Key Teachings of Buddhism - Outside of the Box

That craving is based on ignorance, and ignorance can be ended. What is it ignorant of? It’s ignorant of what really is stress and suffering; what’s causing it; what the end of stress and suffering is; and what qualities you have to develop to get out, to put an end to suffering. So you focus on them. What are you doing right now that’s putting a burden on the mind? You’re making choices that are putting a burden on the mind totally unnecessarily. So get the mind quiet to see if you can watch that happening. Until you watch it happening, it sounds pretty abstract. But when you can actually see the movements of the mind, that’s when you can see: “When the mind does this, it hurts. When the mind does this, it’s harmful, and I don’t have to do that—it doesn’t have to act that way. It doesn’t have to think in those ways.

This is where you resolve the issue. When you end this ignorance, all the other causal factors that lead to clinging, craving, and suffering fall down like a line of dominoes. So this is where the problem lies, this is where it can be solves, and it’s up to us to take responsibility for it right here, right now. If we don’t, who’s going to suffer? Well, we’re going to suffer. And when we suffer, we find it easy to make other people suffer, too.

The Buddha doesn’t force anyone to practice. He simply says that if you want to resolve the issues in your life, this is how they get resolved. This is what you have to do, and it’s up to you to choose: “Am I going to finally take the way out, or do I want to go back and settle a few old scores before I go?” The choice is yours, and you’re making that choice over and over and over again. If you see that the desire to settle scores is dominating your mind, you can always choose to change. That’s one of the good things about the path. You’re never committing yourself to suffering forever. You can always say, “I’m out of here.” This is not a question of irresponsibility. You’re taking your contribution to the troubles of the world and you’re removing it. That’s a choice each person has to make for him or herself alone. We’re the ones who choose to get involved, so we’re the ones who have to choose to say, “I’m out of contributing to that particular problem. I’m out of that unending back-and-forth. I want to focus on the real problems, the real causes of stress and suffering in life.~Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Outside of the Box"