The Quotable Thanissaro

A discussion on all aspects of Theravāda Buddhism
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
If your happiness depends on other people’s suffering, they’re not going to stand for it. You can’t say, “Excuse me, this is my happiness, and so you’ll just have to let me continue enjoying it because it’s so special.” They’ll say, “This is my suffering. It’s special, too. I don’t want it.” This is an equalizer in that it makes you realize that your happiness forces you to take other people’s happiness into account.

From: Bodies & Minds Outside by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Awakening doesn’t just happen. You have to have the desire for it. We hear stories of spontaneous awakening, but the question is, is it really awakening?

Psychologists talk about what are called “neurotic breakthroughs,” where people have been struggling through a really dark period in their lives and then, for one reason or another, it snaps. That really oppressive mind state, that really oppressive state of becoming that they’d been maintaining, had gotten so heavy and so unbearable and so unmaintainable that they just finally dropped it and experienced a great release. But the question is, what did they awaken to?

When the Buddha awakened, he awakened to understandings about intention, action, cause and effect, skillfulness, lack of skill. In the process of reaching the deathless, he really did have to take apart bit by bit by bit very subtle and very pleasant states of mind, very subtle mental activities so that he really understood what it was to act, what it was to condition something. That way, when the genuine unconditioned came, he really knew that it was unconditioned.

With neurotic breakthroughs, though, you usually come to just another form of conditioning that, in contrast to where you were before, seems very bright and very light. It’s like going from a very dark room into one that’s extremely bright. Because you’re so blinded by the light, you don’t see any objects in the room. You think there’s nothing there, just this incredible light. But you’d have to stay with it for a long time to begin to realize, as your eyes begin to adjust, “Oh, there are objects in the room.”

So this is one of the big paradoxes of the practice: We want to get to a state that’s unfabricated, but we really do have to fabricated strong intentions and strong desires to get there. Desire is one of the elements of right effort.

From: Motivation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
The connections we have in life with different people are created by our actions: things that we’ve done together with other people or to other people or for other people. These create the connections that we have with the people around us.

Interconnectedness is a very popular teaching in Buddhism, especially nowadays, but it’s funny that people like to talk about interconnectedness without the teaching on karma. They turn to dependent co-arising as a model for interconnectedness, this web of connections where one factor can’t exist without a whole lot of other factors, but they neglect to realize that dependent co-arising is a teaching on how ignorance is connected with suffering, how craving is connected with suffering. It’s the kind of connectedness you want to cut, not the kind you want to celebrate.

Connectedness through karma can go either way — the connections can be good, or they can be bad. So you want to foster the good ones.

And again, where do you look? You look at what you’re doing right here and right now. How are you behaving with other people? How are you treating them? These create the relationships you’re going to be able to enjoy or you’re going to be stuck with, now and on into the future. So choose your actions carefully.

From: The Sublime Attitudes by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
There’s no telling how many people will be willing to search for true happiness, and you can’t make your happiness depend on their choices. If your happiness depends on the choices of other people, it’s going to be very unstable. You’ve got to make your happiness depend on your choices. Which means that when it comes to the choices of other people, you have to be equanimous. You have to keep your head so that you can make your choices well. Because that’s the area where you do have some responsibility and do have some power to make a change.

From: Keeping Your Head by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
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:
Remember: [The present moment is] here to be used. It’s not here just to hang out with the idea that, well, this is what it’s all about and this is all we have to do, just be in the present moment. That’s abusing the present moment: hiding away from your responsibilities, hiding away from your duties, hiding away from things that you really could get done, that would be to your benefit and the benefit of others. Regard the present moment as a means to an end, and then squeeze all the goodness you can out of it.

From: Getting the Most Out of the Present by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
As the Buddha pointed out, there are two sources for what you’re experiencing right now. One is past actions and the other is present actions. Past actions you can’t do much about, but you can do a lot with present actions. That’s why he has you ask: What am I doing right now? That’s why he has you keep on asking that question every day.

You may feel surprised that the question has the “I” in there. After all, the Buddha taught that there’s no self, right? Actually, he never taught that. There’s no place in the Pali Canon where you can find him endorsing the statement, “There is no self.” What he does describe is a process of I-making and my-making. Selfing is something we do. These are actions you do here in the present moment. You take the potentials that come from your past actions and you turn them into an actual experience, and part of that usually includes creating your sense of who you are, either as the creator of an experience or as the consumer of the experience.

But the “I” is something you do. The “me” is something you do. The “mine” is something you do. In some cases, they’re useful concepts. It’s good to know the difference between your wallet and somebody else’s wallet, your possessions and their possessions, your body and their body, your actions and their actions. If you don’t have a clear concept of this, you’re going to get into a lot of trouble.

