Search results for: "Suffering"
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- To Gladden the Mind… And it’s not the happiness simply of patting yourself on the back that you were good, but you open up to a dimension that’s totally other, totally free from suffering. So we respect the Buddha because he teaches us to respect something good in ourselves: our desire for true happiness. About that desire, the world says, “Oh, don’t bother, it’s …
- The Fortress… And it is possible to put an end to suffering. So as long as skilful qualities in the mind are not yet fully developed, as the Buddha said, you can’t rest content. You have to keep working, working, working at it. But working at it will be rewarded. That’s the message of his awakening. Now, protecting the fortress at the gate is …
- Disenchantment… And these are the factors that make all the difference between whether it’s going to cause stress and suffering or whether it’s not. So normally we bring this huge parcel of attitudes to apply to the present moment, to shape the present moment. And one of the main purposes of concentration is to learn how to pare that down, so at the …
- The Skill of Happiness… Because, after all, in the Buddha’s analysis, it’s what we’re doing right now in the mind that’s causing us to suffer right now. We sometimes hear the teaching on karma that what you’re experiencing right now is determined by what happened in the past, but that’s not totally true. There are influences from the past but you also …
- The Treasure of Virtue… So you may have to suffer loss of wealth for a while. You may have relatives who want you to lie for their sake, and you have to say No. They may get really upset, but you have to realize that when you’re dying, your relatives can’t come and help make sure that you go to a good place. It’s going …
- Breath Meditation When It’s Hard to Breathe… Soon after he arrived at the spot where he was going to stay, he suffered a heart attack. From his description, it sounds like a series of attacks. He knew that he could possibly die. But he decided to look at what he had that might help him survive. He didn’t have much in terms of medicine. The food was very meager. But …
- Determination… The desire for anybody to suffer is wrong view. So you want to make sure that, whatever your goal, it’s conducive to genuine happiness, which means a happiness that doesn’t harm anybody. After all, if your happiness is harmful to other people, they’re not going to stand for it. It’s not going to last, which is why goodwill has to …
- Pride… Other people have put an end to suffering, so can I. In that sense, pride is a good thing. It gives you the confidence you need in order to stick with the path when it gets difficult. It’s one of the last fetters that’s abandoned on the path, along with several of the other fetters that arahants have to get rid of …
- Equanimity After Victory… You have goodwill for them, you have compassion for them when they’re suffering, empathetic joy when they’re happy. That requires work, too, because there are a lot of people who have more wealth than you, more power than you, they’re better looking than you, their lives seem to go better than yours in every way. There are people who’ve gained …
- A Frame for the Day… If you suffer loss in terms of any of the first three, that should be considered a small loss. Now, for a lot of us, that’s hard to think about: losing our wealth, losing our relatives, losing our health. But it’s going to happen. What doesn’t have to happen is loss of right view or loss of your virtue. You lose …
- Skilled in Aims… Then, of course, with the four noble truths, the fact that you’re trying to put an end to suffering shows that you have goodwill for yourself. The way you do it is through the noble eightfold path, and that involves right view, right resolve, all the way down through right concentration, including right speech and right action—again, virtue. You’re acting in …
- At Home in Your Own Skin… As you learn how to inhabit this world properly, you’ll find that you can deal with other worlds with a lot less suffering.
- A Goal Without Limits… But still, to do the duty with the fourth noble truth—the path to the end of suffering—we have to have some motivation. We have to convince ourselves that the path does lead to a good end. It’s for this reason that even though the Buddha said that the goal can’t be properly described, and the person attaining the goal can …
- Perfect Breathing Isn’t the Goal… But you have to realize the real causes of your suffering are inside the mind, and they may not manifest themselves in any physical symptom at all. On the other hand, you can have physical symptoms of tension, tightness, illness, but they may not be related to what’s going on in your mind right now. After all, the Buddha himself, after his awakening …
- Take Responsibility for Yourself… You have to keep looking and looking and looking to see where in the mind are you causing yourself suffering in ways that you don’t really have to. If you’re not really meticulous about this, you’ll miss everything. Little signs will be there, but you won’t see them, and yet you’ll wonder why your meditation isn’t progressing. Well …
- Medicine – Timely & Timeless… He says that we suffer because of our misperceptions of things, seeing constancy in what’s inconstant, pleasure in what’s painful, self in what’s not-self, and attractiveness in what’s really unattractive. But he doesn’t then just go and say, “Simply turn your perceptions around and that’s that. The problem is solved.” That’s not how it works. The …
- Cutting New Paths in the Mind… There are lots of ways in which we bring unnecessary suffering onto ourselves, and they tend to be very quick. They’re like paths in the mind over which we’ve walked back and forth many, many times. There’s nothing in the way, we’ve killed all the grass, we’ve cut back all the bushes. We’ve been back and forth so …
- Happy to Be Here… And you want to watch it because the basic principle of the Dhamma is that the reason we suffer in life is not so much because of things happening outside. It’s because of how we process sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. So we have to learn how to watch our minds to really understand what they’re doing. And one of the …
- How to Really Depend on Yourself… What when you do it will lead to long term harm and suffering? And what when you do it will lead to long term well-being and happiness? Notice that those questions are strategic. You ask them to get some guidance from others, but you also ask them of yourself: to give yourself guidance in how to approach your meditation. To remind yourself of …
- Mindstorms… But as the Buddha pointed out, there’s a lot of suffering in those worlds. They all require effort to keep them going. They have to feed off of something. When the Buddha says that becoming is conditioned by clinging, the word “clinging” can also mean feeding or the act of taking sustenance. And the sustenance is the passion of desire — the desire that …
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