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:
Once the mind learns how not to create unnecessary suffering, the suffering that comes simply from having a body, or living with human beings, or living in this world, doesn’t have any effect on the mind at all. This is a great discovery. You don’t have to die in order to be beyond the sufferings of human life. It’s simply a matter of learning how to approach the present moment more and more skillfully, with more and more sensitivity.

From: Above & Beyond Suffering by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Strive4Karuna
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Strive4Karuna »

danieLion wrote: Mon Jul 30, 2012 6:28 am Licking Yourself Clean
Ajaan Fuang once said that meditators tend to be like little puppies. They go out and defecate and then come running to their mothers to have their mothers lick them off. They haven't learned how to lick themselves off yet. So as a meditator you need to learn how to lick yourself off. If things don't go well, learn how to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and then figure out what went wrong. Take responsibility for your meditation. Take responsibility for your insights. This is what the Buddha did. This is what every meditator has to do.

If you go to a teacher, saying you've had a certain experience, and the teacher identifies it as a level of jhana or a level of insight, can you be sure? Do you really want to hand those judgments over to somebody else? Or do you want to learn how to judge things on your own, so that you can trust yourself? If you let the other people do the judging, there's always going to be an element of doubt: Do they know what they're saying? At the same time, you're absolving yourself of any responsibility. Discernment becomes their duty and not yours. That's not a good attitude for a meditator to take. You've got to learn to look, to try a few things.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... ml#licking" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
My idea in starting this topic is for myself and others to not only drop Thanissaro quotes we like, but also the ones we find controversial, provocative, or downright heretical :twisted:/ :stirthepot: . I have no way to enforce this, but I ask that this topic just be for quoting and if discussing is to happen that it be made a new topic of its own (I suppose a few words about if you agree with/like the quote or think the Reverend's full of it's fine if it's brief).

I'll try and drop a new quote every other day or so (we'll see how it goes).

Kind regards,
Daniel
My boy. Thanissaro Bhikkhu is a legend worth visiting. Thank you for this quote! 😁
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Acceptance is something you have to learn to do in a skillful way. Accepting just where you are and thinking, “That’s all I have to do; I’m perfectly fine as I am”: That’s unskillful acceptance. It dooms you to a miserable life. If, however, you accept where you are as a starting point, accepting that you also have these potential qualities for awakening, that’s the skillful use of acceptance.

From: Shame & Acceptance by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »


Question: To me, I think the major attraction or allure of anger is the feeling of energy and power that comes with it. It’s often seemed to me, in the times I’ve actually been able to look at it, that if there were some way to separate the energetic component from the negative emotional aspect of it, it would be really marvelous. Because there is, simply, a force to it that is so much more powerful than feelings like goodwill — the kinder sort of emotions that come up. But that remains for me as just this idea, that it would be great to find out a way of doing this. I must admit I don’t have the faintest idea of how to begin.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Well, can you think of holding on to that energy for twenty minutes? Of how it would feel? You’d be exhausted. So basically, you’re really draining yourself by letting that energy come through. It’s not that pleasant. If you actually looked at it from a more detached point of view, you’d realize that — while there is a certain thrill to getting that rush of blood right through the system — you couldn’t sustain it for very long.

Question: It does bring a sort of mental clarity. Or, at least, things seem to be very clear.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: That’s the problem. That’s the tunnel. You’re in a complicated situation, and all of a sudden all you see is one little detail, and you see it very clearly. I have to admit, before I was a monk, I smoked pot. And I inhaled... Before becoming a meditator, I had always thought that pot gave great clarity. You saw certain things really, really clearly. But then, after I started meditating, I was visiting someone and he offered me a little. I said to myself, “Well, let’s see what this is like, and why this is against one of the precepts.” I came to realize that that clarity was precisely this issue: that so many parts of your mind just get shut down, and you’re focused on one thing. But everything else was in a haze. So it’s the clarity of an amoeba. Amoebas see one thing very clearly: where the food is. They have a lot of energy devoted to their food. So that’s a lot of the appeal of anger: It seems clear; it seems to be very energetic, but when you open up your brain a little bit, you realize it’s a very narrow, distorted perception, and the energy is really a drain.

