Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 121
  2. In the Mood to Meditate
     … Sometimes we think about kamma as being this horrible force that’s going to bring us suffering for some reason or another. But the Buddha never has you focus on past kamma. He has you focus more on what you’re doing right now. This is why karma is very relevant to the meditation. If your mind is in good shape, then you’re … 
  3. Integrity — In Memory of Luang Loong
     … And when that old meal assigner was suffering from his final illness, it turned out that Luang Loong was the only monk in the monastery who came to look after him. This is one of the characteristics of Luang Loong that we admire: that he was so reliable. So when you think of someone who has just passed away, it’s not simply a … 
  4. One Foot in the Present
     … Then you suffer from whatever the limitations that world might be. Your way of getting out of that location is to give yourself another location, i.e., the breath in the present moment, the sense in the body as you feel it from within. This is called, rūpa-bhava, or a sense of the form of the body. It helps pull you out of … 
  5. Developing the Heart
     … But as the Buddha said, the end of suffering is possible. It is possible to find something that doesn’t change. That’s very much worth willing. This is why, when he explained the different emotions that we’re subject to, he pointed out how we normally deal with undesirable change with sadness and sorrow—what he calls household sorrow or *household grief. *Our … 
  6. Preparing for Death
     … learning how to stop the suffering we’ve been creating for ourselves, and releasing us from this prison in time.
  7. Stop & Think
     … And you’re going to be suffering again and again. So you ask yourself: “What kind of happiness would you want that would not involve having to have a body?” There are the formless pleasures of the formless jhanas. Of course, the irony there is that to get into the formless jhanas, you first have to go through form, i.e., through the body … 
  8. Like an Athlete in Training
     … And, of course, with all this coming in and going out, you’ve got to make sure that what does come in meets with something good going out, so even if bad things come in, you don’t have to suffer. You can keep them right at the edge. Keep them right at the door. Think of the Buddha’s recommendation: If someone says … 
  9. Your Inner Coach
     … You can be aging, ill, even approaching death, but you don’t have to suffer. In other words, learn how to speak to yourself. Make sure your internal meditation coach is the kind of person that gives you hope. Of course, at the same time, you want a coach who is strict with you. After all, this is a training, and the training has … 
  10. Location, Location
     … That’s part of the description of the craving that gives rise to suffering. It has a location, a here or a there. It focuses on a spot, and in that spot it creates a little kernel of what you want. Around that kernel comes your sense of who you are who’s able to get that thing, and the world in which you … 
  11. Testing Karma
     … You can act in such a way that you can really put an end to suffering. Now, when you first hear these things, you can’t prove them, at least not in an empirical way. So the Buddha offers a pragmatic test to begin with. Just think: If you believe that you have choices and that they determine your experience of pleasure and pain … 
  12. Dhamma Medicine
     … You want to have genuine medicine, and you want make sure that it’s beneficial for the particular disease that the patient is suffering from. You also have to make sure that it’s timely: right for that particular point in the course of treatment. Years back, when I was in Thailand, I went to India to visit the Buddhist holy spots. When I … 
  13. Sucked into the Tube
     … When you see through that, then you’ve seen through a lot, cut through a lot of the ignorance that causes the mind’s habit of fabrication to lead to stress and suffering—because you catch these things in the act.
  14. A Special Time
     … If the mind isn’t trained, then all the other good things you gain in life could actually lead to suffering. In other words, you gain something good but your thinking runs out of control. You decide that your happiness depends on this thing or that person or that relationship or whatever. Of course, you realize deep down inside that this thing or that … 
  15. The Mind Comes First
     … It doesn’t create any extra suffering. So always keep the mind first. Even though there are things outside that you can’t change, the fact that the mind is always coming first means that it’s not going to get worked up. It has its independence. And it’s by putting the mind first that we find true release.
  16. Your One Responsibility
     … Mindfulness helps, in that it helps you remember what’s going to lead to suffering and what’s not. Alertness is what keeps you right here in the present moment: the direct experience of what’s happening and particularly of what you’re doing while you’re doing it. Finally, ardency is your desire to do it well. You want to focus that desire … 
  17. Refuge
     … Paralyzed from the base of the spine on down, he’d suffered lung damage, brain damage. So his ability to give Dhamma talks was severely curtailed. When he did give Dhamma talks, either formally or informally, he realized he had to boil the message down to the most essential, most important points. And he always talked about refuge: taking the Buddha, the Dhamma and … 
  18. On Top of Your Actions
     … So all these factors of the path, even the outside ones, are focused back in, right here, because right here is where you’re generating suffering and this is where you can learn how to stop it. So try to bring your attention to what you’re doing right now. Your ability to reflect on your state of mind, reflect on the actions of … 
  19. Teaching Old Selves New Tricks
     … that process of verbal fabrication that the Buddha says lies so close to the very beginning of the processes that lead to suffering. Think about how the Buddha himself would teach people. He would instruct, rouse, urge, and encourage. Three of the four have to do with getting motivated, getting you confident that this is something you can do. The instruction there, of course … 
  20. An Island in the Flood
     … If you have any doubts about that, you can talk to yourself a bit about why the mind needs training, and how all the big problems of the world come down to the fact that the mind is creating a lot of unnecessary suffering for itself, but it can learn how not to do that. This is how you do it. So whatever problems … 
  21. Potentials
     … But the teaching on karma also means that simply because you’ve got some bad things coming in from the past doesn’t mean you have to suffer from them right now. This is where the skills you develop in the present moment make a huge difference. One of the potentials we can develop in the mind is not being easily swayed by pleasure … 
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