Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Name & Form… We’re focusing on form because we want to learn about the activities of name, because it’s the mental side that’s causing suffering. But it’s also the mental side where the solution to the problem of suffering is going to be found. Your experience of the body is a good place to learn a lot of these principles. Try to sensitize …
- Mindfulness in the Driver’s Seat… And why would you have any ill will for someone? Why would you want somebody to suffer? You could think of all the bad things they’ve done, but then you ask yourself, “What good comes out of seeing somebody suffer, even if they’ve done bad things?” There are a lot of people who, when they get punished for their bad deeds, don …
- Mindfulness & Perception… That’s why right view is expressed in terms of the four noble truths, the causes and the effects related to suffering and its end. You’re not just watching things arise and pass away. If you get to a stage where that’s all you’re doing, okay, that’s because for that particular moment in the meditation, that’s the most useful …
- How to Read the Dhamma… Going for the formless attainments and just staying there is also not going to solve the problem of suffering. Everything he mentions is meant to show how he committed himself to a path of practice, and then would reflect on it. As he later said, this is how you find the Dhamma: commitment and reflection. This applies particularly to what he learned about the …
- Rehab Work… When we breathe with ignorance, it leads to suffering and to stress. But if we breathe with full awareness and alertness, it can alleviate that stress. So, what we’re doing now is bringing more knowledge and awareness to the process of breath-fabrication. By exercising all the possibilities of how you could think about and perceive the breath, you can discover what’s …
- Wherever You Go, There You Aren’t… It didn’t solve the problem of suffering. It was simply like turning on your TV at night. Yet she had never listened to these people. She hadn’t even listened to Ajaan Mun. She kept on meditating in her own way because she liked to have visions of devas here, devas there. Part of the problem was that in having that kind of …
- Calming the Breath… The role of intention is really important both in the way we cause ourselves to suffer and in how we help to bring suffering to an end. Even our basic experience of the five aggregates—our experience of the form (the body), feelings of pleasure and pain, our perceptions, our thought constructs, even our sensory consciousness: As the Buddha says, we *fabricate *these things …
- Right Resolve & Right Speech… So, when you think about the principles of right view—that suffering is something you do, and it’s something caused by other things you’re doing inside—right resolve builds on that insight, to get rid of the mind states that are going to lead to suffering, and to start developing the ones that will lead away. Realize the importance of your speech …
- The Skill of Renunciation… That’s because the sufferings that weigh down the mind, the stresses that weigh down the mind, are not so much the things that come in from outside. They come from how we process the things coming in from outside. If we process them with skill, then we don’t have to suffer. There’s no weight on the mind. So we’re here …
- Virtues Bright & Neither Dark nor Bright… But if you’re used to being honest with yourself, honest in observing the precepts, you’re going to be very honest and observant in what you’re doing—and that’s going to be conducive to discerning how you’re creating unnecessary suffering and how you can stop. So the attitude you bring to the quality of virtue is going to determine whether …
- The Carrot & the Stick… You don’t go wandering off, enthralled with beauty queens or involved with their audiences, not sticking your hand into the tar trap, but staying right on the path that the Buddha said leads to the end of suffering. We’ve wandered off the path so much already. Let’s try seeing where the path will go, whether it lives up to the promises …
- Mental Seclusion… the problem of why it is that even though we want happiness, and everything we do is aimed at happiness, we end up causing so much suffering. When you raise the level of the mind, it can see things more clearly. It can see what you’re doing, see where you’ve been wrong in the past, and be very matter-of-fact about …
- Limitless is the Buddha… that the big problem in life is the stress and suffering we cause for ourselves through our clinging and craving, and so that’s the problem we have to focus on. If you start changing the Dhamma in line with your preferences, you’re actually giving more rein to the clinging and craving. And that kind of practice simply aggravates the problem. So you …
- Becoming Consummate… Once the two of them are together, then there’s the possibility that your virtue will become consummate, your concentration will become consummate, your understanding of suffering and its causes will become clear enough, solid enough, so that it really can put an end to suffering. That’s what the Buddha was talking about when he said, “Become consummate,” because that’s the knowledge …
- Saying No to Distraction… So if you find yourself thinking thoughts of sensuality, you’re going to be bent in the direction of sensuality; thinking thoughts of ill will—and here “ill will” includes not only just out-and-out nastiness, wanting to see people suffer, but a lot of times your thoughts of justified anger come down to ill will too. Someone has done wrong in the …
- A Wilderness Mind at Home… That leads to the second level of right view, which is seeing things in terms of what you’re doing that’s causing stress and suffering, and what you can do that’s going to alleviate stress and suffering. Because that’s the big issue in life. Everything we do, we do for the purpose of happiness. Yet so many of our actions bring …
- How the Dhamma Protects… So we’re creating a lot of unnecessary suffering for ourselves, putting the mind in a position where it can be attacked from all sides. You have to learn how to let go. Then there will be no bridges by which dangers come in. We’re the ones who build bridges so that anything can come in and out. As a result, a lot …
- Dethinking Thinking… But it’s also why we suffer, because all those becomings are based on craving. As the Buddha said, wherever there’s craving that leads to becoming, there’s going to be suffering. So the purpose of the meditation is to learn how to unlearn that habit. This is why when the Buddha gives us instructions for concentration—which are actually in the description …
- For When the World Can’t Help You… You want to observe the mind right here, because the movements of the mind are what make the difference between creating suffering and putting an end to suffering. So you stay with the breath. Try to keep it comfortable. Breathe in, breathe out in a way that feels good all the way through the body, because there will be those tendencies that will run …
- The Path of Questions… In fact the first question you’re supposed to ask when you go to meet a new teacher is: “What is skillful? What is not skillful? What, if I do it, will be for my long-term happiness? What, if I do it, will be for my long-term suffering?” You take those questions, usually starting on the level of the precepts or generosity …
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