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:
You go into a place like an airport lounge or waiting at a bus station, train station, wherever: People are not looking at people anymore, they’re looking at their little screens. But if we’re going to change things, it’s not going to happen by appearing on somebody else’s screen. You have to do something that creates an example that startles people, makes them look up from their screens. Now it’s very easy to do that with unskillful things, but to do it with something skillful takes a lot more subtlety. Which is why you have to learn how to be dealing with the subtle issues inside your mind.

From: Goodness by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Kamma and rebirth are often understood to be teachings of fate and helplessness in the face of unknowable influences from the past. For this reason, they’re often rejected. Many people regard them as Buddhism’s cultural baggage: a set of Indian beliefs that — either because the Buddha wasn’t thinking carefully or because his early followers didn’t stay true to his teachings — got mixed up with the Dhamma, his teaching, even though they don’t fit in with the rest of what he taught. So now that the Dhamma has come to the West, many people believe that it’s time to leave all this unnecessary baggage unclaimed on the carousel so that we can focus on his true message in a way that speaks directly to our own cultural needs.

However, the real problem with kamma and rebirth is that we tend to misunderstand what these teachings have to say. This is because Buddhism came to the West at the same time as other Indian religions, and its luggage got mixed up with theirs in transit. When we sort out which luggage really belongs to the Dhamma, we find that its bags marked “Kamma” and “Rebirth” actually contain valuables that are priceless in any culture. Instead of teaching fate, they’re empowering, showing how people can develop skills in the present that will lead to the end of suffering.

From: Karma Q & A, A Study Guide by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
You see groups of people sitting around, and they’re all staring at their little screens. They’re not learning the lessons that come from looking at the people around you — looking at their expressions, listening to the tone of voice, seeing what they’re doing and casting around in your mind to ask yourself, “What do they need? What are they lacking? Is there something I’ve got that they could use?”

From: Sensitivity Through Generosity by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Red Belly
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Red Belly »

I might have said it before (can't remember!), but this thread is such a help and inspiration. Every day I look forward to reading these small, easily digestible bits of wisdom from one of today's most skilled teachers in Buddhadhamma. Thank you!
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
We’ve all made mistakes in the past, but we’ve all done some good things, too. Focus on the good things. Those are what give you strength to keep on doing more good things. If you focus on the bad things you’ve done, you just start spiraling down and it’s hard to pull yourself up.

So focus on the good that you’ve done. Dedicate that to your future, dedicate that to the people you’ve harmed in the past, so that you can live in this world without a sense that you’ve got a big debt. You’re working on paying off your debts, so work at it every day, every day.

From: Focus on the Good by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
I posed the question at the beginning of the talk, “I’d like to see a show of hands for how many in the room here do you find that in every day in every way your practice is getting better and better.” There were no hands of course. So I said, “What do you do to see you through those fallow periods? You’ve got to have some faith in what you’re doing to stick with it.”

From: Faith by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
When the Buddha advises you not to kill, he also recommends that you be gentle and protective of other beings. The same with the precept against stealing: You also protect other people’s belongings as best you can. The precept against illicit sex: You respect people’s rights; you don’t let your lust overcome the bounds of propriety. The precept against lying: You try to be a person who tells the truth, you try to promote friendships, you try to promote goodness in other people as well. So there’s a positive side to virtue, too.

From: Spread Goodness Around by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Our lives in the monetary economy are basically built around the idea that there are certain things you will do because you’re paid to do them, and other things you pay to do. But the fact that there’s payment going around there means that there’s a barrier. If the payment doesn’t pass over the barrier, nothing passes over in return.

But here we’re living in an economy of gifts. You look around you: The whole monastery, everything here is a gift. As we saw this evening, the people who came to help build the shed, they weren’t being paid to do it. Nobody’s forcing them to do it. It’s a gift of time and energy. Every building we have here, every little piece of decoration, every Buddha image: It’s all a gift. The fact that it’s a gift helps to break down barriers.

