Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Realizing Cessation
    Realizing Cessation February 8, 2023 The duty with regard to the third noble truth is to realize it, to realize that there is a dimension totally free of suffering. It’s unchanging, blissful, a type of consciousness that has no object, no restrictions: what the Buddha calls unrestricted awareness. And it’s the best thing there is. As Ajaan Maha Boowa once said, if … 
  3. Above & Beyond Suffering
     … Certain issues eat away at the mind simply because the mind still has a habit of allowing itself to suffer, to create suffering for itself. What we’re trying to do here is to learn how to be more and more skillful in how we approach what we do, what we say, what we think, so that we don’t create that suffering. Because … 
  4. The Brightness of Life
     … All they had seen in the texts were suffering, suffering, suffering, and impermanence. So they expected Asian Buddhists to be pretty depressed. But they found that they were actually very happy. And their original conclusion was that Asian Buddhists didn’t know their own religion very well. The scholars felt superior because they’d been reading the books. They assumed that the people in … 
  5. Opening Your World
     … There’s stress, there’s suffering of one kind or another. This is probably the Buddha’s greatest gift: teaching us how to take care of that problem from within. Sometimes you hear that Theravada’s the selfish branch of Buddhism where people are concerned only with their own sufferings. But how are you going to take care of anyone else’s sufferings if … 
  6. The Right to Repair Your Mind
     … But if you make up your mind that you really do want to solve the problem of suffering, everything you need is right here. You’ve got all the tools. The first noble truth is the truth basically that all forms of suffering can be reduced to clinging. That’s usually the last thing we look at when we’re suffering from something; we … 
  7. The Gatekeeper’s Duties
     … There is suffering, and it’s the clinging. There’s the cause of suffering, which is the craving. There’s also the end of suffering, which comes when craving is abandoned; and there’s a path to the end of suffering. We’re on the path. And the way the path works is that it doesn’t attack suffering right at the suffering, it … 
  8. Defiant Like the Buddha
     … If you go through life not sensing much in terms of suffering, you look at other people and you don’t think they’re suffering much, either. Or if you see them suffering, you have no idea what it’s all about. But if you appreciate your own sense of grief, your own sense of loss, and the suffering that goes with that, it … 
  9. Getting the Most Out of the Present
     … What is the suffering? There are so many different sensations and ideas that all get glommed together when the mind is in pain. And you have to figure out, where exactly is the pain? The Buddha lists all kinds of ordinary things that we can suffer over—aging, illness, death, separation—but then his conclusion is really unusual. He says the suffering is in … 
  10. The Middle Way
    The Buddha’s first sermon started with the topic of suffering. That was the big issue he was going to address all through the 45 years he taught: suffering or stress, and the end of suffering. But when he introduced the topic of suffering as his main topic, he prefaced it by talking about how people tend to act in trying to get away … 
  11. So Little Time
     … You could say that he deserved to suffer, but the Buddha didn’t take that into consideration at all. He said, “Here’s a person who’s suffering really badly and his suffering is spilling out and affecting other people.” By curing Angulimala’s suffering, or showing him how to cure his suffering, he saved a lot of other people, too. So if there … 
  12. The Gift of Discernment
    When we think of the Buddha’s compassion, the first teaching that comes to mind is often the brahmaviharas, in which he teaches us to develop goodwill for all beings, compassion for all who are suffering, empathetic joy for all who are happy, and equanimity so that these other three qualities don’t cause us to suffer from all the suffering in the world … 
  13. Don’t Clap Hands with Pain
    You hear it said again and again, how the Buddha said that life is suffering, even though he never said that. If he had said that, it wouldn’t have been all that useful. What’s the alternative? Death. What he did say was that there is suffering, and he enumerated a lot of the ways in which we suffer, things that we find … 
  14. Protect Your Energy
    When the Buddha analyzes the causes for suffering, one of the most basic points he makes is that we don’t suffer simply from having unpleasant sights or sounds or smells, tastes, tactile sensations, or ideas. We suffer from what we bring to these things, whether they’re good or bad. In fact, we can even be surrounded by all kinds of pleasant things … 
  15. Wise Endurance
     … Being with what is unpleasant, being with what is unloved, is one of the examples of suffering listed in the first noble truth. But remember: All the forms of suffering that are listed there boil down to the five clinging-aggregates: clinging to form, feeling, perception, thought fabrications, or consciousness. In particular, what are your perceptions, what are your thought fabrications about a particular … 
  16. Avoidance
    We all come to the practice for the same basic reason, the fact that we’re suffering and we’re stressed out. We want to be able to train the mind so that we don’t have to suffer from these things, but the way we understand our suffering varies from person to person. In some cases, it’s in line with the Buddha … 
  17. Compassion Without Clinging
     … But he is an expert in knowing how not to suffer. There are people who don’t want to suffer. His advice is for them. As in the case with ordinary everyday life: We live in families. There’s bound to be love and compassion for the other members of the family. We also know that the Buddha taught that clinging is suffering, and … 
  18. Goodwill for Bad People
     … Remember that the Buddha never talked about people “deserving” to suffer. Actions lead to consequences, that’s it. But the actual suffering, the suffering that weighs down the mind, is something that comes from present karma. You’ve seen people in bad situations and they’re not suffering. You’ve seen other people in good situations and they’re suffering horribly. So simply because … 
  19. Acceptance Without Suffering
     … In both cases, you begin to realize the power of your perceptions to make you suffer or to keep you from suffering. This is an important aspect of wisdom and discernment: that you can be with things that would ordinarily make you suffer but you don’t have to suffer. After all, arahants live in this world. They have bodies that have pains, they … 
  20. True to the Teachings
     … When the Buddha talked about suffering, he looked at the suffering in his own mind. When he talked about the cause of suffering, he looked at the cause of suffering in his own mind. When the Buddha talked about the fact that it’s possible to put an end to that, Añña-Kondañña followed the path of practice, and in his particular case, he … 
  21. The Gift of Goodwill
     … Then, as you face aging, illness, and death, you’ve got the tools you need to not suffer. And when you’re not suffering from those things, you’re placing less and less of a burden on others. Otherwise, people will see you suffering and, as things get worse, they’ll see that there’s nothing much they can do. When I was in … 
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