Thanissaro Bhikkhu on the Ultimate Goal

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...

"When the Buddha talks about his awakening, it’s interesting to notice that he never talks in terms of the three characteristics or the three perceptions. It’s always in terms of the four noble truths, which are truths about action and result: There are unskillful mental actions that lead to suffering, skillful actions that lead to the end of suffering. The awakening is to see that that’s actually true — and you see it’s true not by generalizing, but by actually following the path and putting an end to suffering. Some people describe awakening as giving assent to the three characteristics, saying, “Oh yeah, that really is true” — but what does that do, what does that change? The real change comes when you look in terms of the four noble truths. You actually do the path and it does lead you to something new — the end of suffering. That’s how you can be said to know the four noble truths — you’ve actually done the duties; you’ve seen the results." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Pa...

"There is this tendency. We read one of these passages, say, about the awakened one who experiences just the sight, just the sound, without assuming any person seeing the sight or anything behind the sight, any object to be seen. We think, “Well, if I just get myself so fully in the present moment where there’s no division between subject and object, that should do it: a taste of awakening.” But it’s not. Even if you actually can achieve a oneness of consciousness, the Buddha noted that there’s still stress there, because it’s something that has to be maintained. It’s not the case that we’re suffering because we have a sense of separateness between subject and object, and we can end that suffering by bringing them back together again, glomming them together. Once they’re glommed, they don’t stay glommed. There’s the stress of having to keep them glommed. And there’s also the question: Could you function continually that way? So this tendency we have of trying to clone awakening, ...

"The Buddha said that he taught just suffering and the end of suffering. Suffering is the problem he focused on and he proposed to solve it. First he was able to solve that problem inside himself. Then he taught other people to solve it within themselves. It seems fairly simple. You look at all the suffering in the world, and it’s obvious that it’d be really good that people not have to suffer. You see war, famine, induced war, induced famine. The things that happen in even just the human world are pretty bad, and there are realms where it gets a lot worse. So, any teaching that offers an end to suffering would seem to be something that would appeal to everyone. Yet when the Buddha talks about the implications of what it means to put an end to suffering, when he talks about nibbāna, a lot of people say it doesn’t sound all that appealing. Years back, when I gave my first study weekend here in California, the topic was the four noble truths. You get to the third truth before you ge...