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:
Nowhere does [the Buddha] tell people to throw down their lives to prevent every cruelty and injustice in the world, but he does praise his followers for being willing to throw down their lives for their precepts: “Just as the ocean is stable and does not overstep its tideline, in the same way my disciples do not — even for the sake of their lives — overstep the training rules I have formulated for them.” — Udana 5:5

From: Metta Means Goodwill by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
There’s an interesting piece I saw today in The New York Times, complaining about the mindfulness movement and its tendency to fetishize the present. The author’s complaint was that people don’t really get happy because of what they do. People get happy because of circumstances. And the solution to the problem is that we’ve got to change the society so that people will be happy. However, the mindfulness movement is opposed to changing society, or is an obstacle to that change: That was the author’s take.

Yet this is one of those arguments where both sides are wrong. In other words, simply being in the present moment is not going to make you happy. But then trying to create a perfect society is not going to make you happy, either.

Look at the Buddha. If anybody could have created a perfect society, it would have been him. But he saw that it was useless. There was a time when Mara came to him. The question had arisen in the Buddha’s mind, “Could it be possible to rule in such a way that you wouldn’t have to create bad kamma and that you could do nothing but good for all beings?” Mara shows up, and says, “Ah, yes, do that.” And the Buddha realizes that this idea of creating a perfect society is all a trick of Mara, because you’re using people for ends. And how skillful are those ends? Even if the ends are good, there’s a tendency to try to attain them in unskillful ways, to impose them on people. If you tell people that things will be good and they’ll be happy only if society is perfect, people would die before they could find true happiness.

On the other hand, the solution is not a matter of simply accepting things as they are. It’s learning how to reshape them in a skillful way, starting with learning how to reshape things skillfully within yourself and, at the same time, being generous and virtuous. Generosity and virtue are probably the two best things for improving society. We’re never going to get a perfect society, but you find that the wiser you are in your generosity, the more consistent you are in your virtue, then the better the world you create around you. And it can be done without force, without imposing your will on other people.

Generosity and virtue are the yeast that gets into a society and makes it human, regardless of what the structure or system may be. If people were more virtuous and more generous, things would be a lot less oppressive. And the people who are virtuous and generous are also finding that they create happiness for themselves. It’s to their benefit. That goes together with the practice of meditation.

From: The Use of the Present by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
A desire comes into the mind for some real peace. Wouldn’t it be good if we could find true happiness? A happiness that doesn’t cause any harm to ourselves, doesn’t cause any harm to anybody else, seems like a perfectly reasonable desire. But then you see parts of the mind will rebel. They’ll fight back.

It’s the same as with the world outside. Look on the TV and it’s like every corporation in the world is your friend. They bring the good things to life as they say. But then if you start looking into their business practices, you find they are pretty nefarious. Some of them make their money off genuine suffering of other people. And some of them actually find that war is to their best interest. If you try to imagine a world order in which everybody could live together peacefully, it seems sensible, why can’t we live together peacefully? Why can’t people not cause harm to one another? But there are interests out there that would actually lose if there were peace, if there were no suffering. And they fight back. The more you try to cause a revolution in the world outside, the more these powers fight back at you, try to divert your attention from the real issue. If they can’t do that, then it’s out-and-out battle.

So you need allies. It’s the same in the mind. If you are going to create a revolution in the mind where the mind can actually function without causing any harm to itself or other people, you need allies in the fight. This is why we meditate. This is why we develop right concentration. This is our main ally. In the comparison they have of the different qualities on the path, concentration is your food. It’s what gives your nourishment.

So you want to develop these allies as much you can. In other words the idea of being peaceful, a mind that causes no harm, it sounds nice but if it doesn’t give you some immediate visceral pleasure, it’s going to be a hard uphill battle. Because your other desires say: quick, look, here is a quick fix. Just do this, do that, you’ll feel great. Even though the feeling great may not last long, there is a part of you that gives in very easily. That finds it hard to wait for results way down the line. So in order to get that part of the mind on your side, you say, here, here’s a nice comfortable breath, breathe in a way that feels good, breathe in a way that feels refreshing, gratifying. Experiment to see what kind of breathing will do that for you. You make the breath your friend. The pleasure that comes from comfortable breathing, that can be your friend as well.

