Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Calm… If you stay in line with the Dhamma, then you’re on the path going in the right direction, the path to the end of suffering. It’s a good path to be on.
- The Heart to Keep Going… If you don’t aim at the goal, life in samsara is going to take even longer, with a lot more suffering along the way. Each step you take—as long as it’s in the right direction—is a step well made. Learn how to encourage yourself in that way. That, too, is an important skill to take out of the meditation and …
- The Sport of Wise People… Of course, our purpose is serious, the practice is serious—we’re dealing with a big problem, the problem of suffering—but if you’re grim about the path, that grimness begins to grind you down. So you have to learn how to develop a light attitude around what you’re doing. One of the skills of meditation is learning how to gladden the …
- Five Precepts, Five Virtues… You see clearly that your actions will make a difference between whether you’re going to be happy or suffering. And you realize you have to be really careful about what you do, say, and think. You can’t just go with every urge that comes into the mind. You have to stop and think, “When I do this, what are the results going …
- When You Don’t Like Your Selves… The Buddha’s full of recommendations on how you can learn how to create new senses of self, develop new skills, as part of the path to the end of suffering. This is one of our problems: We have a limited range of skills. Even though we have many, many types of self in there, each of them has a script. Sometimes the scripts …
- Recollection of the Buddha… In terms of the compassion, if your happiness depends on the suffering of other people, they’re not going to stand for it. It’s not going to last. So if you want a lasting happiness, you have to think about the well-being of others. That’s compassion. And then you really have to carry through. You look at your actions again and …
- A Safe Home… You also see the connection between acting on an unskillful motivation and the suffering that comes as a result of the action. When you’ve got mindfulness and alertness working together, your choices and decisions get better and better informed. As you learn to associate them with a sense of ease and well-being, they get stronger within the mind. So as we’re …
- Perceptions of the Breath… You want to find a perception that gathers in the calm, solid, alert factions of the mind, the factions that really do want to put an end to suffering and are willing to do what’s needed. As they get stronger, you find you’ll attract other factions of the mind to your cause as well. Find which perceptions are useful, which perceptions are …
- Equanimity as a Skill… May all beings be freed from their suffering. May all beings not be deprived of the good fortune they have attained.” It’s “may, may, may.” But then the fourth one is not like that. It’s a statement of fact: “All living beings are the owners of their actions.” When I was in France this last month, I came across the French translation …
- Fangs in the Static… As soon as you get a body, you’re opening yourself up to the possibility of suffering from this disease or that. Is that what you really want? In another place, the Canon talks about the fact that simply having a body means that you’re subject to people yelling at you, subject to people hitting you. There are a lot of drawbacks to …
- Anger… You’re suffering not from the person’s words, but from what you’re thinking to yourself. So think in new ways. Let the sound stop at the ear. When you approach anger in this way—taking it apart—then you can reassemble a better state of the mind, a state of mind that’s clearer, much more able to think about what would …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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.
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Joy in the Effort… After all, there are some habits in there that are creating suffering one way or another, and the whole purpose of the meditation is to dig them out. You have to bring them out into what we say is this safe space, so that they’re not so scary. They’re scary because they’re operating in the shadows, and of course, being in …
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