From: Antidotes to Anger by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
If you can develop some goodwill [mettā] for yourself, goodwill for the people who’ve been doing wrong, then there’s some hope for the world. After all, you probably haven’t had all your wrong actions tallied up and punished. And you’re probably glad that that’s the case. Try to develop the same attitude toward other people and see what you can do to develop some health in your mind. When you know the way to make your mind healthy, then you’re in a better position to be a good example to others, so that they can make their minds healthy as well. In that way, we all benefit.

From: When Your Will is Ill by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
This is the method: Look at what you’re doing, look at the results. If things aren’t going well, consult someone else who’s also on the path. This is part of the method, too. Give importance to your intentions. Reflect on what you’re doing. Use your imagination. These are all part of the method. When you understand the method, then you apply it to everything. Make it your sport to see: What’s the most skillful thing to do in this situation? What’s the most skillful thing to think? What’s the most skillful thing to say? And instead of getting upset with yourself or depressed or upset at the situation when things don’t turn out the way you expected them to, just learn from it, chalk it up to experience. Next time it comes around, try again.

From: A Path of Action by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
So this is a very important thing to focus on as you meditate and as you go through the course of the day: how you perceive things. You can begin with simply how you perceive your interactions with other people. Notice how much of your perception of the situation is just that, your perception. We talk about the garbage we collect in the course of the day: How much of that garbage is self-produced? To put it really crudely, how much of it is just your own shit that you’re carrying around? This is not to say that other people aren’t behaving in evil, outrageous, or horrible ways. There are people like that in the world, but if your peace of mind were totally dependent on everybody else’s behaving themselves, you’d be their slave. You’d never get free. But as the Buddha said, the whole issue of suffering is something we can overcome through our own efforts. This means that we have to look at the suffering we create for ourselves. As for what other people are doing, that’s their responsibility. It doesn’t have to impinge on us.

And as for the baggage we carry around: If we had to go back and straighten out all the horrible things we did in the past before we could gain Awakening, we’d never be done. But it turns out that when you simply learn to drop old habits, Awakening is possible. After all, the suffering you’re experiencing right now is a combination of things coming from the past and things you’re doing right now, including the way you’re perceiving things right now.

A frequent image in meditation instructions is that all you have to do is turn on a light and the darkness goes away. No matter how many eons the darkness has reigned, all you have to do is turn on the light once and that’s the end of the darkness. All you have to do is work on how you’re perceiving things in the present moment and when things finally click, you don’t have to worry about what other people tell you, you don’t have to worry about the world, you don’t have to worry about the self, you don’t have to worry about what you’ve done in the past, for you’ve learned a new habit, you’ve developed a new skill. And the development of that new skill changes everything.

From: Habits of Perception by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Genuine Dhamma leads to modesty. In other words, you don’t go bragging about your attainments or about how much you know. After all, the Dhamma has nothing to do with what other people think of you. They don’t need to know what you’re doing, because, after all, the big problem is your problem — the way you’re causing suffering for yourself.

If you’re able to make progress in that area, fine. If you have something to share with others, you share it in a way where you’re not bragging. You try to stay modest. But as a general rule, especially in the Forest tradition, you don’t go around talking about your attainments.

From: Modest, Unentangled, Unburdensome by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
We see so many people talking about how little children need to develop a sense of self-esteem, and they try to encourage their self-esteem by giving them rewards and over-praising them for every little thing they do. But that’s not what self-esteem comes from. It comes, on the one hand, from knowing that you can be helpful and, on the other, that you can say No to certain things that you know are beneath you. There’s a sense of happiness that comes from this, a sense of well-being.

From: Relating to Karma by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
When the Buddha talks about killing anger, he doesn’t say you should feel guilty about having anger. The Buddha doesn’t lay guilt trips on anybody. He simply reminds you that it’s not in your best interest to let the anger take over. In his words, if you can gain victory over your anger, it’s worth a lot more than victory over other people. One of the problems that can come up when we hold our anger in check is that we feel we’ve lost out to the other side. If we hold the anger in check unskillfully, it can lead to depression. So we’ve got to learn to think more strategically around the anger.

The wise strategy goes in two directions. One is looking at your assumptions. Which of your assumptions have been violated? When you can identify it, then you have to ask yourself, in all fairness, is it a good assumption? Sometimes it is; sometimes it isn’t. If you can begin to see that the assumption was unrealistic, you’ve got to turn around and deal with it. Ask yourself where it came from, why you’re holding onto it when it obviously causes a lot of problems. But if the assumption seems clear and aboveboard, then the next question is how do you skillfully apply that assumption, given that the situation you’re presented with doesn’t meet the standards set by your assumption? Is right now the time to speak, or do you want to wait a little while later? Is right now the time to act, or do you want to wait until later? And what would be the most skillful thing to say or do?