This is why the monks in Thailand often refer to their lay supporters in the same way they would refer to family, relatives, yaat, whether or not they’re really yaat in the technical sense. There’s a sense of extended family.

Now sometimes this may mean that the monastery’s not run like a tight ship. I’ve known people with military backgrounds who’ve expressed despair about how the monastery is run. But it runs on naam jai, the Thai word for voluntary spirit or good spirit in the heart, good humor in the heart. And that’s a fuel that doesn’t run dry — as long as we learn how to respect one another’s naam jai and learn how to keep it going with good humor and the sense of voluntary spirit, the sense of gift-giving. We’re doing good because it’s a good thing to do. It makes us happy. Always keep that point in mind.

From: Volunteer Spirit by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Simply by sitting here breathing — the breath coming in, going out comfortably — you don’t require any sensual pleasures at all to make you happy. That’s what you learn when you meditate: You’ve got the resources inside that allow you to breathe in a way that feels really satisfying, and it’s all for free. It has nothing to do with sensual desires at all. That’s what renunciation means.

From: Five Precepts, Five Virtues by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
For many people, the issue is, “Should I learn to accept myself or should I reject myself?” And the psychologists would say, “Learn to accept yourself.” Well, acceptance and rejection of yourself are two extremes. We need to recognize them as extremes and start looking at behavior instead.

There are some people who really *should* be dissatisfied with the way they behave. And then, of course, other people who are too hard on themselves. Their behavior is perfectly okay but they tie themselves up in knots with unrealistic expectations, unrealistic standards — and beating themselves over the head with those expectations and standards.

It’s obvious that we shouldn’t have unrealistic expectations, but the question is, “At what point do they become unrealistic?” And that’s something we’ve got to learn through trial and error in the practice.

But it helps to focus not so much on your sense of who you are, whether you’re a person who should accept yourself or a person who should be upset with yourself, and to look instead at your actions, at your intentions.

The Buddha was so wise in teaching Rahula precisely this issue from the very beginning, because your intentions are something you can know if you really look carefully. There are so many other things in life that you can’t know. But this is one thing you can know. And so you work on developing your sense of right and wrong with regard to your intentions — your sense of what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate, your sense of what’s skillful or not. You’re beginning with something you can know, something you can watch in terms of intention and then see what happens as a result of acting on that intention.

From: Accepting Yourself by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
There are times when your practicing and saying the right thing may hurt somebody else’s feelings, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re harming them.

There was a book I was reading recently where the author was saying, “Well, even the Buddha spoke in harmful ways.” But what the author meant by that was that the Buddha would sometimes hurt people’s feelings by challenging them on their wrong views or saying things they didn’t like. Well, that’s not harm. There are times when saying something harsh, something strong, something unwelcome, is an expression of goodwill. Goodwill’s not just tenderness or gentleness.

The example the Buddha gives is of a child who’s gotten something sharp into its mouth. You have to pull the object out, even if it means drawing a little blood from the mouth. Much better than letting the child swallow the object and have it tear up its insides.

This doesn’t mean that we’re weak, and mettā doesn’t necessarily mean lovingkindness or tenderness. There are times when you have to be sharp with people as an expression of goodwill. But if they can sense that it’s coming from your goodwill, then you’re fine.

There are times when pleasing words are actually *not* skillful, where gentleness is not skillful. You may not know the story by Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” This crazy guy has kidnapped a bunch of people and is holding them for ransom. He sits there and he’s talking — and he’s had a miserable life — and this one old woman who listens to him and starts developing tender, motherly feelings for him, realizing what a damaged childhood he’d had. And so at one point she reaches out to him, and he immediately shoots her dead, saying that you can’t trust anybody. So there are times when tenderness may not be the best expression of your goodwill.

But remember that goodwill is the desire not to harm anybody. If you can get other people to act in skillful ways, so much the better. But if you can’t, you have to guarantee that your own skillful actions aren’t going to be affected by other people’s crazy, strange, bad behavior. After all, *your* actions are yours. No one else can give you bad karma. You’re the only one who can give yourself bad karma. And you do that through a lack of goodwill, a lack of discernment.

