The Quotable Thanissaro

[Dhamma Chameleon]

Hmm this doesn’t make sense with right effort. As much as I admire Thinassaro, to say there is no “doer” is to say there is no “one” MAKING the effort.

Who makes the effort? Effort implies an impulse and a conviction and a reliance on the part of “something”.

That something may disappear after enlightenment, but for the sake of provision it is REAL!

As I read it he is in agreement with you.

That’s [that = the idea of 'no doer'] the enlightened way to approach the path, we’re often told, but what happens with an attitude like that is that whatever definition of self you might have goes underground. You start identifying with the awareness. You start identifying with what you think is an awakened awareness. In that way, you can let go of what may have been a neurotic self, but it turns into an overblown but very vague self.

One of the whole points of the practice is to see exactly where your sense of self comes in — when it’s skillful, when it’s not — and how to train your unskillful self to be more skillful. Of course, the emphasis is not focused on the self, but it’s always there in the background.

[dhammapal]

In the Buddha’s teaching on dependent co-arising, it’s very easy to get tied up in some of the complexities and to miss the really blatant features of the series of factors. One of the most blatant is that the causes of suffering come prior to sensory contact. This means that suffering doesn’t arise because we have bad sights, smells, sounds, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas. It arises from the way we approach our senses: the way we look, listen, smell, taste, touch, and think about things. The problem is not out there. The trouble is the way the mind looks out there.

Essentially, the mind is looking for food, for things to feed on. However, it tends to feed on all the wrong things. No wonder it’s sick. It looks for and finds plenty of things to lust over, to get angry about, to be deluded about. You can compare it to a sick person who likes to eat precisely the food that makes his illness worse.

As a result, we’ve got to control the way the mind looks and listens; otherwise, it’s very difficult to settle down and meditate. If you’ve been looking for things to lust about or get angry about in the course of the day, that habit will stick with you. When you close your eyes, there’s no one monitoring your thoughts, so you can think of anything. Part of the mind is tempted to pick up the thread of its old defilements. So we need to get some control over the mind.

From: The Mind on a Leash by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

Some people feel they don’t deserve happiness. Well, the issue of deserving and not deserving happiness never comes up in the Buddha’s teachings. There’s simply the issue of cause and effect. A good action, an action motivated by a skillful intention, leads to good results. It’s impersonal. Unskillful actions motivated by unskillful motivations lead to pain. Each of us has a lot of actions in the past, so there’s bound to be good mixed with bad. You don’t have to wear off the bad kamma before you can enjoy the good. You simply learn to make the best use of both pleasure and pain when they come along. The Buddha never talks about having to wear off your old kamma before you can gain awakening.

From: Empathetic Joy by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

Lies are statements that intentionally misstate the facts of a case. The Vinaya’s discussion of its training rule against lying shows that the intention defining a lie here is not so much the intention to deceive as it is the intention to misrepresent the truth (Pc 1). The distinction is a fine one, but it’s important. In [AN 4:183], the Buddha states that there are cases where a truth should not be told if it gives rise to passion, aversion, and delusion in the speaker. This does not mean, however, that you can misstate the facts of the case in such instances. It simply means that you need not tell the whole truth about an issue. You avoid speaking about the facts that would provoke harm, even if this would cause your listener to misunderstand the situation. AN 4:73 provides an example relevant to this principle: To maintain your integrity, you speak as little as possible of your own good points and of the faults of other people.

Of the four types of wrong speech, the telling of lies is the only one that has a corresponding precept in the five lay precepts. This means that it’s the only aspect of wrong speech that is absolutely to be avoided in all situations. As AN 10:165 says, one should not tell a lie for one’s own sake, for the sake of another, or for any reward.

Of the various forms of wrong speech and wrong action, the Buddha regarded the telling of lies as the most serious and most destructive — perhaps because if you cause your listeners to misunderstand the truth, it can cause them to act unskillfully not only in this lifetime, but also in future ones as well. Furthermore, as he said in [Iti 25], if a person feels no shame at telling a lie, there is no evil that that person will not do.

