The Quotable Thanissaro

[dhammapal]

What you desire in life is very important, and the realization that it’s important is an essential part of wisdom. All too often we hear that we shouldn’t desire anything, that we should learn how to just stop wanting. But as Ajaan Maha Boowa points out, the only people who have no wants at all are those who are dead. Even arahants have preferences. They would prefer to see people reach the end of suffering just like themselves. They would prefer to see people not harm one another. Of course their happiness doesn’t depend on it. That’s why they’re free. But the fact that they’re free doesn’t mean that they lack compassion or discernment or powers of judgment.
From: The Wisdom of Ardency by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

An attainment of concentration does not have to be fully pure in order to qualify as right — and, in fact, if one knows how to use the impurity of one’s attainment, it can actually be an aid to awakening. And there’s no need for right concentration to block out sounds. After all, one can gain awakening from any of the four jhānas. AN 9:37 and MN 43 — in not listing those jhānas as among those where one is insensitive to or divorced from the physical senses — stand as proof that they don’t automatically block out sensory input. The important point about concentration is how one uses it.
From: Silence Isn't Mandatory: Sensory Perception in the Jhānas by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

Sometimes you hear of specific [meditation] methods as being scientific, that they’ve worked everything out, all the steps, and all you have to do is follow the steps. They even have all the questions and answers on cards; they have standard meditation talks. Everybody gets put through the same process. That’s scientific in the same way that an assembly line is scientific, but it doesn’t mean that the workers on the assembly line are going to be scientific, or they understand anything of what’s going on. The process is too mechanical. That’s not the science that the Buddha was teaching. He was teaching how to experiment, how to take joy in finding things out — which means that sometimes you do what you’re told in the meditation and sometimes you do what you’re not told, so you can see what happens.
From: Good & Bad Meditation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

It’s important not to mistake a mundane breakthrough for genuine release, for that can make you heedless and complacent in your practice. One of the touchstones for testing the truth of your release is whether it feels grounding or disorienting. If it’s disorienting, it’s not the real thing, for the deathless is the safest, most secure dimension there is. Another touchstone for testing the truth of your release is whether you understood what you did to get there, for that’s what provides insight into the role of fabrication and mental action in shaping all experience. If your mind senses a great unburdening but without understanding how it happened, it’s not release. It’s just a mundane breakthrough. So don’t be heedless.
From: With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

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. The idea that meditation is a purification that burns away your old kamma is actually a Jain teaching that he ridiculed. And you wonder what he would have said about a passage I read the other day in a Buddhist magazine — that if you can maintain equanimity during sex, that can also be a form of purification. The Buddha had no use for these ideas. You don’t have to burn off your old kamma. If you had to burn off your old kamma, he said, we’d never be done. As for the idea of burning off bad kamma by having sex, he would probably have shaken his head in disbelief. But while you’re meditating you can develop a good expansive state of mind — and empathetic joy is one way of developing that expansive state of mind — that helps to mitigate a lot of the results of your own past bad actions.
From: "Empathetic Joy", Meditations7 pages 120-123 by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

Most people are overwhelmed by the process of dying. The body, which always used to seem to work all right, suddenly starts malfunctioning. The body, which they identified with, which they’ve invested so much time and energy in, starts falling apart. They feel lost and betrayed. And then where do they go? For people who don’t have any training in meditation, that’s a real killer, not only physically but also mentally.

If you’ve got these skills mastered, you’ve got a better place for the mind to stay. You can deal with whatever thoughts come up. And all kinds of thoughts are going to come thronging in to your awareness at that point: this regret, that disappointment, this complaint. There’s going to be a lot of negative stuff. But if you’ve got good solid mindfulness and good clear awareness in the present moment, you can just watch these things come and watch them go. You don’t have to grab onto them.

If you’re really skilled in your meditation, you will have found a place where the present moment opens up into the deathless. Then you’re really safe, no matter what happens: the body falls apart, all kinds of things can happen - but there’s that secure place.

Ajaan Fuang once said that when you’re practicing meditation, you’re practicing how to die properly. And these skills that we’re working on when we’re sitting right here, they’re your survival skills, both on a day-to-day level and also when the time comes for the mind to separate from the body, to separate from all its mental events, everything associated with this life. If you do it skillfully, the awareness that’s left will separate out, will have nothing to worry about, either in the present or on into the future.
From: Survival Tactics by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

The Buddha in the suttas asks all the right questions. We all know that what we see is shaped by the views we bring to things, but we're often not aware of the extent to which our views are shaped by the questions we ask ourselves. The Buddha had the good sense to see that some questions are skillful — they really do point you to freedom, to the total cessation of suffering — while others are unskillful: they take you to a dead end, tie you up in knots, and leave you there. The suttas are helpful in showing how to avoid getting involved in unskillful questioning. If you listen carefully to their advice and take it to heart, you find that it really opens your eyes to how you approach meditation and life in general.
From: A Question of Skill: An Interview with Thanissaro Bhikkhu by Insight Magazine Online

[dhammapal]

the teaching on kamma shows what it means to aim at genuine happiness. Because happiness has a cause — skillful action — your wish for happiness has to focus on the cause. Otherwise it will have no effect.

