Thanissaro Bhikkhu "De-thinking Thinking"

"And instead of thinking of the body pulling the breath in, remember that your primary experience of the body is breath, an energy flow. Our perceptions tend to solidify that, and so we often think that the solid parts of the body are our primary experience of the body, and that breath is something secondary. Actually, it’s the other way around. The sensation of energy is primary. So allow yourself to think in that other-way-around. Your sense of the solid body is sitting here in the breath, in the process of breathing. Whatever you perceive as an immediate, primary experience of “body,” think of it as breath. If you’re having trouble with the breathing, if your breath seems constricted or tight, remind yourself of this, and it’ll open up a lot.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Body In & Of Itself", 9min mp3 audio,

And after a while you notice that the mind, if it has a chance to settle down and be still, has a sense of well-being.

The Buddha once said there is no happiness other than peace, N’atthi santi param sukham. You might argue you can think of all kinds of happiness that are not very peaceful at all. But are they really happiness? There's a sense of excitement, there's a sense of thrill – but there's an awful lot of stress that goes in with those feelings and you can't endure them very long. The sense of ease, however, that comes with this peace: this you can endure for long periods at a time. The mind gets grounded, has a sense of solidity, stability. It doesn't have to jump around the way it used to." ~ 

Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Wide-open Awareness"

"when there’s more openness and more honesty in the mind, it’s a better-behaved mind. It causes you less trouble. You’re not sticking your nose into business that isn’t really your own. You’re not meddling with things that you don’t really want to meddle with. You find that the mind causes itself less and less trouble all the time — all because of this ability to be more open with yourself, more open internally.

And this is not just a mental openness; it’s a bodily openness, too. This is why we work with the breath, so that this openness seeps down into the body as well. All those subconscious roots that can give rise to these walls in the mind get saturated with the breath, saturated with knowledge, saturated with awareness. The conscious area of the mind gets larger and larger; the unconscious activities get pushed off into smaller and smaller and smaller corners all the time, so that it’s harder and harder for them to take over.

So when we’re meditating, it’s not as if we’re clamping down and shutting things down. We simply keeping tabs on this one level of awareness, this one level of energy here in the body, and we allow everything on this level to connect. Once it’s connected, there are no areas where you can hide from yourself." ~ 

Buddhist Way of Life : The qualities of the heart are conditional

Buddhist Way of Life : The qualities of the heart are conditional: When we learn to appreciate the joy that comes from generosity, honor, compassion, and trust, we see that it's much more fulfilling...

Virtue Contains the Practice

"This is why the Buddha says that uncertainty is overcome by looking at skillful and unskillful qualities in the mind. To begin with, you’re focusing your attention on the most important issue in life, which is what sort of impact your actions are having, and particularly what kind of impact your mind states are having. After all, the source of action is in the mind. If you’re uncertain about different mental qualities, then watch. Try developing goodwill; try being generous; try observing the precepts. See what kind of impact these qualities have on your life." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Virtue Contains the Practice", Meditations6,

The purpose of the Buddha's teachings

"The purpose [of the Buddha's teachings] is to help us create happiness. And to find a happiness that lies even deeper that doesn't have to be created. But to find that happiness, to develop the path to that happiness, we have to understand suffering. And that means we have to understand what our minds are doing right now to create suffering. Because that's the suffering that weighs the mind down.

The pains that come in from outside, the misfortunes out there in the world: they don't have to make us suffer. It's what we do as we find out about them and we deal with them: That's where the suffering comes that weighs us down. So [when] we understand this process well then we don't have to suffer that way." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Genuine Happiness", 14min mp3 audio,

Two Hands Washing -

When the Buddha talked about appropriate attention, he defined it in terms of the four noble truths. Learning to see where the stress is, where’s the cause, where’s the cessation of stress, and what you’re doing to help the stress stop. The questions should be aimed in that direction. And you use those standards to judge the answers, the results that you get.

The answers you get, many times, are not verbal answers. What you get is a state of mind. We’re dealing here with realities. The noble truths are not just words about stress and suffering. You’re dealing with the actual sensations." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Two Hands Washing"

The qualities of the heart are conditional

When we learn to appreciate the joy that comes from generosity, honor, compassion, and trust, we see that it's much more fulfilling than the pleasure that comes simply from grabbing what we can for ourselves. We realize that our happiness can't be independent of the happiness of others. We can give one another our belongings, our time, our love, our selves, and see it not as a loss but as a mutual gain.

