Thanissaro Bhikkhu on the Ultimate Goal

"If you want to get the mind under some control, if you want to have control over your life, you’ve got to get the mind on one object and learn how to keep it on one object. When you have it on that one object, then you’re freeing yourself from a lot of unskillful things that are going on in the mind. The Buddha’s teachings are all about freedom, how we can be free from our defilements. The teachings he gives are all about how to do that. Generosity teaches you how to free yourself from your stinginess. Virtue teaches you how to be free from impulses that are going to be harmful. Meditation teaches you how you can free yourself from the suffering the mind ordinarily creates for itself. One of the ironies in life is that nobody’s forcing us to suffer, yet we all suffer from our own actions. The things we do, the things we say, the things we think about can bring a lot of suffering on us — and yet we keep doing it. Nobody’s forcing us. The Buddha’s saying you’re free not to do that....

"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...