This lesson applies to the sublime attitudes both when directed to yourself and when directed to others. Goodwill for yourself means being determined to act skillfully; goodwill for others means hoping that they will understand the causes for true happiness and act in line with that understanding.

Compassion means compassion not only for people who are suffering, but also for people who are acting in ways that will create more suffering.

Empathetic joy applies not only to people who are happy but also to people who are acting in ways that will lead to true happiness.

Equanimity applies not only to sufferings that are beyond one’s control but also to actions that one cannot prevent.

All of this means that if you really want other people to be happy, you don’t just treat them nicely. You also want them to learn how to create the causes for happiness. The best way to do this is to show them through the example of your own behavior. If possible, you can also encourage them to follow your example. At the very least, you don’t thwart their attempts to act skillfully. This is how the brahmavihāras function in the context of mundane right view.
From: The Sublime Attitudes: A Study Guide on the Brahmavihāras by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

And the Buddha never said that we are all one. When asked if the cosmos is a oneness or a multiplicity, he declined to answer, as the question was irrelevant to the practice for ending suffering (SN12:48). He taught the interdependence of events, not as a celebration of oneness or interconnectedness, but as a way of showing that all interdependent events are unstable and destined to pass away. On their own, they don’t provide a reliable happiness. The appropriate way to respond to this insight is to use interdependent events skillfully, with knowledge, to reach a dimension totally free from dependency of any kind.
From: The Sublime Attitudes: A Study Guide on the Brahmaviharas by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

Several years back, we had a meditation session out under the trees in the monastery, and it was a beautiful day: a light breeze; the temperature was just right. And for me, it was a very pleasant meditation. However, a woman in the group had brought along a friend who had never meditated before. After the end of the meditation, the friend announced to the group, “I have never suffered so much in my life.” She suffered because of what she was paying attention to: how she couldn’t move, how much pain she was feeling, how bored she was. If you pay inappropriate attention to the things that you don’t like about the present moment, you actually weaken yourself.
From: The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati & Kamma by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

Here it’s useful to remember the Buddha’s own analogy for his project as a teacher. From the first day of his teaching to the last, he stated that he was teaching a path. He started not with a first principle, but with a self-evident problem — stress — and then showed a path to its solution. Instead of trying to provide a total account of the world, he was simply showing the route to a particular goal where the initial problem is solved.
From: Skill in Questions: How the Buddha Taught by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

The Buddha’s claims for the exceptional nature of his Dhamma did not spring from pride or ignorance. After all, as we have noted, he did not claim to have invented the Dhamma, or even to have been the first to find it. The path is not true because it is "his." It’s true because it’s the only path that works in leading to full release. In this way, the Buddha’s authority is that, not of a creator god, but of an expert who has discovered and perfected a skill, and who wants to pass it on intact. And because this skill was not simply an education in understanding words, but a training of the entire character, he recognized that it had to be transmitted through friendship and frequent association with those who had already mastered those skills.
From: Buddhist Romanticism by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[binocular]

Thank you for posting all these passages! They happen to be just the right ones at the right time for me.
Keep up the good work!

[dhammapal]

One of Ajaan Mun's favorite topics for a Dhamma talk was the theme of practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma — in other words, in accordance with what the Dhamma demands, not in accordance with what our likes and dislikes demand.

As the Dhamma comes to the West this is probably one of the hardest things for Westerners to appreciate. Everywhere you look, the Dhamma is being remade, recast, so that people will like it. Things that people don't like are quietly cut away; and if things that people like are missing, they're added on. And so the creature that comes out is like the old cartoon of a committee designing a bird: The bird looks pretty good to begin with, but then after the committee's done with it, it looks like an ostrich with no legs. It can't walk and it can't fly, but it sells. In this country of ours, where democracy and the marketplace are all-powerful, the question of what sells determines what's Dhamma, even if it can't walk or fly. And who loses out? We lose out. The Dhamma doesn't lose out; it's always what it is. But we like to add a little here, take away a little there, and as a result we end up with nothing but things we already like and already dislike.
From: Beyond Likes & Dislikes by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

[dhammapal]

You hear about more and more people getting involved in what they call engaged Buddhism. They’re looking down on people who meditate, saying that meditators are selfish. Well, that’s not the Dhamma speaking. That’s people’s defilements speaking. The best thing you can do for the world is to learn how to engage with your defilements in a way that puts an end to them. That’s where your Buddhism should be engaged. Because otherwise your defilements just keep burning you, and through you they burn other people. There’s wisdom in realizing that, and wisdom in following through with that realization: realizing you’ve really got to do something about your mind. The ardency with which you set out on that task is the measure of how wise and discerning you’re becoming.
From: The Wisdom of Ardency by Thanissaro Bhikkhu