Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 117
  2. Urgency & Contentment
     … As long as there’s attachment, the mind is leaving itself open to all kinds of suffering. So the skills you develop with the breath to cut through that attachment are very important, because we have this house not just for relaxing. It’s also a place where we can work in comfort—this house of the breath, this home for the mind. So … 
  3. Fear & Conviction
     … He’d been in an automobile accident and had suffered brain injury. He mentioned to me one time that his brain was sending him very weird perceptions. But he’d trained his mind and so he could recognize them as weird perceptions. Then he went on to say, “But that thing I got from my meditation: That hasn’t changed.” That thing is our … 
  4. Unparadoxical Happiness
     … Even the cessation of suffering is something you have to realize. But once it’s realized, there’s nothing more that needs to be done.
  5. Self Power, Other Power
     … He didn’t have a tradition that told him that there’s a path to the end of suffering, a way to the Deathless. All he had was his conviction that life wouldn’t be worth living unless he could find a happiness that wasn’t affected by aging, illness. and death. And he couldn’t live with himself unless he actually gave it … 
  6. The Path of Giving
     … You read about the results of the practice—states of peace, states of calm, states of total freedom from suffering—and you want them. That’s a good desire. Don’t ever let anybody tell you that it’s bad or wrong, that you’re supposed to get rid of that desire. After all, without that desire, what would you have? Why would you … 
  7. Respect
     … He sets out a path that leads to the end of suffering that’s been tested for thousands of years. So we should be willing to put aside some of our preferences and give a little extra time, a little extra space, a little more patience to the path—and we’ll be amply rewarded. That’s the lesson of respect: If we give … 
  8. Stern Kindness
     … That’s the teaching on suffering and stress. And as for the statement, “The world has nothing of its own,” the king says, "Look, I have all this money, all these treasures stored away. How can you say the world has nothing of its own?” And Ratthapala replies, “Can you take that with you when you die?” “No, I’ve got to leave it … 
  9. The Real World
     … And they’re going to suffer as a result. But you take advantage of the opportunity you have to do good. That becomes yours. So there’s no need to resent those who are not doing good along with us. This is an important attitude you need to participate in this economy of gifts we have here, where the more you give, the more … 
  10. Deep Understanding
     … You see directly how the mind is causing itself suffering. It’s not a theoretical proposition. Now, you can understand it on the level of theory, you can listen to it being described, but as Ajaan Lee once said, if insight were simply a matter of things you could listen to, he could explain it all in less than three hours. But for actually … 
  11. Making the Dhamma Your Own
     … Otherwise we’ll suffer in a way that’s not necessary, and that serves no purpose at all. Aging comes, and you find that certain of your body functions no longer work. There’s a great passage in the Canon where a king says that when he was young he thought he had the strength of two men, but now that he’s 80 … 
  12. A Sense of Entitlement
     … You think about all the suffering that goes into making sure that we have the food we need to keep this body going, the clothing, the shelter, the medicine — not only from the work we ourselves have done to get these things, but also all the work and sacrifices that other beings make so that we can have them. So we come to the … 
  13. Negativity
     … His overriding purpose was to get people out of suffering. So you tell yourself, “I’m here for the sake of true happiness.” Then you extend thoughts of goodwill to the people you’ve wronged, and then thoughts of goodwill to everybody. If the mistake you made to begin with was based on ill will, you tell yourself you have no reason to repeat … 
  14. Realities Right Here
     … If you experience them with ignorance, it’s going to lead to suffering. If you begin to bring knowledge and awareness to them, it becomes part of the path. So try to look at your sense of the body in these terms. Look at you mind in these terms as well. What have you got in the mind on this level? You’ve got … 
  15. Pleasure & Pain
     … That’s why we suffer so much. And one of the reasons we don’t look into them is because it’s hard. Pain especially is hard to look at. We’ve been dealing with pleasure and pain ever since we were born, and a lot of our habits for dealing with pleasure and pain are things we learned before we could even talk … 
  16. Strength of Conviction: 1
     … You ask yourself: “How does this teaching apply to me, to my suffering, to my unskillful actions? Where do I measure up? Where do I not measure up? If I don’t measure up, what can I do to make improvements?” Because appropriate attention means looking at things in terms of what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, but also realizing that there … 
  17. Jhāna & Discernment
     … Then you can see how you do it as you go through the day in lots of different ways that can actually cause a lot of stress and suffering. Wherever there’s a desire, that’s how things get started. As the Buddha said, things don’t come out of your self, they come out of desire. Everything, he says, that you’re going … 
  18. Happiness – Yours & Others’
     … In other words, you take seriously the principle that each of us is suffering because of our own actions, and each of us will find happiness because of our own actions. But that doesn’t mean we just leave others to fend for themselves. We’re happy to help. We’re going to do our best, one, not to get in the way of … 
  19. A Room of Your Own
     … This is why you can pour everything into your diary—be really open with yourself about your feelings, about your thoughts—not just for the sake of self-expression but because you really want to see what’s going on and to straighten it out so that you cause less suffering to yourself. So learn to take advantage of what feels good inside. Learn … 
  20. A Cure for the Sluggish Mind
     … And this is how we take advantage of the Buddha’s teachings, and especially his statement that we suffer because of our own actions. He’s saying that not to place blame on us, but to show us where the solution lies: We can change our actions. We can change the way we think, we can change the way we direct our thoughts and … 
  21. May You Forever Be Well
     … There’s another passage where the Buddha talks about the different kinds of loss that we can suffer in life. There may be loss of relatives, loss of wealth, loss of our health. And the Buddha says that those kinds of loss are not serious. They’re simply the results of past actions; they’re one of the affairs of the world. Wherever we … 
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