Unfortunately, these qualities of the heart are conditional, for they depend on a tender web of beliefs and feelings — belief in justice and the basic goodness of human nature, feelings of trust and affection. When that web breaks, as it so easily can, the heart can turn vicious. We see this in divorce, broken families, and society at large. When the security of our food source — the basis of our mental and material well-being — gets threatened, the finer qualities of the mind can vanish. People who believe in kindness can suddenly seek revenge. Those who espouse non-violence can suddenly call for war. And those who rule by divisiveness — by making a mockery of compassion, prudence, and our common humanity — find a willing following for their law-of-the-jungle agenda.

This is why compassion based only on belief or feeling is not enough to guarantee our behavior — and why the practice of training the mind to reach an unconditioned happiness is not a selfish thing. If you value compassion and trust, it's an imperative, for only an unconditioned happiness can guarantee the purity of your behavior. Independent of space and time, it's beyond alteration. No one can threaten its food source, for it has no need to feed. When you've had even just a glimpse of this happiness, your belief in goodness becomes unshakable. That way other people can totally trust you, and you can genuinely trust yourself. You lack for nothing.

Purity of heart is to know this one thing." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Purity of Heart"

when You realize that happiness is something important, then you have to develop important qualities of mind

You realize that happiness is something important, and if it really is important, then you have to develop important qualities of mind.

As we do this, we find that our actions become less and less harmful; there is less and less cause for conflict. On the one hand, that makes it easier for us to practice. On the other hand, it makes the world a better place to be in general — and in particular, in terms of our thoughts, the world of our own mind becomes better, too, because, of course, our actions and words come out of our thoughts. This is where the Buddha finds the source of conflict to begin with." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No Happiness Other than Peace"

Purity of heart is to know this one thing

"When we learn to appreciate the joy that comes from generosity, honor, compassion, and trust, we see that it's much more fulfilling than the pleasure that comes simply from grabbing what we can for ourselves. We realize that our happiness can't be independent of the happiness of others. We can give one another our belongings, our time, our love, our selves, and see it not as a loss but as a mutual gain.

Unfortunately, these qualities of the heart are conditional, for they depend on a tender web of beliefs and feelings — belief in justice and the basic goodness of human nature, feelings of trust and affection. When that web breaks, as it so easily can, the heart can turn vicious. We see this in divorce, broken families, and society at large. When the security of our food source — the basis of our mental and material well-being — gets threatened, the finer qualities of the mind can vanish. People who believe in kindness can suddenly seek revenge. Those who espouse non-violence can suddenly call for war. And those who rule by divisiveness — by making a mockery of compassion, prudence, and our common humanity — find a willing following for their law-of-the-jungle agenda.

This is why compassion based only on belief or feeling is not enough to guarantee our behavior — and why the practice of training the mind to reach an unconditioned happiness is not a selfish thing. If you value compassion and trust, it's an imperative, for only an unconditioned happiness can guarantee the purity of your behavior. Independent of space and time, it's beyond alteration. No one can threaten its food source, for it has no need to feed. When you've had even just a glimpse of this happiness, your belief in goodness becomes unshakable. That way other people can totally trust you, and you can genuinely trust yourself. You lack for nothing.

Purity of heart is to know this one thing." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Purity of Heart"

The purpose of practicing Buddhist meditation

So for [the Buddha], the purpose of the meditation is not to celebrate oneness or to celebrate acceptance. It's to develop two very different kinds of emotions: disenchantment and dispassion. The Pali word for disenchantment, nibbida, also means distaste, disgust, or revulsion, which may sound strong, but it needs to be strong. It's an antidote to our strong attachment to feeding on things. That attachment, the Buddha said, is the essence of suffering. The word upadana, which means clinging, also means the act of eating, of taking sustenance. He says that upadana lies at the essence of suffering and stress. So what we need to learn is how to look at the things we feed on until we develop a strong sense that we don't want to feed on them any more." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Disenchantment", Meditations4

shaping the present moment, you shape the next moment and the moment after that

you’re acting here with intention. You’re not just being passively aware of what’s happening in the present moment. You’re trying to shape the present moment skillfully, and through shaping the present moment, you shape the next moment and the moment after that, at the same time remembering your original intention to stay with the breath.

