"Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Good at Thinking"

"Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Good at Thinking"

Long-term happiness is going to depend on your actions. You can’t blame your happiness or sorrow on other people. It’s not that you blame them on yourself — the word “blame” is not appropriate here — you simply try to figure out where these things come from, so that you can solve the problem. So instead of saying that, “I’m to blame,” you say, “What mental states are to blame?” The mind has all kinds of mental states: There’s mindfulness, and there’s lack of mindfulness. 

There’s sensual desire, ill-will, torpor and lethargy, restlessness and anxiety, uncertainty, which are all things that get in the way, that cause you to do unskillful things. On a deeper level, passion, aversion, and delusion: These are the qualities of the mind that cause you to do unskillful things. But there are also times in the mind when there’s no passion, no aversion, no delusion — everything is very clear. And in times like that, you tend to act in skillful ways.

So it’s not an issue of, “You are a bad person causing suffering.” It’s just that some of your thoughts, some of the qualities in your mind, cause suffering. Other qualities *don’t* cause suffering. You’ve got to learn how to sort them out. And a still mind is the best place to do that."

Thanks Antony.

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7 September 2023