Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Frustrated DesiresWhen the Buddha defines the noble truth of suffering and stress, one of his examples was frustrated desires: not getting what is wanted. He tells you to comprehend that—the fact of not getting what you wanted—or to put it in modern terminologies, learning from your frustrated desires. This is the one point where Buddhism and psychotherapy are very similar. Psychotherapists will have …
- Toughen & Tenderize the Mind… You see all the pain and suffering out there and you see the pain and suffering in your own mind. You also see your own defilements—where your greed, aversion, and delusion come in. The important thing is not to get discouraged; not to get depressed. This is where the other emotion that the Buddha recommends comes in, which is pasada, which is confidence …
- Determination… I want something to show for the fact that I’ve been alive and been through all this suffering. I want something to show for it all.” The Buddha offers as the best goal the end of suffering. But this is a choice you have to make for yourself: How much are you going to focus on that goal? What other goals are you …
- Grasping the Snake… There are other views, though, that can be used to put an end to suffering, and those are the ones the Buddha recommends as right view. Even there, though, it’s possible to use them to get into arguments. Think of the image of the snake. If you grasp the snake wrongly—say, by the tail—it’s going to bite you. But the …
- Strength of Body, Strength of Mind… To be determined not to come back and suffer over and over again. Because you look at the world, all the different ways that the beings in the world suffer—I mean, it’s bad enough being a human being, with all the wars, the conflicts, the insanity that goes on in the human race. But there’s the possibility that you might slip …
- Alert… There must be things you can do that would lead to the end of suffering, that would take you to the deathless.” The question was, “What?” He tried lots of different paths. In each case, he gave himself fully to the path, so that if it didn’t work, it wasn’t because he wasn’t really doing it. It didn’t work because …
- Caring Without Clinging… But then he saw the truths of suffering or stress arising, passing away, and seeing why it arose and why it passed away, and what he could do to bring it to total cessation. Seeing that from a really still and equanimous mind: That’s when he really knew. And that was the knowledge—seeing things in terms of the four noble truths—that …
- Put Your Heart into It… Actually, if you want to comprehend stress and suffering, you have to figure out why things are happening. That requires the mind: your ability to think, to explore, to come up with hypotheses and then test them. That is an important part of the practice. But the heart has to be trained as well. You can see this in the Buddha’s first instructions …
- Honest & Observant… When the Buddha’s teaching us the path to the end of suffering, there’s nothing about it that’s far away. It’s all about what we’re doing right now, close up. And he’s moving us from ignorance to knowledge by telling us to be more alert to what we’re doing. So be more mindful; be more ardent. These are …
- Keeping the Buddha in Mind… Think of how wisdom begins with that question: “What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What when I do it will lead to my long-term harm and suffering?” Think about that. That’s how the Buddha says wisdom begins—with the desire for long-term happiness. It’s wise in the sense that it realizes that …
- A Meditator is a Good Friend to Have… If the person can follow you all that way, then he or she can gain total release from all kinds of suffering. That’s a huge gift you can give to someone who’s dying. It’s not always the case that the person dying can follow you that far. It generally would require someone who’s got a good meditative background, but you …
- Judging the Dhamma… Once you see that it’s not necessary and it’s causing suffering, you’ll drop it naturally. Somehow, part of our mind believes it’s necessary to act in a particular way, to think in a particular way. But as soon as you realize you don’t have to do it, and it’s causing you suffering, why do it? Once you make …
- Judging Your Efforts… Now, these duties aren’t imposed by anyone—aside from the fact of suffering, which is what imposes them—that and the fact that this is the only way out. The mind’s sense of its duties in some schools of psychology is called your superego, and in a lot of cultures the superego can be pretty punitive. It sets up extremely high standards …
- Complexities of Karma… Be generous, be virtuous, develop thoughts of goodwill in your mind, and then try to develop as much concentration and mindfulness as you can, ultimately leading to discernment—a discernment that sees when the mind moves in certain ways, it creates suffering, and you don’t have to move that way anymore. When it moves in other ways, it creates the path to the …
- What Is One… These things can bring a lot of suffering and harm in their wake. And here the Buddha is offering you a totally harmless kind of food, a totally harmless kind of pleasure. Do you really love yourself? If you do, you’d go for the harmless. You’d avoid any kind of harm. As for lack of confidence in yourself, ask yourself, “Can I …
- Safe at Home… So you don’t gain anything from anybody else’s suffering. In fact, the world would be a better place if people didn’t cause themselves suffering, if they could find true happiness within. So be very generous with your goodwill. Spread thoughts of goodwill to people you don’t even know about, and not just people—all living beings of all kinds: east …
- A Mind Larger than the World… The Buddha would recommend that you make your ultimate purpose the end of suffering. Then you have to think about what you have to do in order to get there. Which aspects of your life are getting in the way? Which aspects of your life are helpful? You want to sort things out in line with that standard. Then you think about the four …
- The Uses of Right Concentration… He mentioned the eight factors of the path but then focused just on the first factor, right view about suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. That was enough for Ven. Añña Kondañña to experience the Dhamma eye, the first level of awakening. We can assume that Añña Kondañña followed through from right view to develop the other factors of …
- Inquisitive… How can you take that understanding of mind and body, and use it to put an end to suffering? There’s the belief that the body is just a dead lump and then the mind is what invigorates it. But how can something that’s totally mental have an impact on a dead lump? There’s another theory, which is that they’re both …
- Pain & Distraction… This is why, when the Buddha talks about suffering, he talks about aggregates. Cut the problem of suffering down into little bits and pieces, and you find it’s a lot more manageable. Learn how to destroy the world that you create around the pain: The pain is in this part of the body and it has this shape and it’s doing this …
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