So even though our primary focus is on the present moment, we’re bringing past and future to bear on the present: a clear memory of why we’re here, and what we should be doing, what we should be focusing on. And when you find something good, what you do to maintain it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Past & Future in the Present"

it’s impossible to be lost

You are constantly being found, whether you know it or not. ...no matter what is going on—no matter how distracted you think you are, no matter how much you feel like a terribly lazy individual who has completely lost track of her good intentions and is now hopelessly astray—even then you have the responsibility and the ability to take all negativity, bad circumstance, and difficulty and turn it into the path.

DIAMOND SUTRA – “DWELL ON NOTHING WHATSOEVER”

If a Bodhisattva retains the thought of an ego, a person, a being, or a soul, he is no more a Bodhisattva.” –Diamond Sutra, translated by D. T. Suzuki in the Manual of Zen Buddhism

It was reported on the news that on Wednesday March 8, some people celebrated “A Day Without a Woman” with various kinds of activities and protests such as walking off their jobs for the day. Apparently the intent was to air grievances and declare some level of victimhood. If people in the ordinary human world wish to spend their time doing that kind of thing, I guess it is their prerogative.

In Buddhism we cultivate a different kind of thinking and a different kind of attitude. The target in Buddhism is to transcend being a human being, which means to transcend self. We transcend self and all that it entails to be human and what it means to have human consciousness and awareness of self.

To be a human being means that one has many attributes, traits, and characteristics. In Buddhism we cultivate the mindset of recognizing that they are all empty and ultimately meaningless, and in our practice we actively and deliberately throw them all away. In Buddhism we awaken the truth—the truth that we stand nowhere. We aim to be nothing but a fresh breeze in zazen and in our activities and relationships.

What are the many attributes of a human being? We could list many of them, couldn’t we? A human being must be either male or female, to begin with. A human being has cultural and ethnic background. A human being’s cultural and ethnic background is almost always a blend of a variety of ethnicities and cultures. As well, we individuals each have a plethora of distinctions and personality traits. There are many things that distinguish each individual as compared to other humans and other beings in general.

In Buddhism we consider all these things to be empty. It becomes poisonous to attach to any of our attributes or characteristics or distinctions. In the Diamond Sutra it says, “Dwell on nothing whatsoever.” This means non-attachment. This is what compassion is: To teach others not to attach to self or to any phenomena in any way.

No attribute or characteristic exists without consciousness. The true nature of consciousness, self, and existence are the core issues of Buddhism.

A practitioner of Buddhism does not dwell on whether he is a woman or a man. We practice to throw this and everything else away. People in the general population who do not cultivate wisdom hang onto these attributes, characteristics, and personality traits very tightly. To do this is to hang on tightly to self.

The ordinary human world teaches to hold onto self, fixate self and assert self. To one-sidedly affirm self is the cause of all suffering. To hold onto self guarantees suffering. To fixate consciousness one-sidedly this way is the illness of the human world. To fixate self and always assert, “I am a woman” or “I am a man,” for example, becomes a poison. To become entrenched in one’s identity and fixate there makes one ill.

We should celebrate a day called “A day without a woman or a man”—or even better—“A day without a human being.” This would be a day that brings happiness. There was a Zen master who said, “I am not a human being.” This was told in one of the koans of the Mumonkan, Case Number Two entitled, “Hyakujo and a Wild Fox.”

The only true way to experience One World is to realize the truth of One Buddha Nature. This is the quest of one who seeks perfection of wisdom. Many in the ordinary mindset of the ordinary world think they should try to manipulate and mold the world into their vision of what it should be. That is the mindset of conquest. If one wants to experience One World, one must negate the self completely and realize true self which is no self.

One should take one’s place on the Great Mandala—the great cosmos—and do his best to manifest his true nature, his true self. True self is No Self. No Self is True Love. To manifest true self is to manifest True Love. Why is true self No Self? Because self is nothing but a production of human consciousness.

From the Buddhist standpoint, every day is “A Day Without a Woman” because there is no woman in existence. There is no man in existence. There is no human being in existence.

The primary state is the source of self, and the primary state is No Self. True self is always there, but we are not experiencing it because we have obscured the truth with layers and layers of false views created by conditioned human consciousness.

When the emperor of China asked Bodhidharma, “Who is this before me?” Bodhidharma said, “I don’t know.” This “I don’t know” was not a simple, ordinary statement. It was a manifestation of true nature, One Buddha Nature—it was the manifestation of the Thundering Silence

Mindfulness of impermanence

"If we can flip our habitual mind and see the impermanence and unsteadiness of thoughts, emotions, relationships, and events, our actions will begin to change. Our priorities will begin to shift. Our faith in the teachings will increase, and we will be lighter hearted, because we have less fixation and less pain."