This is a principle with far-ranging implications: Even a seemingly sober attempt to justify the telling of a lie in certain situations would count as feeling no shame around lying. In addition to showing that one is untrustworthy, a lack of shame around telling lies would severely hamper one’s ability to learn the Dhamma. After all, as we noted in Chapter 2, truthfulness is one of the basic qualities that the Buddha looked for in a student, and it’s absolutely necessary for examining one’s actions for the sake of progress on the path."

From: Right Speech & Right Action by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

Here we are, focusing on our own breath, but stop and think about it: Everybody else has a breath just like yours. There may be slight variations, but the Buddha said that when you’re practicing mindfulness, you should practice being aware of the body internally and also externally; being aware of feelings internally and externally; being aware of the mind, mental qualities internally and externally.

Now, if you interpret mindfulness simply as being aware, that sounds very strange: You’re supposed to sit next to someone else and hear them breathe? How are you going to feel their feelings, or be aware of their mind-states? But when you remember that mindfulness is a faculty of the memory, something you keep in mind, then you can see what the Buddha’s getting at. You focus on issues in your own feelings, issues in your own mind, issues in your own body, and you stop to remember, “This is the way it is with everybody.” Everybody has a breath, everybody has feelings of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. And all the various mind states that you can be mindful of, skillful and unskillful: Everybody else has those, too.

This is a good way of getting yourself out of yourself, because when things go down — particularly when the mind turns into a whirlpool and keeps going around and around and around on certain themes — as it goes around, it just gets pulled down. That’s because you’ve restricted your awareness just to what’s in your mind. But if you can lasso out, grab hold of something outside, you begin to realize that what you’re experiencing is not just you. You’re not the only one who suffers in the world. Lots of other people are suffering, sometimes a lot worse than you are.

From: Get Out of Yourself by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

It’s easy to see why some people think that meditation encourages narcissism, a fascination with your own feelings, a fascination with your own thoughts, your own breath, as if that was all that mattered in the world. And it’s not helped when the meditation is reduced to a certain formula, a certain technique, that again just focuses on what you’re feeling, what you’re sensing, as if that were all the world of the practice. It’s easy for people to come to meditation, saying, “What’s in it for me?” and not be challenged with much to discourage that attitude.

So it’s important to reflect on a phrase in the Buddha’s teachings on mindfulness, that when you’re contemplating the body in and of itself, or feelings, mental qualities, states of mind, you do it both internally and externally. In other words, it’s not just your body, feelings, mind states, mental qualities, but also the bodies, feelings, mind states, and mental qualities of other people, other beings. And in this contemplation, it’s important to remember the original meaning of mindfulness. It’s not awareness. If it were awareness, there’d be a problem: How could you be aware of other people’s feelings? How could you be aware of their mental qualities? You’d have to be psychic. And even then, what use would that be?

Mindfulness doesn’t mean awareness. It means keeping something in mind. As in that old phrase — to be ever mindful of the needs of others — you keep other people’s needs in mind. It means you remember them. You hold them in mind.

From: Antidotes for Narcissism by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

Suppose you have a feeling of deep spiritual contentment, of oneness and connectedness with all the universe. To what extent is that feeling meaningful? Is it a sign that you've attained a heightened spiritual state? Are you in touch with some transcendent reality? Or is it simply a sign that you had a nice dinner and you feel rested, physically satisfied? This is an important question for people who want to read deep meanings into their feelings. They want to believe that their feelings constitute their true identity, and that their feelings tell the truth. But feelings can lie. A warm sense of interconnectedness may indicate simply that your digestion is good, and physically you're well provided for.

From: The Reality of Emotions by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

Empires rise and fall, but the mind remains. That’s got to be your perspective. Because the mind remains not only through the death of the body but through many, many cycles of the Universe. So you’ve got to get it into good shape, because otherwise it’s going to take you to weird places, undesirable places. If it’s in good shape, you can go to good places. And you do that by making a good place right here to begin with. It’s by tuning into the possibilities for peace and well-being right now that you also tune into the possibilities for peace and well-being in other places in the cosmos.

