Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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.
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. The Lightened Mind
     … So if our attitude is that we’re suffering because of things outside, we’ve got to drop that attitude, not because we’re trying to absolve other people of any wrong-doing, but because we have the choice. The things they may say may be really unpleasant sounds. The things they do may be unpleasant actions. But we have the freedom not to … 
  15. The Best Place to Practice
     … can go to a monastery, or when you can get out of the monastery, you’re avoiding the real issue, which is, “What’s the mind doing right now to create suffering? What can you do to stop it?” Because that tendency to look someplace else, saying, “Well, I can’t really practice right here because of this or that,” or because the people … 
  16. Stretch Your Mind
     … And who knows, maybe like Angulimala you could train your mind so that it wouldn’t have to suffer from those bad things. So, seeing the power of the mind, seeing the power of the present moment, he then focused on his mind in the present moment in the third watch of the night. You see what he’s doing: He’s stretching his … 
  17. The Equanimity that Doesn’t Give Up
     … In other words, you realize, “There’s work to be done or else I’ll keep creating more suffering, and I can’t sit around not doing the work, because I don’t know how much time I’ve got left.” The anxiety part is in the thought: “I don’t know how much time I’ve got left.” But you do know you … 
  18. Fear of Missing Out
     … Where is the suffering right now? Can you detect the clinging? What are you clinging to? Why are you clinging? What’s the craving? Is it a sensual craving? Is it a craving for becoming, a craving for non-becoming? Are you developing the path to know these things better so that you can abandon the craving and comprehend the clinging? Which parts of … 
  19. A Handful of Leaves
     … The problem is that you’re sitting here thinking and using your mind in ways that are causing lots of unnecessary stress and suffering. So you want to look right here so that you can solve the problem right here. It’s simply a matter of trying to find the right balance of stillness and confidence on the one hand, and the need to … 
  20. A Concentration Checklist
     … All the processes by which the mind is creating suffering for itself are happening right here. And if you can’t find something interesting in that, ask yourself what’s wrong. What part of the mind doesn’t want to look? So basically, the way to overcome boredom is to ask questions based on what you know of the Dhamma: what you’ve learned … 
  21. Appreciating Goodness
     … This training starts with being meritorious, but it goes on beyond that, it goes deeper into the meditation, as you learn to see ways in which the mind is causing itself unnecessary suffering, and you can root out those causes. The mind becomes a lighter mind, more spacious mind, a mind you can trust a lot more. The scariest thing in life—even scarier … 
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