How Siddhartha Seek for Nirvana

After seeing the four sights, Siddhartha could not sleep when night came. He was in bed thinking that one day, everyone would grow old, grey, wrinkled, toothless and ugly like the old beggar. He wanted to know if anyone had found a way to stop this horrible thing — old age, sick and dead. 

After many days of contemplation and distress, Siddhartha visited the city for the fourth time. As he was driving to the park he saw a happy man wearing an orange coloured robe. He asked Channa, "Who is this man wearing an orange robe? His hair is shaved off. Why does he look so happy? How does he live and what does he do for a living?"

"That is a monk." replied Channa, "He lives in a temple, goes from house to house for his food and goes from place to place telling people how to be peaceful and good." The prince felt very happy now. He thought, "I must become one like that," as he walked through the park.

He walked until he was tired, then sat under a tree to think some more. As he was sitting under the cool shady tree, news came that his wife had given birth to a fine baby boy. When he heard the news he said, " An impediment ("rahula") has been born to me, an obstacle to my leaving has been born," and thus his son's name became Rahula.

As he was returning to the palace he met the Princess called Kisagotami. She had been looking out of the palace window and, seeing the prince coming, was so taken by his handsome looks that she said loudly, "Oh! How happy must be the mother, and father, and the wife of such a handsome young prince!"

As he passed this woman, Siddhartha heard this and thought to himself, "In a handsome figure the mother, father and wife find happiness. But how does one escape obstacles and suffering to reach nirvana (escape from suffering, a lasting liberation which is happiness and genuine peace)?" With this question he realised what he must do. "I must quit this household life and retire from the world in quest of enlightenment. This lady has taught me a valuable lesson. I will send her a teacher's fee." Loosening a valuable pearl necklace from about his neck, Siddhartha honoured his word and sent it as payment to Kisagotami, with thanks.

that night Siddhartha left his palace to seek for Nirvana. He traveled for whole night passed three kingdoms reached to the place where He spend six years of seeking the way of enlightenment. 

after six years, He realized that not the way to reach enlightenment or Nirvana . Then He found the eight noble paths which is the right way to enlightenment. 

A good marriage should grow and develop gradually from understanding and not impulse

A good marriage should grow and develop gradually from understanding and not impulse, from true loyalty and not just sheer indulgence. A marriage is a partnership of equality, gentleness, generosity, calm and dedication. Each is complementary to the other; giving strength and moral courage to each other; supporting and appreciating the other in caring and providing for the family

Meditation of the Four Great Elements

Before meditation, think about your generosity such as alms giving, giving foods accommodation to poor people, escape animals from killing, helping other people. This will help you to achieve some concentration level before meditating.

Then meditate like this,

1. Outside world, Excrement is element of matter, not mine. Hair is a element of matter, not mine.

like above think fir, nails, tooth, skin, flesh, nerves, bones, bone marrow, kidney, hart, liver, diaphragm, intestines, omit, excrement is not mine while comparing external excrement as above.

2. Outside world, urine is element of water, not mine. blood is a element of water, not mine.

like above think bile, phlegm, mucus, sweat, tears is not mine while comparing external excrement as above.

3. Outside world, such as a was basket generate heat. Such temperature is element of heat, not mine. Temperature of body is a element of heat, not mine.

We feel the bad smell through wind.

4. Outside world, wind is element of gas, not mine. Inhale exhale breath is a element of gas, not mine.

Why do we compare ugly outside elements with out body elements? Because consciousness is clinging on our body for many neon's. In order to escape the consciousness from body we use ugly element like urine excrement.

After meditation like above, having release the consciousness from hateful body you will reach a peaceful and pleasurable mental state which never experienced before. That state called GHANA level concentration. After liberating the mind from the body Consciousness and Space remains. It is not permanent too.

Then think about like this,

I have taken beauty in the ugly, there is a pleasure in suffering, things that are no self are mine earlier. I have done bad deed and suffered for long time in SANSARA to that misunderstanding and bad deeds. Now i eliminate such wrong understanding and bad deeds like lying.

Now think, the concentration and everything is impermanent, because it is made by giving DHAMMA to mind. Nibbana is the extinction of all the cravings. Nibbana is permanent, because it does not made of anything.

Spread Metta to all beings, not self.

You will reach infinite state of Metta and understand the great enlightenment.

