us that we’re not being stoic just to be stoic. We want to enjoy looking for happiness inside, and to enjoy being independent from things outside.

This applies not only to things, but also to relationships. We’re constantly looking for a good relationship with this or that person. We’re moving our focus in the direction where it shouldn’t be going; it should be coming back in, because relationships, like things, end. And just as with things, our culture has a lot of pressure to go for relationships. We’re not doing our duty as members of our culture if we’re not looking for a relationship, and we don’t look good in the eyes of other people. If we can enjoy not having to look good in their eyes or to meet with their approval, then we’re that much closer to freedom.

If you’re really serious about practicing the Dhamma, you’ve got to say, “Whatever you can do to simplify your life, you do that. Whatever you can do to simplify your surroundings, you do that.” And when things outside are not happy, not quite what you want them to be, you turn around and look for your pleasure in developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones.

From: Contentment by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
I know some people who say that when you’re working with kamma, you’ve got to realize that your intentions are simply the result of causes and conditions. They don’t have anything to do with you. But that doesn’t give you any motivation to try to make skillful choices. Those people say you have to let go of every sense of “I” because it causes you trouble. Well, it’s actually necessary for certain skillful decisions.

From: Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
The purpose of the practice is not just to accept what’s happening and to simply let it happen. When you look at the Buddha’s teachings on karma, you realize that what we experience in the present moment is not something that’s beyond our control. We do have a role in shaping it. That’s what allows for a path of practice. If we didn’t have that role in shaping it, we’d just have to accept things, like a TV show. Wherever the writers decide the show is going to go, you have to accept that. You can’t yell at the screen and tell the characters to do something else, or go back and rewrite it. Actually, experience is more like an interactive game. You have some control over how things are going to go. You have some choices that can steer the action in new directions.

From: Change Your Mind by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Post Reply