Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Full, Focused Attention
     … You don’t gain anything from anyone else’s suffering, so why wish them ill? If sloth and torpor arise, you want to notice that drowsiness, that sleepiness. Ask yourself, exactly how do you know you’re sleepy, aside from the fact that it’s difficult to focus on the breath? What are the other physical symptoms of sleepiness? Where do you feel it … 
  3. A Game of Chess
     … Although there may be suffering involved in the path, there may be stress, still, it’s a lot easier than not being on this path. And the various skills you develop, the tools you sharpen, you can use to fend off whatever suffering you encounter. So again, it’s like playing chess. It’s not that all the pleasure comes in winning at the … 
  4. Attachment to the Body
     … But it does exist, and it is the end of suffering. And if you can’t find it now while you’re wandering around doing your daily chores, it is possible, the Buddha said, to find it at death. Which means that you want to train your mind so that it’s ready to keep on doing the work even as death approaches. Even … 
  5. Generosity & Virtue as Skills
    The cause of suffering is ignorance. The word for ignorance, avijja, is the opposite of vijja, which means not only knowledge but also skill. So to go past suffering we need to learn skills. This is an important point to keep in mind. We’re not simply sitting here waiting for things to happen. We’re trying to approach each breath in a skillful … 
  6. Friends
     … So, how do you use it to get beyond suffering and stress? In other words, you make friends with what you’ve got here in the present moment. You make friends with the breath, you make friends with your basic state of awareness. And then you learn to use them. You’re not abusing them. You’re just nudging them in the right direction … 
  7. No One Size Fits All
     … How is there suffering? Where in the process of fabrication does the suffering arise? What can you do to put an end to it? When you develop dispassion for the process of fabrication, regardless of how you analyze it, that’s the important thing: the dispassion. And when there’s dispassion, you begin to realize that you’re not simply there watching a movie … 
  8. Broaden Your Range of Choices
     … You don’t give in a way that causes you to suffer. But when you look at the things you have, the time you have, the energy you have, you realize you have more than enough. It’s good to reflect on that. Whatever you have in excess, you can give away, and you gain something better in return. There’s an advantage. Giving … 
  9. Seeds of Becoming
     … It’s one of the forms of craving that leads to suffering. Then there’s vibhava-tanha, which is a more controversial term, because it it’s not defined anywhere in the Canon. Some passages indicate that it’s desire for annihilation, in other words that you not have anything that has to go anywhere, you’re tired of going to these different places … 
  10. Mindfulness: The Whole Formula
     … This is why the Buddha would often use the image of a mirror because, remember, where is the cause of suffering? It’s inside. Where is the suffering? It’s inside. The problem’s inside, the potential solution is also inside, so you want to pay attention to what you’re doing inside. As the Buddha said, look at your actions as you would … 
  11. The Mind Like Water
     … After all, you want the kind of knowledge that leads to the right ending of stress, the right ending of suffering, and that doesn’t come simply by watching things passively. To understand things, you have to get involved in the causal process, like any scientist doing an experiment. You change this, see what happens; you change that, see what happens. You get involved … 
  12. Start the Year Right Here
     … a kind of knowing that shakes out all the old cobwebs, reorganizes things in the mind so that it doesn’t keep on creating suffering for itself, suffering for other people. It becomes a mind that really is a cause for true happiness. So when we think about wanting a happy new year, where do we look? We look inside. A lot of Thai … 
  13. Knowing the Body from Within
     … That’s how you begin to understand things like greed, anger, delusion, craving, and all those other mental states that cause suffering—learning how to watch how they form and how not to get hoodwinked into running along with them. But this requires becoming more and more sensitive to how things are happening here in the body, how the mind and the different properties … 
  14. Jhana: Responsible Happiness
     … If you’re going to find true happiness, it has to come from within because the sources of suffering also come from within. We suffer mentally not because of unpleasant things happening to us, but from how we shape our experience of those unpleasant things—or of pleasant things, as the case may be. Which means that we need some internal skills. That’s … 
  15. Trust in the Power of the Mind
     … You read about the other powers that can be developed through concentration, and you can say, “For the time being, I know nothing about those, but I do know that the Buddha says I can put an end to suffering. That’s something I want to try.” It’s all laid out and it all makes sense. But it requires that we have a … 
  16. A Slave to Craving
     … Of course the “should” here, is nothing that anybody is imposing on you, but suffering is imposing it on you. But don’t look at it as an imposition; look at it as a wake-up call. There’s work to be done, and the Buddha’s giving you focus for your work. This is where it’s best done. And he’s pointing … 
  17. Animals in the Mind
     … He showed that a human being can, through his or her own efforts, find freedom from suffering. He didn’t go out and release people from their suffering, but he did show them that there’s a way. And that was enough. That opened people’s minds to new possibilities. That in and of itself is quite a gift. Otherwise, we go through life … 
  18. Honest & Observant
     … These are the qualities that will protect you from doing unskillful things in the future, and protect you from a large part of the results of past bad actions, so the mind doesn’t have to suffer from them. Even if the body gets afflicted in one way or another, the mind doesn’t have to suffer. And these are the skills you learn … 
  19. The Brahmaviharas on the Path
     … If you feel goodwill for them, then when you see them suffering, you want to help. That’s compassion. If you see that they’re already happy, you want them to continue being happy. That’s empathetic joy. If you realize that there’s nothing you can do to help them or the situation that you yourself are encountering, then the kindest thing is … 
  20. The Freedom to Give
     … No requirements aside from the fact that we’re suffering from aging, illness, and death can force us. But there are lots of people out there who choose not to practice. And the Buddha was wise enough to see that you can’t force people to practice the Dharma. But you can invite them. And the best way to invite them is to practice … 
  21. An Island in the Flood
     … But the Buddha saw that that didn’t put an end to suffering. The most skillful thing would be to learn how to take this knowledge and make it lead to the end of suffering. That’s how, in the third knowledge, he realized that seeing things in terms of the four noble truths and then doing the duties with regard to those truths … 
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