Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 107
  2. Motivation
     … We realize that if we act in unskillful ways, there’s going to be suffering down the line. Our actions really do make a difference. If our actions didn’t make a difference, heedfulness wouldn’t be a really worthwhile attitude to have. Regardless of what you did, it wouldn’t have any effect on anything so it wouldn’t matter what you do … 
  3. Train Your Hunger (The Sea Squirt)
     … I’ve been reading some books on the noble eightfold path, and the general message they give is that we suffer because we have the wrong map of reality: that inside we believe there’s a permanent self, and outside we believe that there’s a permanent happiness. And because of that wrong map, we make a lot of wrong decisions. We react to … 
  4. Appreciating Your Practice
     … He judged his meditation based on the level of stress and suffering still in the mind, and the types of stress and suffering that had been abandoned. So focus on what you’re doing right now and try to be sensitive to what’s changing, realizing that it will sometimes take a while to see progress. One of the images in the Canon is … 
  5. Mindfulness Island
     … Your actions are going to have consequences and you’d rather not add to the suffering that’s already there in your life. Try to keep these two qualities in mind. Keep in mind the fact that someone in this world system we live in has found the end of suffering, has found that it can be attained through human effort. The teaching of … 
  6. Capture Your Imagination
    One of the Buddha’s teachings that we don’t like to hear is that it’s through persistent effort that we put an end to suffering and stress. We don’t like to hear it because we think persistent effort means drudgery, a chore. But that’s not necessarily the case. The Buddha talks about bringing joy to the practice, finding happiness, finding … 
  7. Learning How to Learn
     … That’s why the Buddha taught, so that we could learn how to stop suffering, which means that we have to learn how to change our actions, improve our actions, master our thoughts and words and deeds as skills. Because it’s only then that we have any hope to get beyond the suffering we keep causing ourselves.
  8. Alone & Together
     … We wouldn’t know that there was a path to the deathless or that the end of suffering could be found—so we’d be lost. So, we need to spend time with admirable friends. This is one of the reasons why young monks, as they get started, are told to look for seclusion but also to stay with the teacher. The seclusion is … 
  9. Strengthening Your Goodness
     … to comprehend the way the mind creates suffering for itself, to abandon the cause, to realize the cessation of suffering by developing the path. It may seem a little disconcerting that here are even more duties for you, but these are the ones that are for the sake of your true happiness. So give them the space and the priority they deserve.
  10. Mending the Social Fabric
     … There are a lot of people suffering out there right now. We all have our own connections with people who are suffering, but the fact that we’re able to meditate means that we’ve got an opportunity to do something good. Spread thoughts of goodwill around. You create a good energy around yourself that way. And the world needs more good energy of … 
  11. No Mistakes Are Fatal
     … the fact that it’s creating suffering for itself. Its every action is aimed at happiness, but it’s creating suffering for itself. That’s the big problem in life. Only the practice can solve it. And the practice is an activity that gives results only when you’re willing to be patient and experiment and learn from your mistakes. So that’s what … 
  12. In Charge of Your Moods
     … Yet, as the Buddha says, it’s because of the mind that there’s suffering in the world—because of the way the mind processes things. Sometimes things can be perfectly fine outside, and yet the mind can use them to make itself miserable. But it can also develop a skill: that no matter what things are like outside, it can be fine. What … 
  13. Agreements to Perceive
     … So much of our suffering comes from our belief that we don’t have a choice. A particular sensation comes up, and we immediately label it as a pain. Then it becomes a pain, a Big Thing. It becomes solid and grabs on to a certain part of the body. But look at the sensation of that pain. Which parts of the sensation are … 
  14. Remembering Ajaan Suwat
     … What does this do to the mind? Does it lead to the end of suffering, as the Buddha promised? The Buddha made virtue—in the factors of right action, right speech, and right livelihood—an essential part of the path. Why is it essential? The only way to know is through practice. The same with concentration: The Buddha sets out the pattern for right … 
  15. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … In fact, we identify ourselves with our suffering. As the Buddha said, suffering comes from clinging to the five aggregates. And what is our identity made out of? Out of the clinging to those same five aggregates. We identify with our suffering. So of course it’s going to be hard to let go as long as we say, “This is me” and “This … 
  16. A Snare of Death Laid Out
     … After all, one of the ways we suffer is through sensual clinging. And one of the causes for suffering is sensual craving. “Sensuality” here doesn’t mean the pleasures in and of themselves. It means the mind’s fascination with planning them, all the embroidery we create around them, all the perceptions and feelings and thought constructs—verbal and mental fabrications. Often that’s … 
  17. Things as They’ve Come to Be
     … Look at where there’s stress, and that’s where you’ll see fabrication; where you see fabrication is where you see the ignorance that’s been causing you to suffer. As you bring more and more of that ignorance out into the open, there comes a point where it just stops — because you see even the slightest little things that would cause stress … 
  18. Success Through Maturity
     … To put an end to suffering requires really understanding the mind, training the mind, bringing the mind into states of concentration so that it can see itself clearly. That’s a big task. As with any big task, you need to be mature in how you approach it if you want to succeed. The first requirement is realizing that it has to be taken … 
  19. Smart About Lust
     … There is that possibility for the cessation of suffering. And it’s not just a blank lack of suffering, it’s a very positive well-being. Anything that stands in the way of that has a lot of drawbacks. This is why we bring out the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self to help underline the drawbacks of your fantasies so that you … 
  20. Descartes’ Error
     … Part of the Buddha’s map to the exits is realizing that life is made out of actions, the path is made out of actions, and because your thinking is a certain kind of action, you’ve got to learn how to put it to good use as part of the path to the end of suffering. So if you are going to be … 
  21. Appreciating Merit
     … Usually, running into suffering, running into stress are the things that finally force us to learn. So even though the teaching on merit is one that we tend to overlook or push off to the side here in the West, it’s something we really ought to bring back to center stage. It teaches us to appreciate the goodness of the mind, the goodness … 
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