This is where it’s good to live around people who’ve learned to bring their anger under some control, who can deal with difficult situations, can deal with injustices, can deal with all the problems that really need to be dealt with in the world, in an effective way, without letting the anger take over. You can see from their example how it’s done. If you can’t live around people like that, try to read up on how the Buddha dealt with difficult people. Read up on other cases of how to deal with difficult people. Just because you’re getting some control over your anger doesn’t mean that you have to be a doormat, but it is important that you’re very clear that winning a victory over yourself is more important than winning a victory over others.

In this case, you’re winning a victory over your anger. You’re not losing out when you’re not showing or expressing your anger. You can think of it as a strategic move. The less you show your anger, the fewer people will know where your buttons are. They won’t be able to press them so easily. There are a lot of ways in which life is like a poker game. You don’t want to show your hand. You keep it close to your chest, and you want to keep a poker face so that no one else can read you.

So it’s not just out of general niceness that you want to control your anger. There are times when you’ve got to think strategically, and you can’t let your anger show — because it is a kind of weakness.

But don’t bottle it up. This is why we work with the breath.

From: Reclaim Your Breath by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
bpallister
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by bpallister »

i thought this was a good one:

That’s the attitude you have to develop as a meditator. You want to be ardent
and alert and mindful. These are the attitudes you want to develop. Acceptance
might come in there in the sense that you accept when things didn’t go well, or
you accept when you’ve forgotten. You accept those facts, but you don’t accept
them as good things. You just accept the fact that this is what has happened, and
then you try to work beyond that. You don’t stay there. You’re not floating
around in a shimmering matrix of conditions, as someone once said. You’re
dealing with cause and effect, and they have an impact on whether you’re going to
experience suffering or not. There’s nothing shimmering or beautiful about that.
But there’s a lot to learn, a lot that you should want to learn, because after all, it is
your mind.
You’re learning about your mind, and your mind is complex. So don’t be upset
when it shows some of its complexity in that something that worked today is not
going to work tomorrow. There’s simply more to learn. Dig down. Then dig down
deeper, because we’re not here just to mold ourselves to the Dhamma. We’re here
to use the Dhamma in order to explore what’s going on inside to understand it.
When the realizations come, they’re going to be very personal. They’re your
defilements, and you’re going past them. They’re your voices in your mind, and
you’re going to learn how to deal with them. The terms of the Dhamma may seem
foreign—after all, that chant we did just now was all in Pali—but it’s speaking
about something very direct: the way the mind fashions suffering for itself.

from:
https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Wri ... and_On.pdf
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Here you’re creating the world and the identity of a meditator. At the moment, you want your world to be just the range of your body. The self in here is the self who wants to meditate, who wants to get the mind to settle down and gain some clarity inside. You want to nurture that desire, because without it, there’s no getting out. The question is: Why do you want to get out? Because all becomings involve some stress and some suffering.

You look at the world, the world around us. It looks like it has potentials for all kinds of good things, but also look at the other potentials. We live in a world that’s being swept away, that does not endure, offers no shelter, and there’s no one in charge. It’s a world where we really have nothing of our own. There’s nothing that you can hold on to in the world and say, “This is mine; I can take it with me.” And yet, we keep coming back, a slave to craving. One of the reflections the Buddha has you engage in is seeing that any world is not worth going into. But for that not to be totally depressing, you have to develop the world of a meditator.

You realize that this is your responsibility inside, getting this internal world in good shape because whatever you’re going to offer as a gift to the world outside has to come from something good inside. That’s why we try to get the mind with the breath — get it to be centered, get it to be still — because the mind with that sense of well-being inside is much more likely to be wise, generous, virtuous. All the good qualities that we associate with people who are good for the world have to come from here.

They say that Theravada is selfish, that we’re looking after only our own good. It’s not true. It’s just that where we focus our efforts to create good has to start inside. You don’t sacrifice your well-being for the well-being of others, in the sense of true well-being. You’ve got to create well-being inside. If there’s no well-being inside, then good things can’t come out.

