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:
Ajaan Maha Boowa once said that if you hold to what’s true, then the truth holds no danger for you. When you pretend or make false assumptions, then the truth becomes a threat. When you begin to practice and look at where you’re suffering, you notice certain things that you hold on to that cause you to be fearful and to feel threatened. Look into the truth of these assumptions. “Is this really true? Is this really mine?” These are cases where the perception of not-self is crucial as a tool for letting go of the things that make you feel threatened by the truth. When you can let go of those things, the threat goes away.

From: Truth by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
The same with the precepts: You’re sure to run up against some situations where it’ll be hard to hold by the precepts. If you simply say, “Well, this is the path to be stress-free, so I’m not going to stress out over the precepts.” There are times when you have to stress out. You’ve got to stop and think, “How can I handle this situation skillfully, in line with the precepts? What’s worth holding on to, and what’s worth letting go?”

This is why the Buddha gave that list of different kinds of loss: loss of wealth, loss of health, loss of relatives, loss of view, loss of virtue. Those first three can actually happen through holding to the precepts. You can make money by lying, but you’re not going to lie. You can save your relatives by lying about what they did, but you’re not going to lie. You can feed yourself, become wealthy, maintain your health by stealing. But you’re not going to steal because you realize that holding on to the precepts is more important that holding on to those other things.

So, the Buddha never promised that things would be easy. But by learning how to stress out over being good, you get the right attitude to bring to the meditation. Because you’re going to have to give — give your time. The results aren’t going to come right away.

From: Push Yourself by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
I received a phone call from someone who was doing a thesis on using Buddhist teachings and practices in the workplace. He wanted to ask me some questions as part of his thesis. One of the things that bothered me about his questions was that he would ask first about Buddhist teachings and then about Buddhist practices, as if they were two different things. But they’re not. Everything is part of the practice. Even the more abstract and theoretical teachings are meant to be used for pragmatic purposes when appropriate. After all, right view is part of the path. It’s something to do, to develop, to be applied. When it’s done its work, you let it go.

From: The Practice of Right View by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
One of the measures of your wisdom is the extent to which you have a sense of yourself. When the Buddha was talking about this theme, he wasn’t talking about some sort of mystical knowledge of the Self. It was more having a sense of where your strengths and weaknesses are, and how you can build on your strengths to overcome your weaknesses.

From: Freedom Through Painful Practice by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Every time you make up your mind you’re going to meditate, it’s a form of right resolve. You’re looking for a happiness that’s not dependent on sensuality, not dependent on ill will.

There ARE forms of happiness dependent on ill will, when you like to think about all the exquisite pain your enemy is going to go through. But here you decide to give that happiness up. Any happiness based on harmfulness: You’re going to give that up, too.

You’re looking for a happiness that’s innocent, a happiness that doesn’t create any harm for anybody. Just having that thought is a good thought. Of course, you then want to carry through with it.

There are two ways you can do this. One is to focus on thoughts of goodwill as a topic of your meditation. You wish for your own happiness; you wish for the happiness of others. True happiness.

Because the principle of karma is that no one’s going to find happiness unless they learn how to act skillfully. When you wish for people’s happiness or the happiness of animals, or whatever, you’re hoping that they can understand the causes for true happiness and then act on them. In other words, you hope that they develop right view and right resolve as well.

Now, that kind of thought should be easy to think. It’s not like you’re hoping that people who are evil will suddenly be happy as they’re doing evil or regardless of what their actions are. You’re hoping that they’ll see that what they’re doing is wrong and then give it up.

As for the question of whether anyone’s actually going to do that: The simple thought in your head is not going to have that kind of impact. But you want to make sure that your motivation is right.

From: Right Resolve, Right Concentration by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
It’s so ironic that Buddhism is called pessimistic. Actually, it’s probably the most optimistic teaching there could be. Human beings have the ability to totally transcend suffering, that’s what the Buddha says. He not only says it, he also gives us a path to follow. He gives us the techniques and he also tells us, “You’ve got to develop these qualities of mind: an enjoyment in the path, persistence in the path, showing interest and sensitivity in what you’re doing, and using your own ingenuity. Make use of them.”

From: The Power to Transcend Suffering by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
By describing the sensual rewards of generosity and virtue, the Buddha is showing his listeners that he’s no prude. He does appreciate the pleasure they’ve already tasted in sensuality, and he understands their desire for even more. This makes them more willing to trust him when he eventually points out the drawbacks of even the highest sensual pleasures, and on how they would benefit by raising their sights and looking for happiness in ways that put sensuality aside. When the Buddha has accomplished this task, his performative truths have performed their duty.

From: Four Noble Truths by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
The brahmavihāras are a form of wealth you can produce from within, simply from your own thoughts, and you can make your wealth as abundant as you like. It’s like having your own press for printing money. Unlike worldly currencies — where the more money is printed, the lower its value — the currency of the brahmavihāras keeps growing in value the more you produce it.

From: Meditation in Practice by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Get the breath so that it feels good inside, and — when it feels good — how to maintain that sense of feeling good.

This ability to maintain things is a weak point in our culture. We have the tendency to throw things together, get something done, and then move on, move on, move on. But here you’re asked to hang around to look after this.

