Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. The Buddha’s Map
     … He’s pointing you to what’s actually going on in the sense of how you’re creating suffering and how you can put an end to what you’re doing. His sketch directs your attention right there. Our problem is that we want to go off and sketch other things. Pay attention to the Buddha’s sketches, and then look inside to see … 
  3. Factions in the Mind
     … If it’s faced with pain and difficulty, all the parts of the mind work together so that you don’t cause yourself suffering. These are some of the advantages that come from training the mind to stay with the breath. If you find it difficult to stay with the breath, if you can’t quite get it comfortable yet, at least remind yourself … 
  4. A Clean Break at Death
     … As a result, their mindfulness suffers. When you put a lot of energy into forgetting things, you find it harder and harder to be mindful. So it’s not just how we meditate, it’s how we live that determines how we’re going to die. There are three big mental qualities you want to learn how to avoid: worry, attachment, and uncertainty. Worry … 
  5. Mindful of Karma
     … Putting an end to suffering is something you do. And so he has to explain what action is, what it is possible for human beings to do, and how an understanding of action is really very helpful in acting skillfully. So keep these thoughts in the background as you focus on the breath.
  6. Bless Yourself
     … Other things, he said, you can lose them and it’s not all that serious, but if you lose your right view and you lose your virtue, there’s going to be a lot of suffering. These two qualities, he also said, lie at the basis of mindfulness practice. When you live a virtuous life and you reflect back on your actions, there’s … 
  7. In & of Themselves
     … And, as the Buddha said, the way we do this is what creates suffering. It goes against the grain when we hear that, because this is how we negotiate through the world. That’s because we want to find our happiness in the world. The Buddha said happiness is not to be found in the world. It’s going to be found by getting … 
  8. Happy to Be Here
     … We’re jerry-rigging our experience out of these things, and because we tend to do it in ignorance, that’s why we suffer. But now we’re doing it with knowledge. We see what we’re doing, and we’re trying to do it well. As you get more sensitive here, you also begin to get more sensitive to the ways you talk … 
  9. Stay
     … If you’re thinking about trying to put an end to suffering, there are either questions that are appropriate or questions that are inappropriate. Inappropriate questions have to do with things like: What is the nature of the world? Is it eternal, non-eternal, finite, infinite? Did it start at one point in time, or has it been going on for eternity? Does it … 
  10. Here to Learn
     … The situation may be bad enough, but you can find ways of relating to it that cause you less suffering, simply by the way you think about it, by the way you focus on it. The burdens you carry from the past, the anticipated burdens you foresee in the future that you’re going to start bearing right now, you can learn how to … 
  11. The True Dhamma Has Disappeared
     … If you practice counterfeit Dhamma, you won’t get to the end of suffering. It simply won’t work. It’s like Ajaan Chah’s simile of salt and sand. We could get people to agree that sand is salt, and for the purposes of discussion, sand would then be salt. But you couldn’t use the sand to make your food salty. Agreeing … 
  12. The Uses of the Breath
     … And because the way we feed is the cause of suffering, you really want to get very familiar with how you fabricate things and learn how to fabricate them in a more skillful way. This is what insight is all about. You fabricate the breath. You fabricate your sense of the body through the breath. You fabricate your mind through your feelings and perceptions … 
  13. Subduing Greed & Distress
     … Anyone who we know is suffering right now, we have compassion. As for people out there who are happy, we’re willing to be happy for them. And as for things in the world over which we have no control, that’s where we have to develop equanimity. Use those thoughts to disentangle yourself from thoughts of the world, so that you can come … 
  14. The Karma of Not-self
     … It leads to a lot of suffering. Even with things that are relatively skillful, you find that you latch on to them and then they disappoint you. So you create another self to try another desire, and you keep going, creating more selves all the time. The problem is that these selves have to keep feeding. So even when they’re relatively skillful, there … 
  15. Stay with the Knowing
     … Those are the causes of your suffering. You can’t blame them on anybody else. You can’t say, “I was born without craving and without clinging. People taught me craving and clinging.” They may have given you some examples, but if you didn’t have the germs of those things inside you, you wouldn’t have responded in that way. So develop this … 
  16. The Duty to Be Positive
     … We admit that there are things we’ve done in the past that are not so good, but for the sake of putting an end to suffering you don’t want to dwell on them. Take energy from things that give you strength and then apply that strength wisely. That’s what keeps you on the path.
  17. Papañca
     … And the Buddha gives you some good papañca for saying No. “Think about death,” he says. “Think about how much you’ve suffered.” Papañca includes the questions: “Who am I? Where am I going? Where have I been?” And sometimes it’s good to think about where you’re going, where you’ve been, in a way that brings you back to the present … 
  18. Greed & Distress with Reference to the World
     … That can be your message to yourself that there are beings out there who are suffering. Here you are meditating, getting all this merit. There may be somebody out there who sees it and would like a little piece. So you’re happy to share it. That reminds you that as you meditate: It’s not just for yourself. You’re not just straightening … 
  19. Abandoning Effluents (3)
     … By teasing things out in terms of these other approaches, the Buddha is showing you that you’ve got to see how everything you do is related to either increasing the effluents that will lead you to stay stuck in suffering and samsara, or decreasing them, opening the path to getting away. Then, when the path develops, that faculty of seeing reminds you that … 
  20. Bursting Bubbles
     … So recollection of death is good, as is recollection of the suffering that surrounds you at all sides. Again, this is not to get morbid or depressed, it’s just to remind you that there’s work to be done. It’s also to put your ordinary everyday concerns into perspective. Years back, I went to a medical museum in Bangkok where they had … 
  21. Withstanding Pleasure & Pain
     … In other cases, where the past karma is really strong, it’s going to come willy-nilly, but you don’t have to suffer from it because you’ve developed these skills. So, again, you’re putting yourself in a position where there’s a lot less danger, a lot less need to feel threatened by anything. At the same time, you’re less … 
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