So we work on developing this center in here. For the time being, you want all your other identities and all your other worlds and all your other desires just to fade away into the background. You’ve got to strengthen this one right here. This is your world right now. Don’t let the media or anybody else tell you otherwise. Don’t let anything come in, aside from your own determination that you want to find true happiness, a happiness that’s solid, that’s blameless and harms nobody. And the more solid the happiness is inside, the more you have to offer outside.

As Ajaan Suwat used to say, each of us has only one person, the one each is responsible for — and that’s ourselves — because you can’t be responsible for other people’s actions. You can’t be responsible for the world. You can give to the world, you can try to be harmless in your engagement with the world, but you have to remember: This world, like all other worlds, is swept away. It does not endure. It offers no shelter. There’s no one in charge. There’s no one up there saying that the ultimate plan for this world is going to be a good thing, so just bear with the technical difficulties for the time being.

The nature of worlds is that they fall apart. And you give what you can to the other people who are also struggling in this world. That’s your perfection of generosity. You try to be harmless: That’s your perfection of virtue. And that’s where you should focus your attention: on the good qualities you’re developing, both because they’ll lead to your true happiness, and also because a mind that’s imbued with these good qualities is going to come up with words and actions that are more conducive to well-being all around. Still, the focus has to be in here. You have to focus on the source, and the source is your own mind.

From: Look after the Source by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
We tend to have an attitude that we’re like people watching TV: totally passive, everything is already provided, it’s simply our duty to watch. The present moment is something ready-made and we’re simply consumers, watchers, spectators.

But that’s not the case. We’re shaping things from the very beginning — both through our past actions and through our present actions, what we’re doing right now. We take the materials coming in from the past and we shape them into the present. So we’re already making an effort, we’re already doing something. Now we want to do that as skillfully as possible, because the way we shape the present moment affects not only the present moment, but it has ramifications that go on into the future. So you want to be very mindful about where you’re being skillful and where you’re not.

From: Shaping Your Life by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
It’s interesting that when the Buddha describes one of the motivations for letting go of things that are not-self, he says it will be for your long-term welfare and happiness. There’s a “you” in that motivation. It’s a provisional you, but there a has to be a sense that you’re going to benefit from this. You hold on to that because otherwise it’s hard to let go of things. You need that as motivation. Otherwise you say, “Gosh, I’ve got these nice pleasures right now. It would be a shame to let them go because who knows when they’re going to come again?” It’s hard to follow any path that way.

But we’re on a path where we sense that we’re going to benefit from it, so we’re willing to let go right now of things that are attractive to us. The Buddha never denies that the aggregates give their pleasures, but there’s something better to do with them than just wallow around in the pleasures they provide. We can use the aggregates to create a path.

You can think of the aggregates as pieces of wood. You can take the wood and build a fire with it and burn yourself with the fire, which is what we do most of the time. Or instead of burning it, you can build a bridge to take you across the river. The aggregates have their uses. But the kind of determined, steady work that would be involved in building a bridge requires that you have a steady motivation. So you hold on to the sense that you’re going to benefit from this. And you keep at it. As you let go, you let go of some things and hold on to others. Letting go is a skill. And it’s only when the path has gotten you to the other side that you let go of it, too.

So there are some things we hold on to. Even here in the body, you hold on to the fact that you’ve got this body right now. Make the best use of it. Use it to be generous. Use it to be virtuous. Take care of it so that it has the strength to enable you to continue to practicing meditation. You hold on to just that much. But as for all the other attachments and stories and narratives and whatnot that we build around the body, those are best let go.

When you have this attitude toward the body and this attitude toward your mind, then — in Ajaan Lee’s image — you’ve squeezed the juice out of them. Then, when the time comes, you can throw away the rind without any regret because you’ve got the nourishing part.

From: The Body Doesn't Care by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by dhammapal »

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
So this is friendship leading to seclusion. You don’t gain seclusion simply by running away. If you want it to be healthy seclusion, you take some good friends with you to begin with. This is the pattern of the training as a whole.

It’s why the Buddha started the noble Sangha and the conventional Sangha. He didn’t ordain people and send them straight out into the woods. He ordained them and he had them stay with their teachers for a while so that they could pick up the teacher’s habits, pick up the teacher’s way of looking at things, pick up some knowledge about the Buddha’s teachings, both the Dhamma and the Vinaya, to provide the student with good friends inside.

So try to figure out who your loyal friends are right now — the ones that are happy to lead you to skillful seclusion — and develop them as best you can.

From: Friendship Leading to Seclusion by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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