Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

  1. Page 10
  2. Off the Continuum
     … Some people complain, when the Buddha starts off with the four noble truths, that there’s a lot about suffering and very little about pleasure or happiness. Well, it’s actually there in the fourth noble truth, the last factor: pleasure and rapture born of seclusion, pleasure and rapture born of concentration, and the pleasure of the mind coming into equanimity. In other words … 
  3. The Wrong Uses of Right
     … And from our understanding of the importance of action and choosing skillful actions over unskillful ones, we’re led to a higher level of right view – the right view about the four noble truths – learning how to look at our own actions, look at our own minds to see where we are causing stress. Where is the stress to begin with? And then, we … 
  4. Truth with Boundaries
     … The other was the four noble truths. That’s it. Those are the only teachings that he said are categorically true and beneficial. There were lots of other things he taught. Either they fit into the two principles and so are part of the categorical teachings, like the seven factors for awakening—those are basically part of the noble eightfold path, which comes under … 
  5. The Unity of the Path
     … In fact, when the Buddha prepares people to understand the four noble truths and the elements of right view, he starts out with generosity and builds up through virtue, the rewards of these activities, and then their limitations. Simply being generous and virtuous is not enough. There’s more that needs to be done. Learning how to renounce your ordinary, everyday types of happiness … 
  6. The Dhamma Eye
     … And explained the four noble truths as the first factor of the path. It was just after the explanation of those four truths and the duties appropriate to each that Koṇḍañña, who was the eldest of the five, gained the Dhamma Eye, experienced the deathless, and saw that everything else arose and passed away, but the deathless didn’t. That was his first taste … 
  7. Stick to Your Duties
     … Everything keeps coming back to those duties of the four noble truths. For some people, that seems just too ordinary: the fact that you’re suffering, and you can put an end to suffering. They want to go into the “bigger” issues. But the Buddha was wise to say that this is the issue that makes a difference. If you get involved in abstractions … 
  8. Pay Careful Attention
     … For instance, with the four noble truths, the Buddha said to comprehend the first truth, to abandon the second, to realize the third, and to develop the fourth. Now, he’s not saying to abandon words about the cause of suffering. He’s not saying to develop words about the path to the end of suffering. He’s telling you to abandon the reality … 
  9. Antidotes for Clinging
     … This is stress in terms of the four noble truths. Wherever there’s craving, there can be clinging, and the clinging to the aggregates is the stress that really weighs on the mind. When we practice, our main focus is on the stress in the four noble truths, the stress that weighs on the mind. If you don’t cling to the things that … 
  10. Wandering On, Shooting Arrows
    When the Buddha explains the causes for suffering, he traces them back to ignorance—ignorance of the four noble truths. When that ignorance is ended with knowledge (vijjā), he says, all the causes of suffering come to an end. The question is: How do you get from ignorance to knowledge? There’s a passage where he explains how. He describes the steps of dependent … 
  11. Understanding Goodwill & Equanimity
     … All too often, the sublime abidings are treated as something separate from the four noble truths. There was a book years back, What the Buddha Taught, that treated the four sublime abidings as an addendum tacked on to the end, because they didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the discussion, which was on the four noble truths. But that’s … 
  12. Mange in the Mind
     … If you want to see the four noble truths, you can see them right here, in the way the mind relates to the body. If you want to see the three characteristics, you can find them right here as well. Ajaan Maha Boowa’s analogy is the body as a city, with streets and buildings. The four-way intersections are the four noble truths … 
  13. What Is Skillful?
     … It’s all too easy reading the texts to see that delusion is a matter of not seeing the four noble truths and it gets even bigger with delusion about dependent co-arising, which makes it all very abstract. But you have to realize, when the Buddha is talking about the four noble truths and dependent co-arising, what is he talking about? He … 
  14. True to the Teachings
     … He overcame their doubts about him and gave them his first sermon, Setting the wheel of Dhamma in Motion, in which he taught about the noble eightfold path and the four noble truths. One of the results of the sermon was that one of the five brethren attained the Dhamma Eye, his first glimpse of the deathless. In that glimpse of the deathless, he … 
  15. Noble & True
     … I was reading recently of some scholars complaining that the four noble truths are not really noble. After all, what’s noble about craving? What’s noble about suffering? They were claiming that the four noble truths aren’t even really true for anybody aside from those who have already become awakened, which is a very peculiar statement, After all, the Buddha teaches the … 
  16. Positive Capability
     … Why is the mind suffering? What is it doing to make itself suffer? How can it stop? This takes the four noble truths as questions. The Buddha points our attention in the right direction. We’re looking for the cause of suffering. We’re not going to be looking outside. We have to look inside. We have to look at our cravings, see why … 
  17. Feeding While You Work
     … In the four noble truths, there’s a cause and there’s an effect. There’s either craving and the suffering that comes from craving, or else there’s the factors of the path and the freedom from suffering that comes from developing the factors of the path. You want the mind to be in a position where it can see those connections. As … 
  18. Victory
     … When the Buddha talks about duties, it’s always in the context of the four noble truths, starting out with the principle of skillful action: that skillful action should be developed and unskillful action should be abandoned. “Action” here means not only outside actions but also actions of your mind. From there come the duties of the four noble truths: to comprehend suffering, to … 
  19. No Who or Where
     … Then think of the duties of the four noble truths. The four noble truths are not expressed in terms of, “Who’s suffering?” or where the suffering is. It’s just, “This is suffering, and this is its cause”: events. There’s also a path away from suffering. And each of these truths has a duty. The duty with regard to suffering or stress … 
  20. Pride in Your Craft
     … As you do this, you’re getting practice in the four noble truths, regardless of whether it’s the first jhana or the second jhana, or the 1½ jhana, or however jhanas there may be. If you develop this attitude, it doesn’t really matter what level of concentration you’ve attained, you can learn from it. And that’s a sign of a … 
  21. The Gift of the Practice
     … It’s a kind of how-to knowledge and is defined as knowledge of the four noble truths. On the surface this may sound like just knowing about the four noble truths, but when the Buddha explained the kind of knowledge that’s appropriate of four noble truths, it’s not just that. You realize that, on the one hand, you have to learn … 
  22. Load next page...