But it goes deeper than that. You have to have a sense of your own responsibility, and what you’re doing right here, right now. You’re the one who intends your actions. You can’t depend on anybody else to do that for you. If you’re not skillful in the way you react to your experiences, you’re the one who’s going to have to learn how to be more skillful.

So having a good healthy sense of self in areas like this is necessary. It’s how you function and how you progress along the path. You look at an experience and ask yourself: What am I doing to make this experience worse? Sometimes you’ll find that there’s greed involved, sometimes aversion, sometimes delusion. Who’s responsible for those things? You can’t go blaming your parents, you can’t go blaming society, because that will take you nowhere. If you look for what you’re doing in terms of your greed, anger, and delusion right now, though, you can make a difference. You can do things differently.

It’s in areas like this that a good strong sense of self is necessary. It’s skillful; it gets results. Because, after all, your sense of self is a strategy for happiness. The Buddha’s simply asking you to make it a strategy for long-term happiness. That’s what we mean by a healthy sense of self, the sort of person who sacrifices short-term happiness for long-term happiness, where you’re responsible for your actions and develop skill.

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:
“What’s the skillful thing to do in this situation?” That’s more useful than asking, “What do I want to do or what do I feel like doing, what do I feel is the expression of the true me in this situation?” Because if the practice should teach you anything, it’s that there are lots of different yous. And also that your actions have consequences, so you want to focus more on the actions than on your sense of self or your sense of what you feel like doing.

From: Skillful Judgment by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
To maintain its health, the mind needs its own place to rest: not just resting in sleep, resting with alertness, awareness. That kind of place requires several skills. One is the skill of just being able to be quiet. Another is the skill of being able to cut away your interest in things outside. Some people find this to be the scary part of the meditation. We’ve been taught to believe that our goodness consists of our being concerned about things outside, and here we are telling ourselves that, for the time being, those things don’t matter. As they say in the forest tradition, the sky could be falling but we’re going to stay right here and not let it get to us, because we need a part of the mind that things don’t get to. That’s our sanity. That’s our safety.

From: No One in Charge by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Just because a thought comes into your head doesn’t mean that you should continue to think it. Look at it: One, is it true? Two, is it beneficial? Does it really help to think about this? And three, is right now the right time and place to do that, whether it’s pleasing or unpleasing?

This helps explain the seeming contradiction you see in a lot of the Buddha’s teachings: on the one hand, talking about right views, and then on the other hand talking about not clinging to views. Not clinging means looking at your views in precisely this way: Are they true? Are they beneficial? Is right now the right time and place to think those things?

Clinging means you hold on to a particular view no matter what. It may seem true — and in fact, a lot of the forest ajaans always say that true views are the really dangerous ones. When you’re right, you can get yourself in a real mess. There’s pride that comes with having the right idea, and then you start using it in the wrong ways at the wrong time. That’s what they mean when they talk about clinging to views.

Not clinging to views doesn’t mean that you’re wishy-washy or that you don’t care about what’s true or false. You’re very clear about what’s true or false. You try to be very clear about what’s beneficial or not. But also have a sense of when’s the right time to think about certain things. For instance, you can take on really a advanced Dhamma question when it’s not the right time yet.

From: Right Inner Speech by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
What is your life besides what you do, what you say and what you think? As for the things coming in outside: That’s the result of past actions. But the actual practice, the actual environment you’re creating: If you have the right attitude toward what’s coming in, you can make a good place to practice out of anywhere.

So you focus on your thoughts, your words, your deeds. Those are the important elements in your life and those are the important elements in the practice. As for everything else, you let it pass.

If there are things you can do within the boundaries of right speech and right action, you go ahead and you do them. Anything that lies outside of that, you don’t want to touch.

This focuses your responsibility where you really can make a difference, and it takes you off the hook for a lot of things you really can’t make a difference. All too often we get upset about things we can’t control, which means that we’re ignoring the things we can control.

When you focus on keeping your thoughts, words, and deeds in line with the path, your world is a better place to live. The world of the people around you is a better place for them to live as well.

Ajaan Suwat used to say that “Everyone in the world has only one person.” In other words, you’re responsible for your actions; other people are responsible for theirs. If each person thought this way and really was responsible for his or her own actions, this would be a much better world. But we can’t wait for other people to do it first. You’ve got to start.

And you can’t control the extent to which other people will pick up on your example. But you know at least that you’re putting a good example out there for anyone who’s interested. That’s all a human being can do.

From: Your Own Karma by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
No matter how much you read the texts, or how careful you are about finding passages where the Buddha describes a little bit of what it’s like to be awakened, you can’t clone awakening. Because all you’re doing is just indulging in your imagination, indulging in perceptions and fabrications.

