Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 104
  2. Discernment All Along
     … that your well-being and your suffering come from how you do things. In other words, you’re not sitting here perfectly passive, waiting for pains to come or pleasures to come, or hoping for pleasures and fearing the pains. We’re active. We go out looking for things. And when you can be sensitive to the fact that you’re out there looking … 
  3. Strategies for Generosity
     … Even more so when you can take this sensitivity that you develop inside and look deeper into what are the subtler ways that you’re causing unnecessary stress and suffering for yourself in the way you manage the mind. One of the roles of concentration is that it gets things really, really quiet and really, really still. You become more and more sensitive. It … 
  4. Bad Friends Inside
     … A lot of the things we do create unhappiness, create suffering and pain. This is one of the big paradoxes in life. And, as I said, it’s because we’re not paying much attention to what we’re doing. If you think of the mind as a committee, there are lots of different voices in there, lots of different persons almost. And a … 
  5. Training Wheels
     … You’ve got the aggregates, which are neutral, but then they become part of suffering when they become clinging-aggregates. You’ve got the sense media, which are neutral, too, but they become the topic for suffering when you start developing fetters around what you see and hear and smell and taste; or simply fetters around the fact that you like having these senses … 
  6. No Happiness Other than Peace
     … But he speaks in ways that are designed to give rise to the sense of dispassion that comes with comprehension, i.e., you see that this really is a lot of suffering. Going through this process of samsara-ing is pretty miserable. You’ve probably heard the comparison of all the water in the oceans as being less than the tears you’ve shed … 
  7. Defeatism? - Anything But
     … After all, we are doing this for the sake of putting an end to suffering. There’s one passage about a monk who’s beginning to get discouraged in his practice and is thinking of giving up. And the Buddha says, “You should ask yourself, Don’t you love yourself? Didn’t you start this practice for putting an end to suffering? If you … 
  8. Staying on Track
    The causes of suffering are of two kinds: those that go away when you look at them steadily, and those that don’t. It’s because of the first kind that some people think that that’s the solution to every problem appearing in the mind. Just look at it steadily, be with it, and it’ll dissolve away on its own. The problem … 
  9. Timeless Dhamma
     … In this way, you see how, for instance, how craving can cause suffering. And you notice that the things you crave are really not worth the craving. No matter how much you try to create happiness out of these inconstant, stressful, not-self aspects of your life, it’s bound to fall apart. It’s like building a house out of frozen ice cream … 
  10. Practical Wisdom
     … Because if the practice were simply a matter of trading suffering for happiness, we’d all go for it. But there are many aspects of the practice that are difficult and require that you give up things that are going to give you pleasure in the short term. So what do you do? You learn how to talk to yourself. You try to figure … 
  11. Observe Yourself in Action
     … He said all the cravings that lead to suffering are those that lead to becoming, and that includes not only craving for sensuality and craving for becoming, but also craving for non-becoming, too. In that case, you have a state of becoming and you want to see it destroyed. But then a sense of you can gather around that desire for it to … 
  12. Overconfidence & Underconfidence
     … This is why the Buddha, when he was talking to the monks gathered around at his passing away, stressed heedfulness as his final message. “Attain completion,” he said, “through heedfulness.” Heedfulness is the root of all skillful qualities, realizing that your actions are important, that they can make the difference between happiness and suffering, between having something to hold on to when aging, illness … 
  13. Get Attached to Jhana
     … He said that the two duties with regard to the cessation of suffering and with regard to the path—in other words, realizing the cessation and developing the path—are one. This is a good strategic way of thinking. In other words, in the act of developing the path, you’re going to realize the cessation of suffering, so you don’t have to … 
  14. Things that Arise & Pass Away
     … the realization that if your happiness is built on somebody else’s suffering, it’s not going to last. They’re going to do what they can to put an end to it. And if they can’t do it, their friends will, their relatives will, or their descendants will. If you want a solid happiness, you’ve got to keep other people’s … 
  15. Exploring Fabrication
     … You think about all the suffering you’ve had in the past and caused in the past, and all the suffering you’re going to cause in the future if you don’t get on the path. That’s a really good motivator. So this is how we learn about things. This is how we gain insight into them, by working and playing with … 
  16. Persistence
     … If you run into any stress or suffering, you want to comprehend it. If you can see what’s giving rise to that stress, you want to let that go. As for the factors of the path—everything from right view through right concentration—those are things that you’re trying to give rise to if they’re not there, and to maintain and … 
  17. Detail Work
     … Is there anybody out there that you really would have ill will for? Why would you benefit from seeing them suffer? Sometimes you say, “Well, I’d like to see justice done.” Don’t worry about that—kamma takes care of that. *Your *duty is to figure out, “If I ever encountered that person, how could I actually behave in a way that would … 
  18. Shoot Your Pains with Wisdom
     … Whatever arrows you’ve got, you shoot yourself with them all, and no wonder you suffer. The wise person, however, doesn’t fire those extra arrows at all. What this means is that when you find yourself suffering over something, you’ve got to look at which arrows are coming from outside and which ones are the ones you’re shooting. This comes down … 
  19. Resisting the Germs of Defilement
     … And only when you realize that you’re suffering from them—and sometimes in a big way—do you realize something’s wrong. But you don’t even know where it came from. So we practice meditation to develop our resistance. The concentration side is to develop the strength of resistance so that we have a strong sense of well-being inside. This is … 
  20. Healing Skills
     … As for other illnesses, even though working with the breath may not may them go away, at least you find yourself suffering a lot less from the illness, suffering a lot less from the pain, because you learn how to manage the pain from within. Wherever there’s a sense of blockage around a particular pain, you can breathe through it, so that the … 
  21. Momentum Through Restraint
     … If we use it in ignorance, it’s going to lead to suffering. But if we’re clear about our intentions, we can use our powers of intention to create a path inside—a path in our actions, our words, our deeds, our thoughts, that can lead to the end of suffering. So in the case of restraint, it’s not just a matter … 
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