Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Everybody Benefits
     … It really helps see through a lot of things that you didn’t see before, but it also has to be motivated by the desire to see through them—particularly, to see through the things that are causing suffering. Even though equanimous awareness may seem totally without preference, it is motivated by the desire to see things clearly in a way that you haven … 
  3. Songkran Blessing
     … And then the discernment to see which ways you’re causing unnecessary suffering and how you can stop. These five strengths are the things that will carry you through. They’ll make sure that whatever other blessings you gain in life do stay as blessings and don’t become curses. So think about taking the blessing of wanting mindfulness and discernment so you can … 
  4. The Courage to Set Yourself Free
     … In this way, the lessons you learn about how the mind creates suffering where it doesn’t have to can liberate you in ways that you wouldn’t imagine. So that’s one of the lessons to be drawn from that story Ajaan Lee tells. The other lesson is that when you are fighting other people off, you fight them off with goodwill. There … 
  5. Issues
     … The whole controversy is built out of clinging, so it’s going to entail suffering. So it’s good to look at the various issues that you face as you go through the day to see: How many of them are issues where you really do have to get involved? How many of them are issues that are forced on you, or your standard … 
  6. Skillful Fears
     … They will happen, but if you develop the proper mental skill, you can experience them and not suffer. That’s what the passage in the description of five future dangers is all about: realizing that aging, illness, separation, and death are going to come, social unrest is going to come, and you’ve got to develop these five strengths in the mind to reach … 
  7. Go Out of Your Way
     … It’s not natural that people put an end to suffering, that they will put an end to this process of wandering on. The natural thing is just to keep wandering and wandering around. If you want to find awakening, if you want to find true happiness, you have to go out of your way. Otherwise, when you get into a state of concentration … 
  8. A Gift of Strength
     … These are just a few of the things that add unnecessary stress and suffering. When the mind is well fed, well nourished through the concentration, then it can see these things for what they are. If it isn’t, you tend to identify with them, and if someone tells you to let them go, you say,” I can’t let them go. That’s … 
  9. Practice Without Gaps
     … But as he later explained, he said, “No, an important part of mindfulness practice and concentration practice is creating a good foundation in the way you live your life.” As you get practice in not making exceptions in instances where the precepts might be awkward or cause you to suffer some financial loss or loss of your health: When you’re used to not … 
  10. Getting into the Body
     … Or if it’s a problem that you can’t change, at least you have a different perspective on it, so that you can see what you can do not to suffer from it. So it’s important that you pay careful attention to what’s going on in the body. One of our problems in the West is that we have a very … 
  11. Conceit
     … The example he gives is that when you hear of someone who has put an end to suffering, has made it all the way to the goal, you can reflect, “That person is a human being; I’m a human being. That person can do it; so can I.” To that extent, you need conceit in the practice. If you believe that you can … 
  12. A Culture of Restraint
     … The noble ones look at material things and say, “Remember all the suffering that goes into just providing food, clothing and shelter, so don’t get all wrapped up in having lots of food, lots of clothing, a big house. Remember that those things have their drawbacks.” The world out there is saying, “Buy, buy, buy,” but the noble ones are saying, “No.” Listening … 
  13. Goodwill
     … You can create a good environment for other people, but whether they’re going to suffer in that environment or not is really up to them. But you do what you can, realizing that there are limitations. My teacher had a student who had visions of the spirits of dead people. She didn’t like it because it freaked her out, running into spirits … 
  14. Beginning the Rains
     … We want to show that it is possible to live in line with the Buddha’s principles and to live well, i.e., to live in a way that’s conducive to our own practice for the end of suffering. So as we approach this determination to stay for the rains, it’s good to keep these things in mind. In this way, this … 
  15. In Memory of King Rama IX
     … In other words, you make up your mind that you’re going to practice in a way that’s going to put an end to suffering. You do your best to find a good teacher. You test your teacher against the Buddha’s standards: Does this person have the kind of greed, aversion, and delusion that would make him or her claim knowledge of … 
  16. Nimble with Your Questions
     … He asked a different question: “Where is the suffering? What’s causing it? And what can I do to put an end to it?” This is why he was so particular about the questions he would advise you to ask. You start with his questions, but gradually you find that you have to figure out your own questions that branch out from the original … 
  17. Farming Your Body & Mind
     … It’s the force that goes with you as you go through illness, as you go through aging, even as you go through death—and it makes the difference between whether you’re going to suffer from those things or not. So, if it’s out of control, you’re in a bad position. You want to learn how to bring it into some … 
  18. Ideals
     … The more you want things to be a different way, the more you’re going to suffer, so give up your ideals. That’s what they say. But that’s not the picture of the practice that the Buddha gives. He presents it as a path of making sacrifices for the sake of something of great value—as in that very basic principle in … 
  19. Scramble the Image
     … Once you can see that there’s really nothing there in terms of the root cause—in other words, nothing you’d really want to follow when you come right down to it—that’s when you can begin to free yourself from the stress and suffering that can come from your fascination with these things.
  20. An End to the Stories
     … put an end to suffering. It means putting an end to a lot of stories we keep dragging out. After all, those stories are what keep us going, especially if they involve some wrong that we want to right. That would mean we’d have to come back. And, of course, what usually happens when a wrong gets righted is that some more wrong … 
  21. Skillful in Everything
     … The practice is all about mastering skills that can lead to an end of suffering. So it’s good to reflect on what this means, how this applies in our lives. Because the skills here are not just the skills in meditation. They’re a matter of how you approach everything. As I said this afternoon, how you do anything is how you do … 
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