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:
The delusions surrounding our fears promote unskillful actions: we react to genuine dangers in ways that, instead of ending the dangers, actually create new ones. We amass wealth to provide security, but wealth creates a high profile that excites jealousy in others. We build walls to keep out dangerous people, but those walls become our prisons. We stockpile weapons, but they can easily be turned against us.

The most unskillful response to fear is when, perceiving dangers to our own life or property, we believe that we can gain strength and security by destroying the lives and property of others. The delusion pervading our fear makes us lose perspective. If other people were to act in this way, we would know they were wrong. But somehow, when we feel threatened, our standards change, our perspective warps, so that wrong seems right as long as we’re the ones doing it.

This is probably the most disconcerting human weakness of all: our inability to trust ourselves to do the right thing when the chips are down. If standards of right and wrong are meaningful only when we find them convenient, they have no real meaning at all.

Fortunately, though, the area of life posing the most danger and insecurity is the area where, through training, we can make the most changes and exercise the most control. Although aging, illness, and death follow inevitably on birth, delusion doesn’t. It can be prevented. If, through thought and contemplation, we become heedful of the dangers it poses, we can feel motivated to overcome it.

From: Freedom from Fear by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
You don’t really know how much free time you have. You never know when illness will come, or death: your own death or death of someone else around you, which will cut short your time here. All sorts of things can happen. Crazy people may decide they want to have another war, and it won’t be just their own personal war; it’ll drag lots of people into chaos along with them. So you don’t know how much more time you have before that kind of chaos hits again.

This is why the Buddha’s reflections on the world are important. He defines the world simply as your world of sensory impressions, but it’s not a monadic little world. It’s going to be influenced, it’s going to be touched, by other people. And although he said that reflections about whether the world is finite or infinite, eternal or non-eternal are a waste of time, the reflection on the fact that the world is swept away, does not endure, offers no shelter — that passage we chanted just now — is an important reflection. You have no guarantee how much more time you have here or how much longer social stability is going to last.

In one of the passages that King Asoka singled out as important for Buddhists to keep reflecting on, in the series called “future dangers,” the monk reflects: “I’m young now, healthy now, alive now. Society is peaceful. The Sangha is harmonious. But when these things change, it’s not going to be easy to practice. So while I have the time, I should practice and try to attain that which I haven’t yet attained, to see what I haven’t yet seen, so that when I do face aging, illness, death, social unrest, or a potential split in the Sangha, my mind will still be at ease.” This is what heedfulness is all about: to remind you that you don’t have all the time in the world. You may not even have all the time in a day.

So use these thoughts to focus your mind on the present moment. You’ve got this moment right now. Don’t waste it, because you don’t know how many more present moments you’re going to have.

From: Overwhelmed by Freedom by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Everything we have in life we’re going to have to lose — except for one thing that we don’t have to lose, and that’s the skillfulness of our actions. And fortunately, that’s our most important resource, our most important treasure inside. The body, we’ll have to lose; our relatives, we’ll have to lose; society will break down at some point, whether it happens while we’re alive or after we die. But if it doesn’t break down before we die, the fact that we’re dying means that society is not going to be much help at that point. What will be of help is the fact that we’ve maintained our devotion to being skillful. And we see that as our top priority.

The Buddha himself talks about this in his discussion of loss. He says there are five kinds of loss. The first three are loss of relatives, loss of wealth, loss of your health. And those kinds of loss, he says, are not serious. They’re going to happen at some point anyhow.

From: Worry by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
You know the story about Angulimala who had killed 999 people and then, not long after the Buddha taught him, became an arahant. A lot of people like that story. It shows that no matter what your background, there’s hope.

But we have to remember that, at the time, there were a lot of people who didn’t like what had happened and were pretty upset. Here was Angulimala who had killed all these people and he was literally getting away with murder. You could say that he deserved to suffer, but the Buddha didn’t take that into consideration at all. He said, “Here’s a person who’s suffering really badly and his suffering is spilling out and affecting other people.” By curing Angulimala’s suffering, or showing him how to cure his suffering, he saved a lot of other people, too.

So if there’s the question of whether you deserve to be happy or not, you learn how to put that aside. Realize that that’s a non-issue. The issue is that you’ve got actions. The mind is an active principle."

From: So Little Time by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
You have to think of the Buddha’s image of the world after he gained awakening: Everybody is on fire. If you think about it, we go for a pleasure and it goes away as it’s coming. And as soon as we focus on something, as the Buddha said, you try to base your happiness on something and it’s already become otherwise than what it was. It slips away, slips away. Time just keeps going so fast, and there’s no way you can call it back, no way you can stop it. It’s like we’re on fire.

So when you see somebody that you really don’t like, remember: That person is on fire, as the Buddha said. They’re suffering. So if it’s hard to find a good side to their character or good side to their behavior, at the very least remind yourself that they’re suffering, so you can manage a little bit of sympathy for them. In that way, you rise up above the common back and forth of liking people who do nice things to you and disliking people who do bad things to you.

