Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Nurturing Patient Endurance… No matter what the defilement, no matter what the problem in terms of physical pain or mental pain, there’s a way around it so that you can learn how to live with the difficulties that are inherent in having a body, living in the human realm, but not suffer from them. Look for that distinction. The reason we find some things hard to …
- Undividing the Mind… You could take all the care in the world and you’d still suffer from the dangers. But here you can make a difference. You’ve got the opportunity right now, and you’ve tried everything else. Think back over the many lifetimes that you’ve devoted to all kinds of other things. Here’s an opportunity to focus directly on the mind, to …
- Victory in Battle… There’s a Pali term, attha, which means “goal,” “purpose,” and “benefit.” It also means “meaning.” The Buddha taught his teachings with a purpose, so people that will take them and put an end to suffering. The question is, are we going to make that our purpose too? Because we all have purposes. When the Buddha talks about how we fabricate the present moment …
- Potentials… He established the religion, established the Dhamma and the Vinaya to make it available to people so that they, too, could put an end to suffering. So as you sit here and meditate, ask yourself: What are the potentials here? There’ll be some bad ones, but there will also be some good ones. Why stew around in the bad ones? Why encourage them …
- All Your Old Baggage… Even though the baggage isn’t totally let down or totally put down until you attain the total end of suffering, still it’s good to learn how to practice putting things down temporarily when you catch yourself carrying baggage around. At the very least, try to keep the baggage as light as possible. As when you’re sitting here right now:There’s …
- Finding Your Own Balance… There’s no way you’re going to come to the end of suffering if you do things blindly. So experiment. Watch and then test the way you read the experiment, to see if you really can trust it. Over time, your ability to read things will get better and better. Your sense of balance will get better and better. That’s why it …
- Still… He didn’t say that the path was the goal, but he did say that the activity of developing the path and the activity of realizing the cessation of suffering are the same thing. In other words, you don’t have to second guess the path. You don’t have to look down the path and ask, “When’s the next stage going to …
- Producing Experience… The story’s full of all kinds of suffering: A young woman gets sold as a slave to get her parents out of debt; her new master is a good person, but he dies off pretty quickly; he’s got an evil brother, and all kinds of horrible things happen; there are floods, fires, suicides, lots of injustice — what makes for a great story …
- To Comprehend Food… We’re feeding off of a lot of people and other beings’ suffering. So what’re you going to do with that food, what are you going to do with the energy you get from the food? When you think about eating a lot of food, a really good, big meal, you can think about it as putting yourself in debt—more than you …
- Humility & Confidence… We want happiness and yet so many of our actions, so many of our thoughts, our words and deeds create suffering. Stress. Dis-ease. Why is that? What is it about our minds that we don’t know? That should be the most interesting question you can ask yourself. And here you’ve got the opportunity to learn, to explore, to figure out the …
- When You Hit a Plateau… He’s asking you to see what you’re doing that’s causing suffering.” To see that, you have to reflect carefully on what you’re doing. It’s happening all the time. But we’re sloughing over the details, and so we don’t see.
- Tranquility & Insight… how your mind creates suffering for itself, even though it doesn’t want to, but it does. Why on earth would that be? Well, because you’re not paying attention, so you don’t know what you’re doing. You’ve paid much more attention to things outside, and not enough attention to your own mind. This is dangerous, because things outside can do …
- Breath Energies… Which is why, when you see that your sense of self is actually causing suffering—you see it in the act and you see that it’s not necessary—the whole thing short-circuits. After all, what is it there for if not to create happiness? When you see that it’s not doing its expected job, then you drop that particular strategy. This …
- Taking a Stance… The basic indicator is, “Does the breath feel good or not?” For the Buddha, the big issue in life is suffering, so we start with a minor version of it — a minor sense of discomfort coming from the breath. Why breathe in a way that’s uncomfortable? Nobody’s forcing you. It’s your own lack of attention that allows the breath to get …
- True to the Breath… Truths that are really useful in pulling you out of your old habits of creating a lot of unnecessary stress and strain and suffering. It’s a simple strategy. It may not be easy, but if you work at it, you find that it’s one of best the strategies there is.
- Looking for Essence in the Wilderness… So, if you’re working on getting the mind more concentrated or trying to work on gaining some insight into how the mind creates suffering out of all kinds of things good and bad, remember, that’s the purpose of being here. This opens all kinds of opportunities for the mind. Our time here is fleeting, so make the best use of it, because …
- A Master of Your Thoughts… It’s only when we see that we’re complicit in our own suffering that we begin to step back from it, let it go, and develop the disenchantment and dispassion that the Buddha was talking about. So when disturbing thoughts come up and move in, you’ve got your raw material for developing your concentration. In the beginning, it’s just a matter …
- Allies… The duty with regard to suffering and stress, he says, is to comprehend it. Most of the time, we feel threatened by it, we feel engulfed by it, surrounded by it, squeezed in by it, so the only thing we can think of it is how to get away, how to get ourselves out of that situation. That’s not comprehending. That’s just …
- Maintenance Work… It’s always finding new ways to make itself suffer. So look for the voices in the mind that lead you in that direction and learn how not to identify with them. Learn to stick with the Capricorn voices, the ones that say, “Just stick with the work here. Keep going. It’s because you stick with it that things will make a difference …
- A Sense of Adventure… Remind yourself that your assumptions are the assumptions of a person with defilement, the assumptions of a person still suffering. Perhaps it would be in your best interest to put them aside for the time being instead of demanding that everything fit into your preconceived notions of how things should be. And you should be willing to embark on this without a 100% guarantee …
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