There is this tendency. We read one of these passages, say, about the awakened one who experiences just the sight, just the sound, without assuming any person seeing the sight or anything behind the sight, any object to be seen. We think, “Well, if I just get myself so fully in the present moment where there’s no division between subject and object, that should do it: a taste of awakening.” But it’s not. Even if you actually can achieve a oneness of consciousness, the Buddha noted that there’s still stress there, because it’s something that has to be maintained. It’s not the case that we’re suffering because we have a sense of separateness between subject and object, and we can end that suffering by bringing them back together again, glomming them together. Once they’re glommed, they don’t stay glommed. There’s the stress of having to keep them glommed. And there’s also the question: Could you function continually that way?

So this tendency we have of trying to clone awakening, trying to imagine ourselves in a totally awakened state, what someone once called the practice of being awakened: That’s just one more form of fabrication based on ignorance. And if you’ve ever read anything about dependent co-arising, you know that ignorance leading to fabrications leads on to more stress and suffering. Freedom isn’t found that way. It’s found in this very unlikely spot, the point in the present moment where you’re making choices and are trying to do it more and more skillfully.

From: You Can't Clone Awakening by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
We start the meditation with thoughts of goodwill [mettā] to clean out our minds from all the stories of the day: “This person did that, that person did this.” Or the stories of the year or the stories of your lifetime. Think about that statement at the end of the chant just now: “Those who are capable of making an end.” That’s what we’re trying to do: Put an end to suffering. It means putting an end to a lot of stories we keep dragging out. After all, those stories are what keep us going, especially if they involve some wrong that we want to right. That would mean we’d have to come back. And, of course, what usually happens when a wrong gets righted is that some more wrong gets done. Then the other side decides that they’ve been unfairly treated, and it goes back and forth like this.

There are many stories in the commentaries about issues going back and forth to the point where you lose track of who started it. So it’s best to think in ways that can put an end. One of the best ends is when you decide you’re going to step out of the back and forth, to pull yourself out of the feeding chain. That’s what you’re doing right now. So, to whatever extent you need to do a little extra adjustment to the narrative — especially, in cases where you were the wronged party last time around — tell yourself that you’ve decided to forgive the other side, so as to find the way out.

So much life in samsara is just a big fight. The Buddha’s image is of fish in a stream that’s drying up. They’re struggling with one another for that last gulp of water and then they’re all going to die regardless. So you ask yourself, “Does it really matter who gets that last gulp of water, who gets the final victory over somebody else? How about getting victory over yourself?” The Buddha said that kind of victory, victory over yourself, is really worthwhile. That’s what the path is all about: the “unexcelled victory” through the noble eightfold path. That’s a battle where you’re not fighting with anybody outside at all. You’re fighting with your own greed, aversion, and delusion — and all your attachments.

The hardest attachments to let go of, they say, is the sense of having been wronged. There’s usually a desire to want to get back or, at the very least, to have the other side acknowledge that they did wrong. But remember, we’re living in a world where people have the right to withhold kindness. They have the right to withhold any goodness if they want to. And the more you try to force things on other people, then you become the bad party, pushing your way on others.

One of the hardest things we find living in this world where we have freedom of choice is that other people have freedom of choice, too. That’s hard to accept sometimes. We want things to be a certain way outside. But people have every right to think whatever they want, to say whatever they want, to do whatever they want. When you realize that, you have to develop equanimity so that you can focus on what the real issues are: the ways in which you keep on churning up more issues inside. As the Buddha said, the craving that makes for becoming is a big issue. You make something from that becoming and then you become a being with needs to feed. You live in a world where other beings are trying to feed as well. There’s going to be conflict. So you have to remember that the becomings in your mind are not just idle pastimes. They can have a big impact on what’s going to happen now and on into the future.

From: An End to the Stories by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
The Buddha said that even if it rained gold coins, we wouldn’t have enough to satisfy one person’s sensual desires. The monk wanted to get out of that slavery to insatiable desires.

Now, there are two ways of attempting that. One is just to deny desire, to tell yourself, “I don’t want anything.” But that wasn’t the Buddha’s way. His way was to find a happiness so total that it satisfied all possible desires: something outside of space and time, so that it couldn’t be touched by changes in space and time. That would solve the problem of desire.

From: The Desire to Be Free from Desire by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
I don’t know how many articles I’ve read in supposed Buddhist magazines saying, “Oh, your inner critic is horrible; make sure that your inner critic doesn’t have anything to say; don’t listen to the inner critic” — as if there were no such things as positive criticism, useful criticism. Being a helpful critic is one of the roles of the teacher. That’s part of the “instructing” in those four types of talk: instructing, rousing, urging, and encouraging. Simply teach your teacher how to be a useful critic, a positive critic. And teach your teacher to have those other skills as well: learning how to encourage you when you need to be encouraged, urged when you need to be urged, roused when you need to be roused. Then you will have developed a refuge inside.

From: Training Your Inner Teacher by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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