In Ajaan Lee’s image, it’s like a path that you follow back and forth, over and over, again and again and again. It may be boring to begin with, but if you’re really observant, you begin to see things, little changes here, little changes there, something that wasn’t on the path the other day that is on the path today. You get more and more familiar with the plants along the side of the path. There are the plants you can eat, and the plants you can’t eat. You really get to know this path well. Because that’s why we’re doing concentration: It’s not just to settle down and have some stillness for a while. You want to see the mind in action.

From: Friendship Leading to Seclusion by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Our educational system nowadays teaches you how to be a good member of the society, productive and all that, but it doesn’t teach you how to find happiness. That’s something you have to learn on your own, and this is a good place to start because this is what these teachings are all about. As the Buddha said, “The teachings all have one taste, which is the taste of release.” And release is the ultimate bliss. So it’s good to read up on these things.

Following that, there’s generosity, being willing to give. Give material things, give of your time, give of your energy, give of your knowledge. The Buddha would often teach generosity in conjunction with gratitude. We’re here to give, not to get, because we’ve already received so much. It’s the opposite of a sense of entitlement. People with entitlement are never happy, because they feel they’re not getting everything they deserve, not getting enough. If you realize, though, that you’ve already been on the receiving end of a lot of goodness, you don’t feel so entitled. The fact that you know a language depends on the fact that other people taught it to you. The fact that you know how to maneuver in the world depends on other people who have taught you, so have some gratitude for them and then be generous to the world in response — because if you’re looking for opportunities to be generous, they’re there. That gives you a sense of inner wealth, instead of wanting to get get get, receive receive receive, when there’s never any sense of “enough,” you realize, if you have something to share, that there’s already more than enough. That sense of having more than enough: That’s a real happiness regardless of what the actual material circumstances around you are. The frame of mind, the state of mind that wants to be generous, that wants to give, is a happy state of mind.

From: How to Be Happy by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
Helpful attitudes toward the past include gratitude and forgiveness: the ability to appreciate the good things that other people have done for you, and to forgive them for the bad.

From: The Karma of Happiness: A Buddhist Monk Looks at Positive Psychology by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
All too often, we look around and we see somebody with a fancy car, a nice relationship, and think, “Well, that must be a happy person. I want to be like that person.” But that's not looking deep enough. You want to look deep inside. The mind that's truly happy is one that can depend on itself in all situations, that has the strength and the well-being and the wisdom not to get knocked off course by changes outside or in. That takes time to develop, which is why we meditate. You need mindfulness, you need alertness, you need a quality called ardency in order to get the mind to be solid like that.

From: Long-term Happiness by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
As long as you’re using the body as a foundation for sensual ideas it’s going to require a lot of mental activity. You begin to see that sensual thoughts are like little blips that appear in the form of the body and you have the choice of going with them or not, stepping into their worlds or not. It’s like a little cyst of a sensual world appearing in the form of the body, a little seed that you then water, and it’ll turn into a world that you enter into. That’s one way you could approach it — or you could see it simply as a disturbance in the various properties of form. It’s like having a computer. You can type with the keys and get letters or numbers, or you can press a function key and then the keys do different things.

These little sensations in the body either can stay simply as form sensations or they can become the basis for sensual worlds. You begin to realize that those sensual worlds take a lot of energy and don’t provide much in terms of genuine satisfaction. So you see the power of perception, the labels you put on things, and if you start training yourself to use the proper labels and can maintain enough mindfulness and alertness and concentration to keep them in mind with the right amount of effort — not too much, not too little — then you can touch whole new levels of pleasure in the body that are actually part of the path.

So try to acquaint yourself with the pleasure that the body can provide when it’s approached from this side: as form, rather than as a source of sensual pleasure. You’ll find that your whole notion of what pleasure is will change radically. So, too, will your notion of what pleasure can do. It’ll change radically. Instead of being a source of intoxication, this pleasure of form actually clears away the intoxication and gets the mind more solidly on the path.

From: Pleasure from the Body by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
I was reading recently about studies they’ve done of major disasters and catastrophes — huge hurricanes, earthquakes, fires. They’ve noticed how people immediately after a catastrophe feel a bizarre sense of euphoria. They develop a sense of common purpose as they drop their normal concerns and band together to rebuild, to recover. Then, after a while, once things get back to normal again, everybody goes back to their old ways. As one researcher pointed out, right after a catastrophe there’s a suspension of time; people’s normal narratives stop functioning and there’s a sense of liberation from those narratives as you’ve now got an obvious, immediate, common purpose. In fact, one of the researchers said it sounded a lot like Buddhist meditation to him: the idea of dropping the narrative of the past and the future and just staying with the present moment, finding a purpose in the present moment. That gave a buoyancy to the rebuilding efforts.

Well, try to use that same attitude when your meditation comes crashing down. You’ve got some rebuilding work to do. It gives you a purpose and it’s something you can focus on totally in the present moment. The best way of doing that is to drop the whole narrative that’s driving you crazy: the fact that things seemed to be going well and now all of a sudden they’ve crashed. Whether it’s a sudden crash or a gradual one doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you realize, “Okay, just forget about the narrative and focus on the needs of the present moment.” That’s all you’re responsible for. That’s all you have to worry about. You’ll find that that will give you the buoyancy, the energy you need in order to start the rebuilding work.

From: Intelligent Design by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:
So even though the Buddha’s teachings are all laid out, it’s important to remember how he went about his practice: by asking questions. Because we can hear the teachings, we can understand them, we can think about them, but if you don’t start asking questions, nothing happens. It just becomes plain technique without any real insight.

From: Taking Responsibility by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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