Problems and obstacles for Buddhist practitioner

Buddhist practitioner who diligently practice and cultivate the Buddha-Dharma tends to face many problems and obstacles before them. Some are lessons to be taken, some are tests to test what one is going to do next, some lesson and test are bitter to swallow, like being pricked by razorblades thorn while some are painful shattering the heart and mind. In order to advance forward along the path in practice, sometimes one need to step backward in order to advance forward, One must stick to one's commitment and if you hurry, you will only be delayed nor should you be too lax, for then you will become lazy. The Buddha-Dharma is flexible and if one's mind is rigid then one may not be able to understand and advance forward in the practice and cultivation.

There are many good Buddhist practitioners who have attained 'Enlightenment' regardless whether it's small enlightenment or big enlightenment as there are four stages of enlightenment such as Sotapanna, Sakadagami, Anagami, and Arahat which a sincere practitioner can attain in this life. These are the four progressive stages culminating in the full enlightenment as an Arahat however before one achieve such a blissful state of mind, one has not only learn how to get rid of all kind of fetters but also learn how to endure all the hardship, bear all the blames from others and overcome all the problems and obstacles before them.

Whatever task one do, 'avoid all evils, do all goodness and purify their mind' as taught by the Lord Buddha. Through patience and diligent in practice, cultivation on the Eightfold Path teachings and meditation one will arrive in this blissful state of mind. Good Health and Buddha Bless!

Thanissaro Bhikkhu - Encouraging Perceptions

"When we meditate, we're working with the process of perception. When we focus on the sensation of the breathing, we're also keeping in mind a particular perception of the breath so that we know what to look for, where to look for the breath. For example, if you have a perception of breath simply as air coming in and out of the lungs, you're going to be looking in one place and seeing one kind of thing. If you change your perception and think of the breath as energy flow in the body, you're going to be looking other places, seeing other things.

~

Perception is also used in gaining insight. Sometimes you hear that concentration basically deals with the perception or the mental label of something, whereas when you're developing insight you're dealing with the actual experience, but that's not the case. The two go together, the perception and the experience, both in concentration practice and in insight practice. When you're trying to concentrate, you use the perception of the breath to direct you to the experience of the breath and to keep you there. When you're starting to develop a sense of dispassion, you use the perception of inconstancy, or the perception of stress, or the perception of not-self. These are mental labels and you're applying them to things you're experiencing.

~

One of the important lessons you learn from meditation is the power of perception, how it can shape your experience: what you sense in your world of experience, both inside the body and around you; where you're going to focus your attention and what you're going to do with it; your sense of your possibilities, of what can be done. Again, if you think of the breath as simply the air coming in and out of the lungs, there's a limited range of possibilities for what you can do. The idea of allowing the in-and-out breath to stop gets kind of scary. But if you think of the breath energy flowing throughout the body, extending out to all the pores, then the idea of the in-and-out breath stopping is not so scary.

~

If you think of yourself as starved of breath, you have to keep gulping it in. You're going to breathe in a way that's not very conducive to getting the mind to settle down. But if you develop a perception of the body being filled with breath energy, then the in-breath is just connecting with what's already there, energizing what's already there, and you're going to breathe in a different way, with a lot less desperation, with a greater sense of fullness and ease. What's called the bodily fabrication aspect of the in-and-out breath has an impact on the movement of energy in the body, and the way you feel the body is going to get more and more subtle, more conducive to the mind's settling down.

~

All these perceptions are true to some extent, it's just that some of them are more useful than others, more beneficial, for some purposes and not for others. For the purpose of meditating, you want to hold onto a perception that's right for what you're doing right now. In this way, the perceptions you hold in the mind are a kind of mental chatter, a kind of inner speech--the words that go into the sentences of your directed thought and evaluation--and the same principles apply to inner speech as the Buddha applies to outer speech. In other words, before speaking, you have to ask yourself three questions.

~

The first question is, is it true? There are all kinds of things that are true. So, the next question is, is it beneficial? Is it really good to say these things? Is it really good to hold these perceptions? What use do they have? What impact do they have on the mind? Even though they may be true, if they're not having a beneficial impact on the mind, you might want to let them go. But even if they're beneficial, the next question is, is this the right time and place for them? Is this the time for comforting perceptions or is this the time for perceptions that crack the whip?--the ones that say, "Hey, you've got to get to work." These are the sorts of things you learn through experience..."

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Encouraging Perceptions