Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

  1. Page 13
  2. Discernment
     … They’re here to help you look at things in a whole new way, applying the four noble truths to your experience. That’s the framework the Buddha gives you. It’s not only the framework for his teachings, but also the framework he’d like you to apply to your experience. It’s hard to shift frameworks. We’re used to our old … 
  3. The Power is in Your Hands
     … That’s what the Buddha means when he says, “You do your duty.” The duties here, of course, are the duties of the four noble truths. The first is to comprehend suffering. When you find the cause, you abandon the cause. You do that by developing the path. And in developing the path, you get to the most important duty, which is to realize … 
  4. Of Past & Future
     … He also talks about the four noble truths, and each of them has a duty. With stress and suffering, your duty is to comprehend it. If you happen to run into some suffering here in the present moment, try to comprehend it. If you run into any craving, recognize that that’s the cause for suffering. Do what you can to abandon it, to … 
  5. To Go Where You’ve Never Gone Before
     … This goes very much against the grain, which is why we hold to the four noble truths as our guide, because they tell us: There is a cause for suffering, but it’s not where you think it is. There’s also the cessation of the suffering that comes by allowing the cause to cease. And there’s a path of practice that can … 
  6. Abandoning Effluents (3)
     … The first of the approaches, seeing—i.e., seeing in terms of appropriate attention—is applied to abandoning the effluents of becoming and ignorance, because you’re putting aside questions that deal with your identity, which is the kernel of becoming, focusing instead on seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. That puts an end to ignorance. The next four approaches deal … 
  7. Stubborn Clinging
     … This is why the Buddha taught the four noble truths, why he began the path with the four noble truths: pointing out first that our clinging is suffering. This is the essence of all the mind’s sufferings: its ways of clinging to the five aggregates. The recognition of this suffering—the stress, the pain you’re causing yourself—and the recognition that it … 
  8. Be Heedful & Think
     … That’s a lot of what the four noble truths come down to. You’ve been allowing yourself to think in ways that lead to suffering, and you’ve been doing it for so long that you don’t really see the connection between what you’re doing and the suffering, because the suffering is so constant. But if you learn how to be … 
  9. A Handful of Leaves
     … And what was in the handful of leaves? The four noble truths. This is one of the Buddha’s teachings that’s categorical—in other words, it’s true across the board, for everybody—and he chose these leaves because they were going to be beneficial. So you have to stop and think: There’s a lot the Buddha knew in his awakening that … 
  10. Developing Absorption
     … It’s part of a series of duties that the Buddha says is to be applied to the four noble truths. The first noble truth, the truth of suffering, is to be comprehended: not just registering the fact that there is suffering, but realizing that clinging to the aggregates is the suffering. That’s not a point that’s easy to comprehend, because it … 
  11. Prerequisites for the Practice
     … From there, you move into the four noble truths. In looking inside, what kind of actions in the mind are unskillful, i.e., the ones that create suffering? Which ones are skillful, the ones that don’t, the ones that actually lead to the end of suffering? That’s how the question on skillfulness and unskillfulness translates into the four noble truths. You’ve … 
  12. The Trick to Staying in Place
     … Classically, they describe ignorance as ignorance of the four noble truths. It sounds pretty abstract, but what it comes down to is what are you doing, what are the results of what you’re doing: what are you doing that causes stress and suffering, and what might you do to bring an end to stress and suffering? So if we are going to see … 
  13. The Middle Way
     … Right view is seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. The main point of the four noble truths is that the cause of suffering is inside, and the suffering itself is something you’re doing. Clinging-aggregates are not just things sitting around. The compound means the act of clinging to the aggregates, and it’s related to craving, which is the … 
  14. Patience & Endurance
     … Everything the Buddha teaches falls under the four noble truths, and the four noble truths all have duties: four different duties. It’s not just noting, noting this or noting that. Where there’s stress or suffering, you want to comprehend it. When you begin to see what’s causing it—in other words, you ask yourself, what comes along with the stress and … 
  15. When Nothing’s Happening
     … Remember your duty with regard to the four noble truths. You do want to realize the cessation of suffering, but you don’t do that by realizing the cessation of suffering. The realizing is a result. The cause of that result is that you develop the path. And in developing the path, you have to comprehend wherever there’s any stress or suffering that … 
  16. Asalha Puja – Completeness
     … The Buddha went on to say that it wasn’t until he realized he had completed these tasks, and his knowledge was complete in all three rounds of knowledge about the four noble truths—in other words, there are twelve factors to this knowledge: It wasn’t until then that he claimed to be fully awakened. So that’s genuine completeness. That’s why … 
  17. Not-self for the Sake of Happiness
     … When your reflective self agrees, that’s when you’re ready for the four noble truths and their teaching that goes against the grain: that clinging to a sense of self is suffering. In the case of the Five Brethren, when he first taught them right view, he made no mention of self. He got them to an experience of the Dhamma Eye, where … 
  18. Freedom, Conditioned & Not
     … One is the four noble truths, and the other is the principle that skillful actions should be developed and unskillful ones should be abandoned. In fact, you can derive the four noble truths from that second categorical teaching. Craving should be abandoned; the path should be developed, so as to comprehend suffering and then attain its cessation. In that case, the craving is the … 
  19. Appropriate Attention Always
     … Simply that as the practice progresses, that principle gets developed even further into the four noble truths, which is the second expression of appropriate attention. What you develop is the noble eightfold path; what you abandon is craving. You realize that when you abandon craving, you can put an end to suffering. You develop the eightfold path so that you can abandon craving and … 
  20. Categorical Truths
     … In terms of the four noble truths, the first one is the truth of suffering or stress—dukkha is the Pāli term. As the Buddha says, the truth here is basically that your suffering is in the way you cling. You cling to the body, you cling to your feelings, your perceptions, your thought constructs; you cling to consciousness of the senses. Wherever you … 
  21. Owning Your Actions
     … And of course, this all relates to the four noble truths, which is the Buddha’s teaching on how the suffering that weighs the mind down comes from within. So meditation is always a matter of looking back at what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing. This is why, when the Buddha wanted to express his awakening in as … 
  22. Load next page...