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:Training in gratitude shows how powerful perception can be, for it requires developing a particular set of perceptions about life and the world. If you perceive help as demeaning, then gratitude itself feels demeaning; but if you perceive help as an expression of trust — the other person wouldn't want to help you unless he or she felt you would use the help well — then gratitude feels ennobling, an aid to self-esteem. Similarly, if you perceive life as a competition, it's hard to trust the motives of those who help you, and you resent the need to repay their help as a gratuitous burden. If, however, you perceive that the goodness in life is the result of cooperation, then the give and take of kindness and gratitude become a much more pleasant exchange.
From: The Lessons of Gratitude by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:This is why, when you meditate, you have to learn how to say No to every thought that comes up. It’s your first line of defense. That means not just putting it aside but questioning it. “Is that really true? Is that so? Is that so?” you could ask. And then watch. Try to keep the mind in position with the breath or just with the sense of the body in the present moment, staying outside of your thought-worlds. And remember the old principle, Don’t believe everything you think. Because it’s very rarely that we fall for just raw desire. Desires have their reasons.
From: Your Mind is Lying to You by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:A brahman once asked the Buddha, "Will all the world reach Awakening, or half the world, or a third?" But the Buddha didn't answer. Ven. Ananda, concerned that the brahman might misconstrue the Buddha's silence, took the man aside and gave him an analogy: Imagine a fortress with a single gate. A wise gatekeeper would walk around the fortress and not see an opening in the wall big enough for even a cat to slip through. Because he's wise, he would realize that his knowledge didn't tell him how many people would come into the fortress, but it did tell him that whoever came into the fortress would have to come in through the gate. In the same way, the Buddha didn't focus on how many people would reach Awakening but he did know that anyone who reached Awakening would have to follow the path he had found: abandoning the five hindrances, establishing the four frames of reference, and developing the seven factors for Awakening.
From: Freedom From Buddha Nature by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:What is attachment? It's basically a kind of addiction, trying to find happiness in things that have never given a true happiness, in things that aren't worth the effort. And we do it again and again and again. Partly, this is from a lack of imagination. We can't imagine other ways of finding happiness. Partly, it's from a lack of skill. We haven't mastered other ways, other approaches for finding happiness. And partly, it's simply a lack of knowledge. We're not paying careful attention to what's going on. So in the practice we try to develop more imagination, more skills, more knowledge.
<...>
In this way you find that there are alternative ways for finding happiness in life, finding pleasure in life. You look back at your old addictions, and they seem not to make much sense any more. From your new perspective, you wonder why you would have felt so addicted to them in the first place. In this way the Buddha doesn't ask you just to go cold turkey, with no gratification, nothing to replace your old addiction. He gives you something new and viscerally pleasing to hold on to.
From: Levels of Addiction by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:It's always good to focus on where things are going well, and not to keep obsessing about the things that are difficult or wearisome. We may distrust that sense of being a Pollyanna, looking for the bright side, but it makes the practice a lot lighter: to keep reminding yourself that there are a lot of positive things about being on this path. And you find that they give you energy.
Success on the Path by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:So the more you can become your own teacher, the better. The discernment that’s involved in becoming your own teacher is going to be essential for release. Discernment is not just a matter of seeing things in line with the texts; it’s a matter of learning how to watch your own mind, question your impulses, look at your intentional input into any situation. And the best way to see that intentional input is to start asking questions about when it’s skillful and when it’s not.
From: To Be Your Own Teacher by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Mary50
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

Post by Mary50 »

This may have been posted before but as a newcomer, please indulge me.


“…When we’re meditating, it’s not as if we’re clamping down and shutting things down. We simply keeping tabs on this one level of awareness, this one level of energy that’s here in the body, and we allow everything on this level to connect. Once it’s connected there are no areas where you can hide from yourself. Now, some people find that scary. They’re used to being in denial. But when you learn how to bring some compassion to the whole process of opening up to yourself, when you learn how to bring some understanding and maturity and equanimity to the process, you find that you’re much better off working through these things than you were when you tried to keep them hidden. You’ve now got the tools where you can work through them. You don’t have to be overpowered by these things. You’re more and more in control."
~
360 Degree Awareness
Thanissaro Bhikkhu - July 1, 2003
~
http://www.dhammatalks.org/Arch" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;…/Writings/eDhammaTalks_1.pdf
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:As we meditate we’re not training ourselves to be zombies or to be totally indifferent. We’re learning that there’s a time and a place to be interested in things, and a time and a place when the mind has to rest. And right now is a time and a place to rest. If you want to be curious, be curious about the breath. Keep your curiosity focused in here. Don’t let it go flashing out.
From: Wide-open Awareness by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Welcome Mary50!

