Thanissaro Bhikkhu on the Ultimate Goal

"You want to be willing to stay with the breath not only while you’re here, sitting with your eyes closed, but also in all of your activities as continuously as possible. After all, this is a big job we are taking on here, rooting out the mind’s habits of causing suffering for itself and for the people around you. There’s another passage in the Canon where an elephant trainer is talking to the Buddha and says, “Elephants are easy; human beings are hard.” He says, “I can be with an elephant for a week and by the end of the week, I’ll know all that elephant’s tricks, but the human mind has lots of tricks, and it takes more than a week to get to know them.” This means you’re in here for long haul, so try to have a mature attitude toward your goals, a mature attitude toward being on the path, even when it seems as if the path is endless. Actually, this is one of the few paths in life that actually have an end. Think of all the other endless things in life, the fact that, as long as y...

"Perhaps to counteract the common fear that the release of nibbana is a type of starvation, Khp 6 depicts it as a form of consumption in which one’s food is totally free — freely available, free from debt, and free from suffering: § 50. Those who, devoted, firm-minded, apply themselves to Gotama’s message, on attaining their goal, plunge into the deathless, freely eating the liberation they’ve gained." — Khp 6 ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Shape of Suffering: A Study of Dependent Co-arising"

"So here we are in the midst of a storm. But there’s something deep inside that doesn’t have to suffer from the storm, doesn’t have to be threatened by the storm. Even though we may reflect on the awesomeness of the powers of nature and how huge they are, there is something in the mind that’s even more enormous, more solid, than they are. It can be found through our own efforts, and it offers a security that you can’t find in any place — because it’s outside of places. There’s a recurrent phrase in the Canon of the arahant’s being “released everywhere,” which means released from every where, every place. That idea’s awesome, too. The reality of it, once you’ve touched it, is even more awesome than the idea." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Awe" (Meditations6)

"One of the important things to understand as you come to practice the Dhamma is that you’re not running away from anything. If you want to run away from the human race: You come out here and what have you got? You’re sitting here under a tree, you’re sitting with a member of the human race. You want to run away from your body: You’re sitting there with your body. You want to run away from the issues of the mind: You find that when things are quiet, the issues have more space to come and confront you." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No Running Away"

"You look at the world, and there’s just constant conflict. So your gift to the world is that you’re going to get out. Meanwhile, if you find what the Buddha said is a deathless happiness, it’s not as if you’re just snuffing yourself out and going away into nothingness. You’re finding something better: a type of happiness that doesn’t require that you lay claim to anything. So this practice we’re doing here is not just an exercise in stress reduction. It’s a gift to yourself, a gift to the world. You’re trying to pull yourself out of this constant conflict. Maybe you can’t stop all the conflicts in the world, but you can be one less person to be involved in those conflicts." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Papañca"

Question: I’ve come to meditation to help me bear the atrocities of the world. What is awakening? Is it a moment of conscience when one embraces all the sorrows of the world, and in that case means hello to all sorrows or is it on the contrary a state of total forgetfulness and egotism, in that case it would be hello to guilt? So, which is it? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Neither. Remember the image of feeding. Ordinarily, we feed on the world, both physically and mentally, in order to gain happiness and maintain our identity as beings. But when you gain full awakening, the mind no longer needs to feed because it already has enough in terms of its own happiness. When you’ve reached that state, you can engage in the world without having to feed on it. You can help those whom you can help, and you don’t have to suffer in cases where you can’t help. In this way, you’re neither embracing the sorrows of the world nor are you running away from them. Instead you have a different relati...