NOBLE & TRUE

Noble & True

Essays on the Buddhist Path

Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

(Geoffrey DeGraff)

Copyright

Copyright 2016 Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported. To see a copy of this license visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. “Commercial” shall mean any sale, whether for commercial or non-profit purposes or entities.

Questions about this book may be addressed to

Metta Forest Monastery

Valley Center, CA 92082-1409

U.S.A.

Additional resources

More Dhamma talks, books and translations by Thanissaro Bhikkhu are available to download in digital audio and various ebook formats at dhammatalks.org.

Printed copy

A paperback copy of this book is available free of charge. To request one, write to: Book Request, Metta Forest Monastery, PO Box 1409, Valley Center, CA 92082 USA.

Contents

• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Danger is Normal
• What’s Noble about the Noble Truths?
• Truths with Consequences
• We Are Not One
• Under Your Skin
• Silence Isn’t Mandatory
  • Background: the Nine Attainments
  • Silence in the Formless Attainments
  • Buddhaghosa’s Interpretations
  • More Arguments for Silence in the First Jhāna
  • Purity of Concentration
  • The Right Use of Concentration
• The Not-self Strategy
  • 1. The Purpose & Range of the Teachings
  • 2. The Metaphysical Assumptions of the Four Noble Truths
  • 3. The Buddha’s Teaching Strategy
  • 4. Two Fetters of Views
  • 5. “Self” & “Not-self” as Skillful Strategies
  • 6. The Strategic Use of the Knowledge, “All phenomena are not-self”
  • 7. The Abandoning of All Strategies
• The Buddha’s Last Word
• Glossary
• Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Many people have read earlier versions of these essays and have kindly offered suggestions for improvements. In particular, I would like to thank the monks here at the monastery, as well as Michael Barber, Claude LeNinan, Addie Onsanit, Nathaniel Osgood, Robert Rhyne, Dale Schultz, Mary Talbot, Isabella Trauttmansdorff, and Barbara Wright. Any mistakes that remain, of course, are my own responsibility.

Some of these essays, in earlier incarnations, have appeared in Tricycle and Insight Journal. I would like to thank the editors of these journals for their help in making the writing clearer and more coherent. The fact that the essays were originally written on different occasions for different audiences explains the difference in style among them, as well the occasional overlap in content. I hope that this is not a problem.

These and other essays on Buddhist practice are available on the Internet at www.accesstoinsight.org and www.dhammatalks.org.