Search results for: "Suffering"
- Page 115
- The Goldsmith… We’re here to be aware of what we’re doing that’s causing suffering and how we can stop it. That requires putting the gold into the fire sometimes. So, be ready with your full range of skills and learn what’s the right time and the right place for them, realizing that equanimity is one of those skills, but not the only …
- Circumspection… He saw that you can’t attack the problem of suffering straight on. You attack it through its causes: That’s strategic thinking. Sometimes even his way of attacking the causes is a little indirect. The cause, he says, is craving. So what does he have you do? He doesn’t have you look at craving right off the bat. He has you look …
- Inconstant, Stressful, Not-self… Is this something that’s going to be long-term? Is it going to help lead to the end of suffering, or is it going to lead to more suffering? Is this part of the path or is it something that leads away from the path? Part of the Buddha’s strategy is that you do have to use things that are inconstant and …
- Can Do… He used the Thai term kraikruan, which means “to contemplate.” Kraikruan includes the word krai, which means “you do this because you want it.” So ask yourself, “Do you really want to put an end to suffering?” If you say, “Yes, that’s what I want,” you have it within you to do that. The Buddha’s basically telling you, “Don’t let anybody …
- The Riddle of Freedom… And that’s precisely the same attitude that he says suffering leads you to: You’re left bewildered. You don’t know why it’s happening. You don’t know what to do. So obviously, the Buddha’s not teaching a deterministic or fatalistic explanation of karma. He makes it very clear. You do have freedom in the present moment to make choices. Now …
- The Skill of Letting Go… You may remember that the Buddha said there are two types of causes for stress or suffering: one in which you develop dispassion for it simply by watching it with equanimity, and the other where you have to exert a fabrication before you develop dispassion. The first sort are the ones where you haven’t basically been paying attention to why you’re holding …
- Motivation… realizing that if you don’t make progress on the path, if you don’t give yourself over to training the mind, there’s going to be a lot of suffering. At the very least there’s aging, illness, and death. There’s also the possibility of war or social unrest. There’s the possibility that the Buddha’s teachings could be forgotten. There …
- A Thorough Cleaning… Of course, there may be some people for whom you have some long resentments, and there’s the thought, “Well, maybe they should suffer a little bit first before they can be happy.” If their karma has really been that unskillful, you don’t have to arrange for it to happen. But still, if people have been acting in unskillful ways, the world would …
- A Pleasure Without Stories… How much you suffer over your stories, you can tell other people, but they don’t actually feel it directly. And the relief you feel when you’ve been able to pull yourself out is something you know, but it’s not a story you can really tell to anybody. So we’re looking for a pleasure with fewer and fewer stories—a pleasure …
- Consciousness, Awakened & Not… The four noble truths take the same issue and go deeper, focused on the problem of suffering: Where are you causing suffering through what you’re doing? Each of the four noble truths involves an action. Clinging in the first noble truth is something to be comprehended. The craving in the second noble truth is to be abandoned. The third noble truth is dispassion …
- Wise About Pleasure… You may think that being reborn as a deva in Zion National Park might be a good thing, but the devas in Zion National Park have their own forms of suffering, their own forms of stress. So you’ve got to keep those limitations in mind, which means that you’ve got to develop another type of pleasure that’s actually part of the …
- Recollection of the Buddha… After all, we all want happiness, and yet cravings get us to do a lot of things that make us suffer. Why are we so bamboozled? What in us likes the craving? Why do we listen to it? Meditation allows you to find this out, but you have to stick with it. And to stick with it, you have to go against the craving …
- Heedful, Ardent, & Resolute… The experience of awakening would have blotted out any sense that you had suffered on the path. Fortunately, that’s not what we have to do. We don’t have to get speared. But we do have to be heedful, ardent, and resolute. So you need the well-being of concentration to sustain you. Otherwise it gets dry and dull. So allow yourself to …
- Worldly Narratives… The reason he taught those truths was because they were useful for putting an end to suffering. So, as he said, he wasn’t the sort of person who would teach things just because other people believed them. He taught rebirth because it’s a really useful truth, in the sense that you reflect on how what you’re doing with your mind, the …
- Using Perceptions… After all, our perceptions of the world are the ones that accompany our lack of skill in approaching the issue of suffering. So we have to learn how to step back from them a bit. This is why it’s helpful to think of coming to the Dhamma as going to a new country where the customs are different, the language is different. Their …
- Don’t Worry, Be Focused… Brahmas still have self-identity, which means they still suffer, even if it’s only a subtle level. If the mind is really ready, it can actually let go at that point. As for the things you might be worried about, you have to remind yourself that there comes a point where you have to put everything down. You can’t carry the world …
- Hunting & Foraging… If you don’t admit the mistake—and it’s usually because you’re in no mood to hear about your own mistakes or to admit to them—then there’s no way you can solve the big problem, which is the unnecessary stress and suffering we cause ourselves. So try to feel at ease with the breath. Ajaan Suwat would talk about having …
- Forgiveness… suffering, its cause, the end of suffering, and the path to its end. Many of us make the mistake of wanting to go straight to the transcendent level. Who wants to muck around in the mundane? Especially when you hear the theory about two levels of truth, that there’s just conventional truth and then there’s the Real Thing, so who wants to …
- A Good Buddhist Ego… If you die before that work is done, you could suffer a great deal. So, you work on it now. That’s a healthy ego function. The second is altruism, which in Buddhism is called compassion or goodwill. We realize that if our happiness depends on other people’s suffering, they’re not going to stand for it. They’re going to do what …
- The Dhamma Eye… For instance, the origination of suffering is craving—and where is craving? It’s in the mind. What’s the origination of the causal chain that leads to craving? It’s ignorance. That, too, comes out of the mind. You then begin to realize all the other things that come out of the mind: fabrication, name-and-form, consciousness, your experience of the six …
- Load next page...
