Everybody is trying to straighten everyone else out. But the Buddha’s realization is that we have to straighten ourselves out. There’s no way you can force anybody else to practice. You can’t force other people to be skillful.

"I was reading recently someone saying that Buddhism is going to have to change, that nibbana is no longer good enough for us, it no longer meets our needs. We need a more compassionate teaching that straightens out the world first before we all go off to nibbana.

Well, one of the problems of the world, of course, is that everybody is trying to straighten everyone else out. But the Buddha’s realization is that we have to straighten ourselves out. Again, this is where that issue of skill and lack of skill comes in. There’s no way you can force anybody else to practice. You can’t force other people to be skillful."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Good Fundamentals"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Buddha talks about dispassion, disenchantment, equanimity — and to us it sounds cold. But everything in the Buddha’s teachings is put in the service of freedom.

Develop some equanimity around the fact that injustice is universal, and then see what you can do most effectively in response to this particular instance of it.

Ajahn Chah story: The Equanimity of a Water Buffalo