Thanissaro Bhikkhu on the Ultimate Goal

"When we realize our captivity, we naturally search for a way out. And this is where it’s so important that the first noble truth not say that “Life is suffering.” If life were suffering, where would we look for an end to suffering? We’d be left with nothing but death and annihilation. But when the actual truth is that clinging is suffering, we simply have to look for the clinging and eliminate its causes." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Life Isn't Just Suffering"

"Over time, you get a sense of what really works, what you’ve got to do and what will happen as a result, so that you’re not just sitting here with the desire or the wish not to suffer. You’re taking that desire, that wish, and putting it to good use. At the same time, you’re not playing a game of pretending you don’t have these desires in hopes that lack of desire will get you to the goal. If you didn’t really want to find peace of mind, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be off someplace else. And if you lie to yourself about not having that desire, how are you going to understand any of your desires? What’s needed is simply learning how to approach your desires and wishes in a mature way. That’s how we get what we truly want. The heart’s true desire is for a happiness that’s reliable, a well-being that’s reliable, something you can really depend on, something that’s harmless — something that doesn’t age, grow ill, or die. And, as the Buddha said, there is a path to just those things....

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 relationship to the ...

"[The Buddha] talks about the goal just enough to make you understand that it’s worth pursuing: the ultimate happiness, the ultimate freedom, totally outside of any physical or mental location in space or time. As he says, if you hold to a perception that the goal might be accompanied by any kind of suffering or regret, drop that perception. Don’t listen to it. The deathless is totally satisfying and ends all your hungers. Once your hungers are satisfied, that solves all your other problems as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Uses of Right Concentration"

"This path does offer a way out. In the meantime, you’re not harming anybody and you’re providing yourself with definite wealth, definite strength, definite treasures — as we often say in Thailand — that last beyond death. In other words, you treat the world around you in full knowledge that it’s going to die, but you treat the quality of your mind as something that doesn’t die. That’s what gives honor to what you’re doing. It’s what makes this a noble path." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Living Honorably" (Meditations8)

"And even in the relative comfort we have here, when you actually gain a taste of the Deathless, you realize that ordinary sensory experience is extremely painful compared to what the Deathless is. So even the pleasures we have here have pain built into them. We use those three perceptions to remind ourselves of that, so that we don’t get complacent, say, “Well, what I’ve got is good enough as it is.” You look around. It’s unstable, whatever well-being you have that’s short of the Deathless. And because it’s unstable, it’s going to be a cause for suffering. So why identify with it? There must be something better. That’s the discontent with skillful qualities. So our teacher is the Anti-slacker or what you may call an Unslacker. If we want to do well on the path he laid out, we have to be anti-slackers and unslackers as well. Because our suffering is our problem. No matter how much someone else may tell us it’s no big deal, we know for ourselves that it is a problem. And no one el...

"We create lots of havoc, not only in our own lives, but also in the lives of others, simply because we don’t even know what our desires are. We think we want something and we find out, “Well, that’s not what I want,” and we want to throw it away. We barge through life like this, creating huge messes. So getting to know your own desires and gaining some control over them requires sitting down very quietly with a mind that’s steady and solid, and looking at what you really want in life. You’ve got the choice. Choose your desires well so that you create good becomings. Ultimately, of course, as the Buddha said, the best thing to do is to go beyond becoming this person or becoming that person. With arahants, as he said, you can’t define them because people define themselves around their desires and their attachments, whereas someone who has no desires, no attachments — because they’ve found true happiness — can’t be defined. As far as they’re concerned, the question of who they are ...