From: The Most Important Thing to Be Doing by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

We want to be compassionate, we want to be discerning, but to make our compassion and discernment pure we have to check our actions, to see if they will cause harm, are causing harm, or have caused harm. In other words, learn from the perspective of past, present, and future to keep your actions in line with your basic principle of wanting to be compassionate.

From: Truthful & Observant by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

Lies are statements that intentionally misstate the facts of a case. The Vinaya’s discussion of its training rule against lying shows that the intention defining a lie here is not so much the intention to deceive as it is the intention to misrepresent the truth (Pc 1). The distinction is a fine one, but it’s important. In [AN 4:183], the Buddha states that there are cases where a truth should not be told if it gives rise to passion, aversion, and delusion in the speaker. This does not mean, however, that you can misstate the facts of the case in such instances. It simply means that you need not tell the whole truth about an issue. You avoid speaking about the facts that would provoke harm, even if this would cause your listener to misunderstand the situation. AN 4:73 provides an example relevant to this principle: To maintain your integrity, you speak as little as possible of your own good points and of the faults of other people.

Of the four types of wrong speech, the telling of lies is the only one that has a corresponding precept in the five lay precepts. This means that it’s the only aspect of wrong speech that is absolutely to be avoided in all situations. As AN 10:165 says, one should not tell a lie for one’s own sake, for the sake of another, or for any reward.

Of the various forms of wrong speech and wrong action, the Buddha regarded the telling of lies as the most serious and most destructive — perhaps because if you cause your listeners to misunderstand the truth, it can cause them to act unskillfully not only in this lifetime, but also in future ones as well. Furthermore, as he said in [Iti 25], if a person feels no shame at telling a lie, there is no evil that that person will not do.

This is a principle with far-ranging implications: Even a seemingly sober attempt to justify the telling of a lie in certain situations would count as feeling no shame around lying. In addition to showing that one is untrustworthy, a lack of shame around telling lies would severely hamper one’s ability to learn the Dhamma. After all, as we noted in Chapter 2, truthfulness is one of the basic qualities that the Buddha looked for in a student, and it’s absolutely necessary for examining one’s actions for the sake of progress on the path.

From: Right Speech & Right Action by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

We often think that vipassana means seeing things as they are, the idea being that there’s something already out there — things as they are — and they’re all covered over by our preconceived notions, our mental fabrications. What we’ve got to do is clear those fabrications away and that will leave just the pristine things as they are. But that’s not really how insight works. That understanding actually gets in the way of insight’s arising because the Buddha didn’t say, “things as they are.” He said, “things as they’ve come to be”: how they’ve come into being. That’s a process of fabrication. It’s not the case that fabrications lie on top of pristine things as they are. Fabrication is how those things have come into being in the first place.

So once the mind is settled down you want to look at the fabricating that goes on in the mind to see how the things you experience contain a very large element of fabrication. The fabrication is your intentional input: That’s what the Buddha wants you to see. You might think that if only you could get rid of your fabrication you would see the pristine things as they are, but if you take away the fabrication the things are no longer there. Your experience of the world is a process of fabrication; to gain insight you have to see that fabrication in action.

From: Things as They've Come to Be by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

I know some people who say that when you’re working with karma, 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. They say you want to let go of that sense of “I” because it causes you trouble. Well, it’s actually necessary for certain decisions.

From: Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

As Ajaan Lee points out, your lower lip has never turned into your upper lip. Your arm has never turned into your leg. The elements always stay the same. Solidity has always been solidity and hasn’t turned into anything else. So there is that constant aspect to things. Or, as Ajaan Chah points out, the way in which things change is pretty constant. So you could latch onto the fact that things are constant.

From: Right View about Right View by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

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.

From: Contentment by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

So basically when you’re spreading thoughts of goodwill [mettā], hoping for all beings to be happy, you realize that this is not a prayer. It’s a resolution on your part. It’s a type of right resolve, that you want to act in a way that’s harmful to no one and actually helpful when possible. But it’s not just a matter of being nice. To be a true friend, you have to be a virtuous person. You have to be generous.

From: A Friend to the World by Thanissaro Bhikkhu