Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Goodwill Is Respect
     … The Buddha lists one of the forms of suffering as not getting what you want. He goes down the list of things that people want: They’re subject to aging and they’d rather be free from aging. They’re subject to illness and death and they’d rather be free from illness and death. They’re subject to sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and … 
  3. Training for Dispassion
     … Sariputta went on to say that if by abandoning unskillful qualities you met with pain and suffering, either short-term or long-term, then the Buddha wouldn’t have taught to abandon unskillful qualities. If, by developing skillful qualities, you wouldn’t experience ease in the present and long-term happiness, then the Buddha wouldn’t have taught that, either. This tells you something … 
  4. Forging a Path
     … that bigger dimension inside; that dimension where there’s no death, no illness, no suffering. And instead of allowing your map of your life to just be squiggly lines wandering and bouncing around, try to make it into a path—a path that goes someplace. So as you’re sitting here and different intentions come up, learn how to resist them. Don’t let … 
  5. Food for Endurance
     … Ask yourself, “How does this teaching apply to the suffering I’m undergoing right now? How does it teach me to comprehend that suffering? How does it teach me to let go of the cause? And to let go of the cause, what’s the path of practice I should develop?” Ask those questions, and that’s when you’re listening to the Dhamma … 
  6. Older than the Cosmos
     … He said that when each life ended, one thing kept coming to his mind: “all that suffering, all that suffering.” And yet we keep going for it. Think about King Koravya. Here he is, 80 years old. He means to put his foot in one place and it goes someplace else. He’s got a recurrent illness. He’s stashed away all kinds of … 
  7. Body Contemplation
     … Look into that desire, right there, because that’s the key to why we keep on suffering. We cling to the things that make us suffer, and this is why we like to lie to ourselves: so that we can keep on clinging, thinking that’s the only way to find happiness. So look at that, try to figure that one out, and you … 
  8. Dharma Warriors
    Dharma warriors going into battle with ignorance, craving, defilement, clinging, suffering: It’s an old image, an old analogy. It goes way back to the early texts. But before we take it on, it’s good to think about how genuine warriors fight, especially noble warriors, because those were the warriors in the time of the Buddha. To begin with, they put a lot … 
  9. Ups & Downs
     … This is why the Buddha said that our first reaction to pain and suffering is bewilderment: How did this happen? What’s going on? That inspires us to search to find a way out, to try to understand what’s going on. It’s good to keep that point in mind, that your mind is very complex; causality is very complex. What you’re … 
  10. Cleaning Out the Stables
     … But as the Buddha said, all of these states of becoming involve suffering. This is the process we have to overcome. And this is one of the reasons he taught the teaching on not-self: so that we could learn how to strip away, starting with the unskillful senses of self, all the unnecessary members of the stable and to develop a few necessary … 
  11. For Your Good the Good of Others
     … Otherwise, you suffer from what Kurt Vonnegut called samaratrophia. You try to help, help, help, and then you just run out of energy. You burn out. So for the good of the people around you, meditate. Try to get a sense of what it’s like to have the breath filling the body and a sense of well-being filling the body as well … 
  12. The Buddha’s Rules of Order
     … all this time to watch the mind, to train the mind, to get the various committee members working together on a project that’s really useful—developing the path, letting go of the cause of suffering so that you can realize what the cessation of suffering might be like.
  13. The Dhamma Eye
     … As the Buddha said, the cravings that lead to becoming are the source of suffering. So we have to know: What is this process that the Buddha’s talking about? Basically, you have a desire, then you see the world in which that desired object can be found, and then you take on a role in that world—you take on an identity. This … 
  14. A Graduated Discourse
     … Sometimes he wouldn’t have to bother with hell, he’d just say, “Look at the common animals, see how they suffer.” Once you see that the drive to keep coming back to these levels is based on sensuality, he says that’s when you begin to see that renunciation is a place of safety—a state of mind that would pull you out … 
  15. Near to the Buddha
     … You say, “I don’t like suffering like this,” and you grab at whatever comes by that offers a little bit of pleasure. You’re not very choosy, and so it just gets worse and worse and worse. You’ve got to make up your mind: Who are you going to trust? Are you going to trust your defilements or are you going to … 
  16. Balancing the Bases for Concentration
     … So when you spread thoughts of goodwill all around, that includes inside, too, thoughts of goodwill to yourself, people you like, people don’t like, because you don’t gain anything from anyone’s unhappiness, from anyone’s suffering. No matter how much you might dislike somebody, that person’s suffering can actually come back and make you suffer as well. So wish happiness … 
  17. Taking Charge
     … He doesn’t impose them on you, but once you’ve decided that you want to put an end to suffering, you’ve taken on those duties yourself. You want to comprehend the suffering and abandon its cause. So wherever you look in your mind, wherever you look in your actions, make sure that you’re following in line with these duties, trying to … 
  18. Right Effort & Right Mindfulness
     … It’s the desire that you don’t want to come back and suffer or, as Ajaan Mun would say, you don’t want to come back and be the laughingstock of the defilements ever again. You hold on to that desire and you then sort out all the other desires that you have in the mind that would pull you in other directions … 
  19. Explore & Experiment
     … When the Buddha talks about the causes of suffering, there’s one way in which he expresses dependent co-arising that goes down to consciousness on one side, and name-&-form on the other side. Nāma-rūpa is the Pali. Form, of course, is the four elements or properties. Name covers, among other things, acts of intention, attention, and perception. If you’re ignorant … 
  20. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … After all, do have the preference of wanting to put an end to suffering—of wanting to train the mind to follow through with all the skills of the four noble truths to comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize its cessation by developing the path. That preference you don’t abandon. But the preferences that would go against those duties: Those are the ones … 
  21. Four Roles to Play
     … Another problem is that you’re telling yourself strange things, things that are actually going to lead to suffering. So, the purpose of the meditation is, one, to get you more sensitive to how you’re talking to yourself on these many levels and, two, to start talking to yourself in a skillful way. This is why, when the Buddha has you get the … 
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