From: The Pleasure Principle Made Noble by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
I read somebody complaining that they had seen a passage where someone had said that jhana is necessary for awakening, and he said, “No, that can’t be the case. My teacher says you see your defilements most clearly when they’re really strong: strong lust, strong anger. That’s when you’re going to gain awakening.” That’s what he said, but where are you in relation to that anger, where are you in relation to that lust when you’ve allowed these things to grow strong? When they stir up the mind, you can’t see things clearly. There has to be at least part of the mind that’s standing very still and watching whatever is happening, not the least bit stirred by those things. Otherwise you just slip along with them, accepting this as the normal way of the mind. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Part of the practice is learning that the mind at normalcy is not affected by those things. It’s a mind that’s been trained in line with the Buddha’s standards.

Those standards are set out in the factors of the path, and you want to have respect for that fact. We’re not here just to meditate as we please. We have to check ourselves to see if there’s anything we’re doing that’s causing stress, anything causing harm to ourselves or to people around us. You want to check for that.

From: Accepting the Buddha's Standards by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
When you come right down to it, there’s a part of you that’s totally alone as you come into the world, totally alone as you face your sufferings, totally alone as you leave here. Even when you are with other people, there’s an internal dialogue that’s just between you and yourself. That’s what you’ve got to be responsible for. The world would be a nice place if we could provide for each other’s happiness — and we can a little bit — but for the really deep down parts, we each have to be responsible for ourselves. If you constantly worry about this person and that person, no matter how close you are to them, there’s going to be a part of you that gets neglected that you really are responsible for.

From: Your True Responsibility by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
No matter how much you feel that your desire to straighten other people out is a good desire, you’re looking in the wrong place. Remember the acrobats. You have to maintain your balance and in doing so, you help other people maintain theirs. If you’re reaching over to straighten out their balance, you’re leaning over. And of course, when you’re leaning over, it causes other people to lean over as well, and everybody falls down. Always remember that the problem is inside.

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

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
You think of all the politicians who trade on fear. They get away with that because of our attachments to our sensual pleasures. They raise the specter of war, they raise the specter of unemployment and poverty, and push through all kinds of horrible legislation based on that. As long as we’re attached to sensual pleasures, we’re going to be susceptible to their fear-mongering. Think about it. If you weren’t attached to sensual pleasures, what would you have to fear? Nobody could prey on your fears. You’d be more independent. Safer. This element of independence is really important, because a lot of our sensual pleasures depend on other people.

From: Sensuality by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
If you have trouble sleeping, then by all means meditate when you’re lying in bed, for meditation is a useful substitute for sleep. Often it can be more refreshing than sleep, for it can dissolve bodily and mental tensions better than sleeping can. It can also calm you down enough so that worries don’t sap your energy or keep you awake. But make sure that you also set aside another time of the day to meditate too, so that you don’t always associate meditation with sleep. You want to develop it as an exercise in staying alert.

From: Your Physical Situation in "With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation" by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Question: You’ve said that mindfulness is to always keep something in mind. I thought that mindfulness was to be aware of the present moment, but if I’m keeping something in mind, I might not be aware of the present moment. I get a little confused. Could you say more about it?

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: There is mindfulness and there is right mindfulness. Mindfulness in general means keeping something in mind. Right mindfulness means remembering which qualities are skillful, which ones are unskillful, and remembering to be alert and ardent about recognizing and developing skillful qualities in the present moment.

From: Good Heart, Good Mind: The Practice of the Ten Perfections 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:
You do things for the sake of happiness. There are cases where the sense of self actually does contribute to your happiness, in which case it’s a skillful strategy. There are other times when it causes stress and suffering, in which case it’s an unskillful strategy. It defeats its own purpose, its whole reason for being, the whole reason for why you made it. When you see that, you can stop doing it. That’s the whole point of the teaching.

From: The Kamma of Self & Not-self by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
All too often, people who practice Theravada get accused of being selfish, that they’re not out there awakening everybody else. But you can’t really awaken other people. We suffer because we have a lack of skill, and you can’t make somebody else skillful. Skill is something you have to develop through your own powers of observation, doing things and looking at the results and then adjusting your actions in line with what you’ve learned from the results. This is something each person has to do for him or herself.

However, we’re not totally self-centered. After all, generosity can’t be accused of being selfish, and that is part of the path. Virtue, harmlessness, is also part of the path. The good qualities you develop in your mind send a good influence out and they pay off all your debts.

From: Getting Out of Karmic Debt by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
So remember: There are no “ends” out there in saṁsāra, there are just “means.” They only real end is nibbāna. You may not be sure whether you can attain any of the ends that you want, but you can be sure that your means are good. Those are the things you can be sure about. You can look directly at your intention and directly at what you’re actually doing. As for how the results will work out in the long term, there are a lot of factors beyond your control. So you focus on what is in your control: what you’re doing right now.

From: A Safe Space Inside by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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