So goodwill’s something you have to keep in mind all the time. And as for the battles you fight in the world, choose them well. Choose your battles well. But always fight using goodwill. Remember that it is a strength.

From: Goodwill as a Strength by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
This is probably one of the Buddha’s most important messages: that the suffering we go through is not necessary. He’s not teaching us to accept it, to be resigned to the fact that we’re going to have desires that will never be fulfilled. That’s like living a life of quiet desperation, calm desperation, equanimous desperation, but it’s still desperate, because there’s the sense that things could be better but somehow they’re not getting better. He doesn’t leave you there. He says that that state of being is not necessary. There is a path of practice that leads out, that leads to the deathless, so that the wish not to have to age, grow ill, and die can be fulfilled — simply that you have to be willing to learn from your mistakes, willing to learn from your frustrated desires, trying to learn the right lessons.

Some people go through life never learning anything at all. This is why a psychotherapist has to dig up childhood patterns. You learn something in your childhood, then you don’t learn anything anymore. The child is where people had to deal with frustration and it’s often the level from which people deal with frustration as they grow older. They don’t learn.

So whenever you meet up with frustration in your practice, asked yourself: What kind of lesson would the Buddha have you learn from this? What kind of lesson is helpful and will go all the way to the goal? If you look in those terms, you find that the path is a lot easier to sort out.

From: Frustrated Desires by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
A while back, I was reading a piece: someone complaining about the idea of translating the word kusala as skillful, saying that in Western ethical thought the idea of skillfulness plays no role, so why should we introduce it when we talk about Buddhism?

That’s a very narrow attitude, as if whatever Buddhism has to offer has to go through our filter first before we’ll accept it. And we’re unwilling to have our horizons expanded.

Actually, introducing the idea of skillfulness to ethics would be a very useful thing — a very skillful thing — because it makes the point that, on the one hand, mere good intentions are not enough. They have to be skillful to get genuinely good results. On the other hand, the idea of skillfulness emphasizes the extent to which you can learn from your actions and apply what you’ve learned to future actions.

This is just one of the many ways in which Buddhism introduces a lot of concepts that may seem foreign to us at first, but the more you get to live with the concepts, the more you realize that they deal with your direct experience, and they’re very useful, especially for the purposes that the Buddha assigns to all of his teachings, which are to understand suffering and stress and to use that understanding to put an end to them.

From: Wind, Fire, Water, Earth, Space by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Our culture is a very unforgiving one. We have one shot at making it in society, they usually say. Of course, it’s based on a religion that gives you one shot. You’ve got this one lifetime and then there’s going to be either eternal reward or eternal damnation. Which is a very unforgiving way of thinking.

This is one of the reasons why the Buddha’s teachings on rebirth are so helpful. If we don’t make it this time, we’ve got another chance. Now, the other chances may not come for a while. As the Buddha said, “Your chance of being reborn as a human being right away is pretty slim.” But at least you’ve got more chances, and there’s not some arbitrary person up there who’s going to damn you forever for one little mistake, or praise or reward you for one little change of heart. Karma is a lot more fair in that area, and it gives you a chance to start over, start over, start over.

So learn to think in a way that “Okay, you make a mistake. Recognize it as a mistake but it’s not something that’s going to cause you trouble forever.” Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and then try better the next time. Try better the next time. Try to develop the ability to spring back and to cut through a lot of the recriminations that would otherwise tie you down.

From: The Wisdom of Self-regulation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
The world is swept away, things change, it offers no shelter, there’s suffering, there’s nothing of our own in the world that we can really hold on to as any kind of protection. And then that reflection on craving: If we don’t take care of our craving, we’re just going to keep coming back to more and more and more of the same old changing, stressful world, but it constantly eludes our grasp. Which means we’ve got to work on the mind.

From: In Shape to Meditate by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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