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:Samsara literally means "wandering-on." Many people think of it as the Buddhist name for the place where we currently live — the place we leave when we go to nibbana. But in the early Buddhist texts, it's the answer, not to the question, "Where are we?" but to the question, "What are we doing?" Instead of a place, it's a process: the tendency to keep creating worlds and then moving into them. As one world falls apart, you create another one and go there. At the same time, you bump into other people who are creating their own worlds, too.
....
If samsara were a place, it might seem selfish for one person to look for an escape, leaving others behind. But when you realize that it's a process, there's nothing selfish about stopping it at all. It's like giving up an addiction or an abusive habit. When you learn the skills needed to stop creating your own worlds of suffering, you can share those skills with others so that they can stop creating theirs. At the same time, you'll never have to feed off the worlds of others, so to that extent you're lightening their load as well.
From: Samsara by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Although [the Buddha] foresaw that his teachings would someday disappear, he didn't simply resign himself to change or trust that it would always work out for the best. He established a wide range of safeguards to ensure that reliable words and models of behavior would survive as long as possible. But in the cut-and-paste Buddhism developing around us in the West, many of these safeguards have been dropped. In particular, the idea of apprenticeship — so central in mastering the habits of the dhamma as a skill — is almost totally lacking. Dhamma principles are reduced to vague generalities, and the techniques for testing them are stripped to a bare, assembly-line minimum.
From: Lost in Quotation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:When the security of our food source — the basis of our mental and material well-being — gets threatened, the finer qualities of the mind can vanish. People who believe in kindness can suddenly seek revenge. Those who espouse non-violence can suddenly call for war. And those who rule by divisiveness — by making a mockery of compassion, prudence, and our common humanity — find a willing following for their law-of-the-jungle agenda.

This is why compassion based only on belief or feeling is not enough to guarantee our behavior — and why the practice of training the mind to reach an unconditioned happiness is not a selfish thing. If you value compassion and trust, it's an imperative, for only an unconditioned happiness can guarantee the purity of your behavior.
From: Purity of Heart by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Sometimes you hear that the deepest, most underlying form of clinging is the sense of self identity that you build around things. If you learn how not to have any sense of self identity, there you are: You've taken care of all the other forms of clinging. Sometimes you hear that clinging to views is the basic form of clinging. If you can deconstruct all your views, you'll be done with all the other forms of clinging as well. So you reason your way to seeing how you can't say that things exist, you can't say that things don't exist, or both, or neither. They're empty. That means that your sensual desire is empty, your habits and practices are empty, your doctrines of the self are empty. With everything empty like that, there's nothing to cling to. But that doesn't work either. After letting things go in this way, you'll find that your sensual desires weren't touched. You just turn around and pick them back up. So you have to realize that each kind of clinging has its own antidote.
From: Antidotes for Clinging by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Because consciousness and craving can continue feeding off each other indefinitely, the process of repeated becoming is endless unless you master the skill that brings it to an end. Because this process of wandering-on simply rises and falls, again and again, it is pointless and meaningless. Because it requires constant feeding, it is not only precarious but also stressful and painful, in that it is driven by hunger and uncertainty over your next source of food. It also places a burden on others who provide your food or who want to lay claim to the same sources of food that you do.

Realizing these facts, the Buddha saw that the happiness he sought could not be found anywhere in the cosmos of becoming, even the highest levels. However, the meaninglessness of saṁsāra gave him the freedom to give his own meaning to his life. For both of these reasons, he saw that the only way to find happiness and meaning would be to discover the way to bring becoming to an end. That was why, on the evening of his awakening, he turned his mind to the third knowledge: the way to end the effluents that “flow out” of the mind and flood it with craving and becoming. The solution to the problem, he saw, was not out there in the cosmos, but in here, in the mind.
From: The Buddha's Teachings: An Introduction by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:[One of the qualities of a person of integrity] is having a sense of yourself: where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are, where you can trust yourself, where you can’t trust yourself, where you need to work on yourself. You could look in a whole library of books, you could look through the entire Internet, and you would never find that kind of knowledge. You have to look at yourself in action and you also have to be around people of integrity so you get a sense of where you do and don’t measure up — and how they see where you do and don’t measure up. It’s not just a matter of your own opinion. You have to listen to their opinions, be sensitive to their standards. You have to read not only their words, but also their behavior and their body language. This is why the Buddha put so much emphasis on choosing a good teacher.
From: An Apprenticeship in Integrity by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:You sometimes hear that everyone deserves your good will because they all have Buddha nature, that they’re all essentially good inside. But this forgets the primary reason for developing good will as a brahmavihara in the first place: You need to make your good will universal so that you can trust your intentions. If you regard your good will as so precious that only Buddhas deserve it, you won’t be able to trust yourself when encountering people whose actions are consistently evil. Remember that you don’t have to like someone to feel good will for that person. All you have to do is wish for that person to be happy. And the more you can develop this attitude toward people you actively dislike, the more you’ll be able to trust yourself.
From: Head & Heart Together: Bringing Wisdom to the Brahmaviharas by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:This is one of the reasons we develop mindfulness: not to be non-reactive, but to be mindful of what we're doing, of what situation we're in, and of the most skillful thing to be doing right now. Keep that in mind, because the principles of karma, the laws of karma, are not traffic laws that apply only in certain places, only at certain times, on the south side of the street from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, that kind of thing. Karma is a law that applies to all of our actions, 24/7. So be skillful at all times. No matter what the situation, no matter how minor or major it may seem, we've got the opportunity to do good, to act on skillful intentions — not just good intentions, but intentions that are skillful as well.
From: For the Good of the World by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:There are some people who really like to take a macho approach that whatever defilement comes up in the mind they’re going to starve it. They go without food, they work themselves really hard, thinking that somehow the austerity is going to burn the defilement away. And that does work with some problems. That can be one tool you use, one tool that you keep in your tool chest, but it can’t be the only tool. There are other defilements that require more precision, less brute effort, but demand a lot more from your powers of observation, so that you can understand where they’re coming from. You want to have a wide range of skills.
From: Against Your Type by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu's unique English translations of important Pāli terms:
mettā=goodwill, dukkha=stress, anicca=inconstancy, saṅkhāra=fabrications, anattā=not-self, Nibbāna=Unbinding, viriya=persistence, saddhā=conviction, muditā=appreciation, kusala=skillful, akusala=unskillful, paññā=discernment, appamāda=heedfulness, yoniso-manasikāra=appropriate attention, dosā=aversion, dhātu=properties, kalyāṇamittatā=admirable friendship, Satipaṭṭhāna=Frames of Reference, vitakka=directed thought, vicāra=evaluation
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:To bring a total end to the mind’s self-inflicted stress and suffering requires a great deal of dedication, training, and skill. But the meditation technique taught in this book doesn’t give its benefits only to people who are ready to follow it all the way to the total cure of awakening. Even if you simply want help in managing pain or finding a little more peace and stability in your life, meditation has plenty to offer you. It can also strengthen the mind to deal with many of the problems of day-to-day life, because it develops qualities like mindfulness, alertness, concentration, and discernment that are useful in all activities, at home, at work, or wherever you are. These qualities are also helpful in dealing with some of the larger, more difficult issues of life. Addiction, trauma, loss, disappointment, illness, aging, and even death are a lot easier to handle when the mind has developed the skills fostered by meditation.

