Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Enthusiasm
     … The biggest thing to fear, of course, is that in your effort to find happiness you’re going to do things that will cause suffering; in your effort to do good, you may get so that you lose your enthusiasm to do good, or when the situation gets tough, the virtues that you’ve been trying to develop, the precepts you’ve been trying … 
  3. Effort against the Hindrances
     … There’s no way at all that you benefit from ill will, wanting to see someone else suffer. You’re just burning yourself up with anger at the moment, and setting yourself up to do unskillful things in the future. There’s no reason you should want to be involved in that kind of thinking. Sleepiness is very seductive, because when it comes on … 
  4. Your Main Foundation
     … exactly is going on in the mind, and we can sort out all of the different ways that we glom things together and turn them into huge big sticky forms of suffering. This is why, when one of Ajaan Fuang’s students complained that her practice wasn’t making all the fast progress that she wanted, he said, “Look, work on your foundation. Make … 
  5. The Alternative of Concentration
     … As far as they can see, sensual pleasures are the only alternative to having to suffer pain. But then the pleasures show their drawbacks, and turn painful. So the mind runs back and forth between these things, and the whole political situation in the mind gets determined by what we see as our alternatives. But when you practice concentration, you develop sense of pleasure … 
  6. Old Movies & New
     … Stories where we suffer, stories where we were miserable, where other people took advantage of us, we like to think about those things. What’s the hook? Part of it, of course, is that we like being portrayed as a victim, because someplace in the story the victim has to come out on top. Or if the victim doesn’t come out on top … 
  7. Sober Up
     … Some of the causes of suffering, the Buddha says, go away when you simply look at them. But there are a lot that require work. You have to “exert a fabrication,” as he says. You have to look at the way you’re breathing, you have to look at the way you’re talking to yourself, you have to look at the perceptions you … 
  8. Unlearning Helplessness
     … This is one of the reasons why the Buddha said that conviction in the Buddha’s awakening is a strength, because the whole message of the awakening is that it is possible to follow a path of practice that can lead to the end of suffering through our own efforts. We can make a difference by our decisions. And you live in a world … 
  9. The Light of the World
     … Rather than just leaving him to his fate, the Buddha was able to teach the Dhamma in such a way that Angulimala wasn’t going to have to suffer in the lower realms. A lot of people were unhappy with that because, literally, he was getting away with murder. But then you take their desire to see him punished, and you compare that with … 
  10. The Samsaric Mud Fight
     … You’d like to have this kind of pleasure, but no matter what it is, it’s going to cost a certain amount of suffering both for yourself and for other people in the worlds you create around that desire. This is why stopping the process, stopping the addictive habit, is actually good for yourself and for those others. And this is why samsara … 
  11. Delight in the Path
     … People in Sri Lanka who were reputed by their friends to be really into the Dhamma were given psychological tests, and the conclusion was that they were all suffering from a mild form of depression. They had resigned themselves to the impermanence of things, didn’t have any large scale hopes or expectations—life was gray. That’s what happens when you put the … 
  12. The Identity Crutch
     … You’re looking at things that you’re identifying with and seeing that they are causing you to suffer, so you learn how to let go. Simply that as the practice progresses, you get a more and more refined sense of how to draw the line and seeing how there’s less and less territory that you really want to lay claim to as … 
  13. Staying True
     … There have been times in the past when you didn’t prepare for the future and you suffered. So they might be sneaking around in the back, not very content that you’re just sitting here focusing on the present when you should be worrying about the future, as they would say. You have to remind them that whatever comes up in the future … 
  14. When You’re Discouraged
     … You’ve got to learn how to get your mind under control, otherwise you’re going to suffer a lot when aging comes, when illness comes, when death comes. People may give you advice, but how you manage your mind in the face of those things is something no one else can do for you. So take a cheerful attitude toward a skill like … 
  15. The Positive Side of Heedfulness
     … Make the most of that fact, so that even when you encounter situations you don’t like—whether in the meditation, your work, your family life, or your responsibilities around the monastery—see what you can do not to suffer around them. When I was with Ajaan Fuang, it always seemed that his bouts of psoriasis came at really inconvenient times. Not that I … 
  16. The Escape of Discipline
     … seeing where you have habits that cause unnecessary stress, unnecessary suffering, understanding why you do them, and understanding how you can drop them. A great sense of relief and release comes with that. So the training that the Buddha offers is not three hundred spears a day. The path itself—even though it may involve some difficulties in training your habits, changing your habits … 
  17. A Fool for Sensuality
     … The tedium of the practice is much less tedious than actually having to go through the suffering that comes when you fall for these things.” So be willing to do it again and again until it becomes quite automatic. You look at somebody attractive and you can see immediately that they have their unattractive side as well. Even when there’s nobody else around … 
  18. A Skillful Attitude
     … a lack of skill in dealing with the issue of suffering. Whereas the path—virtue, concentration, discernment—is a skillful approach. So in looking at the meditation as a skill, looking at the whole issue of where there’s dissatisfaction, where there’s discomfort, where there’s dis-ease as something you can approach as a problem to be solved through mastering the skill … 
  19. Tending the Flame
     … After all, when the Buddha pointed out the causes of suffering, he said they’re inside. Sartre said that “Hell is other people,” but no, hell is yourself. Yet it doesn’t have to be. Your self doesn’t have to be hell. The things you do in the mind can switch around and they can become your genuine friends. Your admirable friends. So … 
  20. A Taste of Freedom
     … We speak, we act, we think for the sake of happiness, and yet all too often the results come out the other way around, bringing suffering and stress. It’s when you want to know why that you’re going to begin to be wise. And then there’s asking the right question: “What when I do it will lead to long-term welfare … 
  21. Stupid about Pleasure
     … You give things up only when you really see that there’s a direct connection between suffering and the pleasures you’ve been enjoying — and that there’s a better alternative. Only then will the mind begin to let go. This is the duty of discernment: to see the drawbacks of these things. This is why right concentration on its own, or jhana on … 
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