From: The Balance of Power by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
The Buddha talked quite unabashedly about developing treasures inside: the treasures of conviction, a healthy sense of shame, compunction, virtue, knowledge of the Dhamma, generosity, and discernment. He talked about them as a wise investment. This is very much unlike what we’ve heard in modern days about how bad it is to have an attitude of spiritual materialism, the idea that you’re going to get something out of the practice or you’re going to amass something in the course of the practice.

But then you look at the people who decried spiritual materialism and you can see that they were trying to deprive people of their sense of shame, their sense of self, their sense of accomplishment, their sense that they had worth to themselves. This was all very unhealthy. We do have worth, and our worth lies in the qualities of the mind. They can be developed, and it’s good to think of them as things you amass.

This line of thinking starts with the development of merit. The Buddha talks about gaining huge amounts of merit, immeasurable amounts of merit, through having the right attitude toward giving, virtue, and developing thoughts of goodwill for all beings. This is all to the good because it gives us a sense that even though things of the world outside may be washed away — as we say in the chant: “The world is swept away” — there are good things in the mind that don’t have to be swept away. We have the potential within us to develop them. As Ajaan Lee said, of the various noble treasures, discernment is the most valuable because discernment is what realizes where those potentials lie and how you can develop them.

From: Noble Wealth by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
We’re not here just to be equanimous about things, because there’s a sense of powerlessness in equanimity. You realize that there are things you simply cannot change as long as you’re in this world dealing with other people. They may decide they want to go to war. What are you going to do? You can protest, but what if they decide they’re not going to listen to the protests? What if they mow the protesters down?

People do unskillful things all over the world all the time. This is the world we’re born into — and this is one of the relatively good ones. So equanimity cannot be the goal. But the fact that the reflection on equanimity is also the same as the reflection that leads to a motivation to want to practice the path, shows that when the Buddha teaches us equanimity, it’s not just a general indifference. When you have equanimity for all beings, it’s not just saying, “Well, who cares?” It’s more to focus you. There are a lot of things you cannot change in the world, but there are some things that *are* within your power, and the path is something that’s within your power. It’s something you can do. That, the Buddha says, is a type of action. It’s the type of action that leads to the end of action, but it’s a choice you can make.

So when you develop thoughts of equanimity to overcome disappointment, grief, or just general irritation of the world, you then want to think about it a little bit further to take it beyond simply learning how to accept things as they are. You have to learn to accept the fact that there are potentials as well. There’s the potential to act skillfully, so skillfully that you can put an end to suffering. That’s there, too.

From: Equanimity & More by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
This story of the world right now.... If you believe the media, then where everything else is happening, that’s where the power is. The people who seize the power, those are the important ones. But from the long view, those are the ones who are going to suffer the most.

So use the power you have right now to make wise choices — because it is within your power to really make a difference, a difference that will last for the long term.

From: Taking the Long View by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
When you take the long, long view like this, it makes a lot of your problems in your present lifetime seem pretty small. It helps give you some equanimity, gives you some patience. Because there are a lot of things in life that, if you thought, “This is your one lifetime, this is your one chance,” would strike you as very unfair. It would be hard to live with the idea that, say, someone smeared your name and you couldn’t get it un-smeared. Other people who don’t seem to have any right to power have taken over a lot of power. But if you take the long view of things, you realize that this is going to pass, and this is not your only chance. It makes it a lot easier to live with the things you can’t change, and focus on the ones you can.

From: Patience & Hope by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
People in an insane asylum who are motivated by fear are the most dangerous ones. The ones who are angry are not nearly as likely to do something destructive as the ones who are afraid. When you’re afraid, you can’t think straight at all. All you can see are enemies all around you. You feel that you’re being threatened by something, and as a result you can do and say and think all kinds of things for what you feel is your own preservation.

From: Treasured Possessions by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
If Buddhist groups are to bring reconciliation to modern society, they have to master the hard work of reconciliation among themselves. Only then will their example be an inspiration to others. And even if their impact is not enough to prevent a general descent into the madness of fascism, terror, and war, they will be planting seeds of civilization that can sprout when the madness — like a fire across a prairie — has passed.

