Search results for: "Suffering"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Marshalling the Emotions… And the amount of suffering in life: Not only is life fleeting, but there’s a lot of suffering before you fleet totally away. There’s that famous passage where the Buddha says that the waters of the ocean are less than the tears you’ve shed in all your many lifetimes. You’ve drunk more milk from your mother’s breast, whether your …
- Controlling… It’s not absolute, but you can learn how to control these things in a way that can take you to the end of suffering. And that’s quite a lot. There may be plenty of events in the world outside that you can’t control. But if you learn how to control your mind, you can accomplish a lot more than could be …
- Borrowing the Buddha’s Wisdom… just opening that possibility, that there is a way to put an end to suffering. The world tells us, “You can assuage or manage your suffering, but there’s no way you’re going to totally end it.” The Buddha’s saying something else. The simple fact that he gives us that message is important. That’s one of the ways in which we …
- Precept Meditation… Worldly happiness is limited by the fact that one person’s happiness often requires feeding on someone else’s suffering and pain. So there are limitations to the range of the precepts. When you decide to adopt the precept against killing, for example, you decide basically that you yourself are not going to kill and you’re not going to give the explicit order …
- Pleasure & Pain… It’s very rare that intentionally pushing yourself in that direction, or allowing that to happen when you have other ways of dealing with it, really impresses upon you the fact that this kind of unskillful thinking is causing suffering. That’s because the mind does have a tendency to discount the suffering because it’s enjoying the unskillful thinking so much. So watch …
- Where the Mind & Body Meet… The Buddha went on to say, still it’s not possible to put an end to suffering without finding the end of the cosmos, yet here it is: right here in the body. Here he’s treating the word, loka—which is either cosmos, world, universe—as equivalent to dukkha: suffering and stress. It’s right here in this body with its perception and …
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