Thanissaro Bhikkhu on the Ultimate Goal

"According to the Buddha, though, there is one thing that doesn’t disappoint. When you pursue Awakening, when you pursue nibbana, it’s not going to lead to disappointment. Quite the contrary, it goes wildly beyond your expectations, wildly beyond your hopes. Even just the first taste of the Deathless, stream entry, is enough to produce a seismic shift in your whole awareness, your whole understanding in what you think you are, and what’s possible in life, and in the importance of your own actions. Once you reach that state, your conviction in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha is unshakeable. Your standards for what counts as true happiness get ratcheted up immeasurably." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Culture Shock" (Meditations2)

"So, renunciation is a trade — and it’s a good trade, a trade up. You’re trading candy for gold. You’re abandoning the fears and worries that come with trying to lay claim to power, trying to lay claim to material things, and you’re finding your pleasure elsewhere, in safe places: inside you, in your experience of the body and the mind as you experience it from within. An area where no one else can enter, no one else can sense. If you’re looking for your pleasures outside, people can see the material things you have and they can want them. But when you’re looking for pleasure inside, it’s nobody else’s business — which means it’s safe . Nobody else has to know. But you’ve developed your resources inside: through the brahmavihāras, through the practice of jhāna, right concentration, until you get to that third high and luxurious bed of the Buddha’s which is the noble bed — where the mind is free from its effluents. In other words, no longer any dangers from outside, and also no da...

"If you focus on the area inside, you don’t have to conflict with anybody. No one is going to move into your territory. No one can evict you and take over your place — except for the fact that the body will evict you from the body at some point. Otherwise, you’re in this world wherever it goes. It’s your territory. So you want to make sure that it’s in order, and it’s not creating a lot of suffering for itself. It’s in a world that has lots of potentials for suffering, but also potentials for happiness. It’s in this inner world where the Buddha talks about touching deathless with the body. This is what he means: The deathless is something that will appear in your inner world. There’s that possibility, too, right here. So try to stay as grounded as you can right here, as sensitive as you can — sensitive not only in sense of sensing what’s going on, but also in the sense of understanding. When something happens, if there’s any pain, any suffering: Why? What can be done about it? It’...

"That old saw about the path of the arahant being selfish: What’s selfish about a happiness that doesn’t deprive anybody of anything? If you could go out and concentrate people’s minds for them, that would be a noble activity, but you can’t. What you can do is get into a concentrated mind state yourself and be an example to other people. People around you will pick up a sense of ease, a sense of peace, from the peace that you develop in your mind, the sense of happiness that comes when you can stay longer and longer and longer in one place and realize that you don’t have to get pushed out. No matter what happens, no matter how loud the noises around you are, how insistent outside stimuli maybe, they don’t destroy the breath. They don’t destroy your ability to stay with the breath. This is a kind of happiness that comes with practice. So it’s worth working on. It’s a happiness that does withstand scrutiny. Yet even this is not the ultimate. It’s not the happiness the Buddha went i...

"The Buddha was not down on pleasure, it’s simply that he was a real connoisseur. He said, "Why settle for second best when there’s best? And it’s available.” Now, we may decide that it seems awfully far away, and that we’re going to starve in the meantime unless we get the pleasures we want. But that’s taking the wrong attitude toward your pleasures. You can ask yourself, “Which pleasures are conducive to getting to the ultimate, and which ones are going to get in the way?” You focus on encouraging the ones that are conducive, letting go of the ones that’ll get in the way. That’s the real sign of wisdom. After all, the quest for wisdom begins with that question, "What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” This applies to how you deal with pleasures, how you deal with pains: pleasures of the senses and pleasures of the practice; pains of the senses, pains of the practice. So you want to be wise about pleasure, wise about your feelings. That way,...