Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Solid in the Face of Death
     … It keeps coming back for more and more of the same old stuff despite all the suffering involved. When you take a larger view like this, it’s a way of taking some of the burden off the mind caused by the personal problems of your daily life. You realize that you’re not suffering alone. Everybody is suffering. It seems paradoxical, but it … 
  3. Coping & Beyond Coping
     … The Buddha discovered that that was the source of our suffering. If we were able to cure that problem, then there wouldn’t be anything to suffer from. There would be no need to cope, because we wouldn’t be creating the suffering that would force us to have to cope. We realize that we suffer not because of things coming in at us … 
  4. The Noble Eightfold Path to the Deathless
     … You also hear him say that you can, through your own efforts, put an end to suffering. If you don’t put an end to suffering, suffering can just keep going on. From that right view come the other factors of the path. The Buddha compares your views about things to a seed. Wrong view, he says, is like a seed for a bitter … 
  5. Success on the Path
     … If it were the case that there wasn’t that potential for putting an end to suffering, that life was simply a matter of learning how to accept what’s already here, then the practice would be very different. But what the Buddha is asking you to do is to accept something else, that there is a potential to put an end to suffering … 
  6. Birth Is Suffering
    *Jātipi dukkhā. *Birth is suffering. I heard someone recently explaining the Buddha’s list of the different forms of suffering. He came to this one and he said, “Well, that’s behind us now.” The problem is that it’s not behind us. We have it behind us, but we also have it ahead of us if we’re not careful. Each time it … 
  7. Learning from Desire
    That phrase in the chant just now, “Those who don’t discern suffering”: It sounds strange. You’d think that everybody discerns suffering. Babies know suffering. They know enough to cry. Even common animals know when they’re in pain. But that’s not what the Buddha’s referring to. There are the kinds of suffering we all know about, and he lists them … 
  8. Acceptance
     … There is suffering, we are responsible for the suffering that has happened, but we also have the potential not to suffer. That’s another part of conviction, another part of the type of acceptance the Buddha has us develop: not just accepting where we are, but accepting that we bear responsibility for where we are. When we have the responsibility, we have the power … 
  9. The Buddha’s Universal Solvent
     … These truths are expressed just in terms of suffering and the acts of the mind that lead to suffering—in other words, the things that you experience directly inside that nobody else can experience. Each of us has to experience these things on our own: the suffering, the actions inside that lead to suffering, and also the qualities we can develop that can take … 
  10. Not Getting What You Want
    Most of the Buddha’s descriptions of dependent co-arising end with the suffering of aging, illness, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, despair. But there’s one that goes beyond that. “From suffering,” it says, “there’s conviction”—in other words, conviction in the Buddha’s teachings that there is a way out. Then, based on that conviction, you practice until you gain a … 
  11. Cooking Skills
     … He didn’t teach the end of suffering only to people who had exclusively good karma. He said, “Look, if you’re suffering, here’s the way to the end”—regardless of what your past karma is. If you can create good karma in the present moment, you can put an end to suffering. And you can lessen your suffering right now. You have … 
  12. Living Honorably
     … Stress and suffering are the problem, and you’ve got to do something to find a long-term solution. The Buddha’s first recommendations are to comprehend suffering and abandon its cause. So how are you going to figure out a way to sit with the suffering long enough to comprehend it and detect the cause? The cause for the suffering that’s weighing … 
  13. Karma & the Sublime Attitudes
     … You can’t simply say, “Well, they deserve what they got.” After all, some people do have the potential to get out of that suffering. That teaching on equanimity doesn’t say that people suffer because they’ve done something that makes them deserve to suffer, simply that they have some actions in their past that lead to suffering. Yet they may have lots … 
  14. The Sublime Attitudes
     … It’s not an excuse to justify the suffering that people are going through or for our being indifferent to that suffering. When you really understand the workings of karma, you see other people’s suffering as an opportunity to help them. You don’t know how much longer their karma for suffering is going to last. Wouldn’t it be a good thing … 
  15. Large Perspective, Small Focus
     … It’s hard to understand what’s going on and particularly hard to understand what it is that you’re doing that’s contributing to the suffering. You look at the world and there’s a lot of suffering out there, and a lot of things that don’t show any intelligent design or certainly no compassionate design—and you start thinking about it … 
  16. Goodwill for All Beings
     … As he saw, having overcome the problem of suffering in his own heart, he couldn’t just wave a magic wand and have everybody else stop suffering. Suffering is something that each of us creates for him- or herself. Our own lack of skill is what makes us suffer. And because no one can master a skill for anyone else, this is a path … 
  17. May All Beings Be Heedful
     … Remember, the Buddha didn’t say he would teach only those people who didn’t deserve to suffer. He taught the end of suffering for everybody who’s willing to take on the path, regardless of what your past has been. And the path requires having a healthy attitude toward happiness, a healthy attitude toward suffering: that you can learn from your suffering, but … 
  18. Your Breath, Your Territory
     … The problem of suffering is right in here. It’s nowhere else. Other people have their suffering, but you can’t sense their suffering, you don’t have to suffer from it. You can suffer vicariously, but the real suffering is what you experience from within. But he saw that there were common patterns even though everyone’s in his or her own world … 
  19. The Humble Way to Awakening
     … So the Dhamma that explains the cause of suffering and the path to its end is the Buddha’s contribution to end our bewilderment so that our search actually leads to the end of suffering. In the course of following his path, you’ll also find that other issues get settled as well. Suffering is like the watering hole in the savannah. If you … 
  20. You Can’t Relax Your Way to Awakening
     … What it means is that whatever the path to the end of suffering entails, you’re up for it. Whatever the difficulties, you’re ready for them. You’ve seen that otherwise the mind is going to create a lot of suffering for itself. And the sufferings that come from people outside or situations outside are nothing compared to the suffering that the mind … 
  21. What We Have in Common
     … But his analysis of suffering, the causes of suffering, and the end of suffering was not limited to India or the noble warrior caste. It was simply a matter of how the mind, every mind, works. So as we focus on this, it’s what keeps us working together, belonging together. The Buddha talked about how a group can stay together. We look at … 
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