From: Reconciliation, Right & Wrong by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Perhaps one of the reasons we’re so messed up in the West is because our culture is designed so that goodness of heart doesn’t really count for much. Our society is designed to take advantage of good-hearted people. They’re not the ones who rise to the top. And because we believe that rising to the top is what matters, goodness of heart doesn’t seem to count for much. And the Buddha wants to reestablish that it does.

Even in India, of course, society was not necessarily designed so that the good people would rise to the top. Remember when the Buddha would talk about kings, he would often put them in the same phrase with thieves: “kings and thieves.” And so it wasn’t the case that society was moral back then and somehow changed now. There are, and have been, a lot of immoral elements in human society, all over the world. But the Buddha’s asking you to look at the good results that come from generosity: not only the impact on the person who receives the gift, but also the good things that happen in your own heart when you’re generous. He’s saying, “Value that.” Value the freedom of choice that you have; value the good results that come from generosity. These are important. They matter in the long run.

From: The Buddha's Basic Therapy by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
There was that cartoon in the New Yorker once: two Congressmen walking out of the Capitol and one of them is saying, “What good is having power if you don’t abuse it?” That’s the attitude that a lot of people have and it’s very easy for us, standing outside, to look down on that. But the real question is: When you get power, are you going to use it well or not?

From: Large Perspective, Small Focus by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
You wonder what the Buddha would think about teachings that are said in his name nowadays: that you don’t do the practice; that there’s no “you” there to do the practice, it’s just conditions happening. That sort of thinking defeats any sense of your worth as a person, or of the worth of your choices. The Buddha was very clear that what you choose to do right now — what you choose to focus on, what you choose to think about, which intentions you choose to act on — is of prime importance. He started Rahula, his son, on the path of the Dhamma by having him look at his actions to see the extent to which his actions do have an impact, and trying to make that impact harmless. That theme carries all the way through the practice.

From: You Are Not Redundant by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
When you look at the Buddha’s similes for people who practice, or at the similes given by the great ajaans, you never find the image of someone relaxing his or her way to awakening, or just sitting back and saying, “I’ll be okay the way I am right where I am.” The similes all have to do with people who are searching, people developing skills, warriors going into battle: people who have a goal and who will do everything they can to reach that goal.

From: Skills for Awakening 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.

From: Sensuality by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
As for specific issues that you bring into the meditation, sometimes you have to put the breath aside if the mind isn’t willing to stay with the breath. Directly focus on what it is that’s got the mind all stirred up. Is it lust? Is it anger? Is it greed? Regret? Discouragement? There are lots of different emotions that can come and get in the way. Then use whatever antidote there is for that particular emotion, that particular defilement of the mind. We have that chant on the 32 parts the body to help you with lust and the chant on goodwill [mettā] to deal with anger.

Actually, there are lots of tools to use for anger. Sometimes you have trouble feeling goodwill for the other person, but at the very least try to have some goodwill for yourself. There’s that fine passage in the Canon where the Buddha says to remind yourself that if you give in to your anger and start acting on it, you’re going to do precisely the sort of thing that an enemy would be happy to see you do. You look ugly when you’re angry. You destroy your property, destroy your friendships. You get all confused as to what’s going to be to your advantage and what’s not going to be to your advantage. You have trouble sleeping at night. If you are having goodwill for yourself, you wouldn’t do these things.

So that’s where you start: goodwill for yourself. Then, after you’ve settled down and dealt with that issue, you can start thinking goodwill for other people.

When you’re feeling lazy and sluggish, you can contemplate death. Death could come at any time. Are you ready to go? If not, what have you got to do? You’ve got to get your mind in good shape. That’s the first priority. So focus on that. When you think in this way, it helps incline you to be willing to meditate.

In other words, learn how to read your mind, see where it’s off balance, and then do what you can to bring it back into balance. Sometimes the breath can do that for you; other times, you have to drop the breath for the time being and work on other issues that will finally bring you back to the point where you’re willing to take on the breath.

From: Different Minds, Different Bodies by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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