So even if you don’t make it all the way to total freedom from stress and suffering, meditation can help you to handle your sufferings more skillfully — in other words, with less harm to yourself and the people around you. This, in itself, is a worthwhile use of your time. If you then decide to pursue the meditation further, to see if it really can lead to total freedom, so much the better.
From: With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Regardless of how rich or poor you may be, no matter what society may think of you, you have the ability to train your mind. And you can shape your world through that power. The teachings talk about becoming: It’s basically your sense of the world in which you live, and your identity within that world. That becoming is based on your actions. Your actions are the field in which a particular sense of the world can grow. You keep on doing things that you know are good, and that creates a good field. The possibilities in that field are always replenished. That’s something totally within your power. The world at large may have political strife, economic collapse — all kinds of negative things may be happening but in your world — but you’re creating a good world. And you’re not the only one benefiting from that.

So this is why we train the mind. Regardless of the situation outside, it’s through training the mind that we’re shaping the world — the world in which we live and the world in which the people around us live as well. So even though the mountains of aging, illness, and death may be moving in, we can still train the mind. Because as the Buddha pointed out, death is not the end. It’s one incident in a very long story. Poverty is not the end. Famine, the four horsemen, are not really the end. The four horsemen have been stampeding all over the world for who knows how long. But we can still do good.
From: In Charge of Your World by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:There are lots of ways that we can develop doubts and uncertainty about the path. So let’s look at how the Buddha said to deal with uncertainty. First, of course, you ask yourself: What are you being asked to believe? You’re being asked to believe that your actions have an impact. That the quality of the mind with which you act is going to have an impact on the results of that action. That it’s possible to learn from your mistakes. And that you do have freedom of choice. These are all fairly commonsensical propositions. Where the Buddha is asking you to take this a little bit further than normal common sense, of course, is that by following this principle you can go all the way to true happiness, a happiness that won’t change.
From: Strengthening Conviction by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:Mindfulness is to remind you that you can make choices, and that you want to learn to make them skillfully. You can learn how to breathe in a comfortable way, to think in a comfortable way, to fashion your thoughts and your perceptions so as to shape a greater sense of well-being. You don't have to invest any money. Just take time and use your powers of observation. That's what it all comes down to.
From: Wisdom for Dummies by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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Re: The Quotable Thanissaro

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote:I was reading recently of some scholars complaining that the four noble truths are not really noble. After all, what’s noble about craving? What’s noble about suffering? They were claiming that the four noble truths aren’t even really true for anybody aside from those who have already become awakened, which is a very peculiar statement, After all, the Buddha teaches the truths as part of a path. They’re part of how you get there – to awakening.

You take them on as right view. In other words, you don’t know whether they’re actually true or not, but you’re going to test them. You’re going to apply them to your life, and the act of doing that is a noble act. Seeing craving not as a friend but as a cause of suffering – something to be abandoned – that, too, is a noble act. Seeing the act of clinging to the aggregates not as a source of happiness or a source of who you really want to be, but as suffering, something to be comprehended so that you can abandon its cause: That’s a noble act as well. When the mind has a good sense of the present moment and how to stay with the present moment without letting other things get in the way: Seeing that as something to be developed is a noble act, too.

So the truths really are noble. Ajaan Suwat often said to regard the suffering of the mind as a noble truth, something that’s really worth paying close attention to, trying to really understand it. That’s another thing that’s noble about the truth. It deserves your full attention.
From: Noble & True by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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