With metta / Antony (dhammapal).
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Often when we hear “restraint of the senses,” it sounds like we’ve got to put blinders on — we’re not allowed to look, we’re not allowed to listen, which would cause all sorts of repressed things to come boiling up out of frustration inside.... But that’s not what the Buddha’s talking about. He says to watch for the details. What are the little things that set you off? Oftentimes that’s just what the problem is: the little details. When you focus on the details and not on the whole thing, the mind comes up with a lopsided or unbalanced response. So if something with beautiful details is giving rise to passion, look at its repulsive details. That’s why we chant that contemplation of the thirty-two parts of the body almost every morning — as an antidote, to give you some perspective.
From: The Mind's Immune System by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Restraint of these senses doesn’t mean going around with blinders on your eyes or plugs in your ears. It actually forces you to see more than you normally might, for it requires you to become sensitive to two things: (1) your motivation for, say, looking at a particular sight; and (2) what’s happening to your mind as a result of looking at that sight. In this way you bring the questions of discernment to bear in an area where you’re usually driven by the questions of hunger: the search to see or hear delicious things. You learn to view your engagement with the senses as part of a causal process.
From: With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:The Buddha’s basic teaching on insight is the four noble truths. We tend to lose sight of that fact, thinking that insight means seeing the inconstancy, stress, and not-selfness of things. It does in part, but that insight has to take place in a larger context, which is of the four noble truths. And these truths in turn come down to cause and effect, skillful and unskillful: the things you do that lead to suffering and the things you can do that lead to the end of suffering.
From: Anger by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:When you read the Buddha's teachings on mindfulness out of context, it's possible to interpret them as saying that when you're being mindful, say, of feelings, you just watch whatever feeling comes up and don't make any changes. Don't meddle with it. Just be non-reactive, allowing whatever's happening to happen. What this attitude does, though, is to drive underground some really important sources for insight: the ability to see to what extent you're shaping your feelings of pleasure and pain right now. This applies to physical pleasure and mental pleasure, to physical pain and mental pain. So when the Buddha talks about the things you do that lead to happiness, he's not just referring to your external actions. He's also referring to the way you think, the way you interpret, filter, make choices about how to shape the present moment: a purely internal matter.
From: Wisdom for Dummies by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:If you look around the human race and all you see is all the selfishness and cruelty, your heart begins to shrivel and dry. You decide that you don't want to help anyone, for everyone seems unworthy of help. In that way your own goodness dies. So you've got to view the goodness of other people as water for your own heart.
From: May I Be Happy by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Vary your routine. Just as a muscle can stop responding to a particular exercise, your mind can hit a plateau if it's strapped to only one meditation technique. So don't let your regular routine get into a rut. Sometimes the only change you need is a different way of breathing, a different way of visualizing the breath energy in the body. But then there are days when the mind won't stay with the breath no matter how many different ways of breathing you try.

This is why the Buddha taught supplemental meditations to deal with specific problems as they arise. For starters, there's goodwill for when you're feeling down on yourself or the human race — the people you dislike would be much more tolerable if they could find genuine happiness inside, so wish them that happiness. There's contemplation of the parts of the body for when you're overcome with lust — it's hard to maintain a sexual fantasy when you keep thinking about what lies just underneath the skin. And there's contemplation of death for when you're feeling lazy — you don't know how much time you've got left, so you'd better meditate now if you want to be ready when the time comes to go.

When these supplemental contemplations have done their work, you can get back to the breath, refreshed and revived. So keep expanding your repertoire. That way your skill becomes all-around.
From: Strength Training for the Mind by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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A Sense of Honor

"...there's a lot of behavior that goes on in our world that is pretty dishonorable and it's becoming more and more the norm, but you have the freedom to decide whether you're going to make it your norm or not. And having a sense of well-being that comes from within...they've done studies that they can actually use mindfulness practice or concentration practice to make soldiers better killers, make traders more aggressive traders which is not what the mediation is for...you have the choice...the world may be going one way, but the dharma goes another way, you have the choice to go with the dharma...one of the Buddha's lay discipe who was a stream winner, someone who actually tasted his first taste of awakening, was asked one time if the world were lined up against the Buddha, who'd you side with, he said, 'I'd side with the Buddha, even with the whole world, even if it was the rest of my family,' because he had seen what the Buddha taught was true, that there really was a genuine happiness.. "
"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;
He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;
He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "

--------------------------------------------
"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One,
Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation,
Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "
dhammapal
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:When the Dhamma talks about the past or the future, it's meant to catch you if you've wandered off into the past or the future, and to bring you back — not only to bring you back to the present, but also to give you a perspective on what you're doing here.

For instance, the teachings on karma: Every time the Buddha talked about cycles of past lives or the general direction of the universe in the future, he ended up by saying that it all comes down to what people do, that karma is what has fashioned the past, will fashion the future. And where is karma being made? Right here, right now. What is karma? Intention. That's the action being performed in the present moment. So you want to look at your intentions. The best way to do that is to meditate.
From: Of Past & Future by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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