Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 134
  2. The Joy of the Battle
     … So you’re not dealing with just little things, you’re dealing with the big problem that causes us to suffer. As the Buddha said, you can trace back, way, way back, and you cannot find a beginning point for ignorance. Even he couldn’t find one, and his memory of previous lifetimes was very, very long. But he says you can see what … 
  3. Seven Facets of Discernment
     … There are ways to focus the mind even as the body is dying so the mind doesn’t have to suffer. We’re told some of these skills as we read about how to meditate, but we have to learn the rest of them from observing our own minds as they relate to the breath, as they relate to distraction. As they relate to … 
  4. Clear of Defilement
     … feel right now.” Ask yourself, “If you really love yourself, are you going to let that attitude take over? If you do, you’re setting yourself up for all kinds of suffering down the road.” Part of the mind will say, “I don’t care,” and you have to learn how not to identify with the “I don’t care” attitude. It’s like … 
  5. Impossible Things
     … But of course what’s easier to handle also brings on more suffering. As the Buddha said, “Lay life is hard. Life as a renunciate is hard.” But at least life as a renunciate takes you someplace really worth going to. When you finally make up your mind that you’re really going to train yourself, it makes that goal less of an impossibility … 
  6. Good Traditions
     … It changes into something else—into pain and suffering. So we want to look into the mind for our happiness. That means we have to train the mind. If the mind isn’t trained, it’s going to keep slipping outside, looking for a quick fix, looking for something easy: nice sights, nice sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, which are like junk food for … 
  7. Dethinking Thinking
    Dethinking Thinking September 15, 2015 Dogen had a nice definition for meditation, which is “dethinking your thinking.” You’re trying to take apart the concepts that you carry around with you, especially the ones that are causing you to suffer—and a lot of these concepts you believe in, very firmly. They’re what the Thai ajaans called sommut, from the Pali sammati. They … 
  8. Suppressed Emotions
     … We’ve got to turn around and look: “Okay, what are we doing that turns the pain into suffering for the mind?” So by creating this new frame of reference through the technique, you’re not suppressing your fear of pain. Your new frame of reference changes your attitude toward the pain so that you can see it more clearly. We often believe that … 
  9. Limitless Thoughts
     … You don’t have to ask, “What happened when I was a child, why did this happen?” You just have to look at what you’re doing, to see the unnecessary suffering you’re causing yourself. Or you can keep an eye out for any lack of openness and honesty in the mind: What’s that doing to the mind? Do you want to … 
  10. Only Your Best
     … the foolish ways we make suffering for ourselves. This skillful habit is going to become more and more crucial as aging comes, as illness comes, as death comes, and you have fewer and fewer other things to depend on. There will always be that point where the doctors have to give up. They do everything they can—assuming you’ve got good doctors: They … 
  11. Respect for the Breath
     … This is important because the mind is the ultimate source of all true happiness and all true suffering. It’s the factor that makes all the difference in your life. So it needs to be trained. And remind yourself also that the happiness you’re looking for is a happiness that comes from inside, a happiness that doesn’t harm anybody—doesn’t harm … 
  12. Perfections as Priorities
     … You may not want to be here, but here you are, so what are you going to do about it? What are you going to get out of this? There’s a lot of suffering involved in being a human being—and this is one of the better planes of existence—so what will you have to show for your life? If you’ve … 
  13. Finding Extra Energy
     … The Buddha said that with some of the causes of suffering in the mind, all you have to do is just watch them, and they go away. With others, you have to exert what he calls a fabrication. You have to look at the way you’re breathing around the issue. You have to look at the way you’re thinking about it, how … 
  14. The Joy of Growing
     … He realized that all human beings have those potentials—not to become Buddha, maybe, but to put an end to our suffering, to grow. He said that if people couldn’t develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones, he wouldn’t have bothered to teach. But it’s because we have this ability to learn and to grow and to learn from our mistakes … 
  15. The Five Precepts for the Mind
     … In fact, when the Buddha-to-be realized that, that was what got him on the path to the end of suffering. He had been afraid of sensual pleasures to the extent that he was afraid of all pleasures, so he subjected himself to all kinds of torments for six years. When he realized that that wasn’t working, he had to ask, “Is … 
  16. For the Survival of True Happiness
     … On the path to the end of suffering, we train the body as part of our training, in virtue. In other words, we make sure that we don’t use the body to kill or steal or have illicit sex or to lie or to take intoxicants. We use it in our training in concentration as we focus on the breath, or as we … 
  17. Defilements at the Door
     … Of course, given the power of past actions, sometimes you’re stuck with certain things because of what you did in the past, but you don’t have to suffer from them. They don’t have to invade the mind and remain. That’s the phrase that the Buddha uses: “invade the mind and remain.” They may present themselves to your awareness, but they … 
  18. Take the Buddha Seriously
     … So what was he going to do? Was he going to fight them off? He turned around, looked in his own heart, and realized that there was an arrow in the heart—the suffering with which he was making himself miserable. He saw that he had shot himself, basically, with that arrow. You know the story: There’s the arrow of pain, say, and … 
  19. Not the Predictable Thing
     … In other words, they’re just stuck in the original problem of suffering: They’re bewildered by the pain. And because they’re told that they have no way of dealing with it, they’re unprotected. They have no reason for trying to say No to their unskillful urges. He saw the importance of the fact that there is an opportunity for freedom in … 
  20. A Trained Observer
     … If we didn’t crave the end of suffering, we wouldn’t be here practicing. If we didn’t realize that we have some ignorance, we wouldn’t search for knowledge. So even the defilements can have their good side, but to see that requires developing a very resilient observer inside. An important part of the observer is learning to be aware of things … 
  21. Learning from Labor
     … We can take that slogan and adjust it a little bit to make it a slogan for the Buddha’s teachings: “Learning from Labor.” In other words, you do the work of the training in terms of virtue, concentration, and discernment, and in the doing you’re going to learn a lot about the mind, a lot about how you’re causing suffering, and … 
  22. Load next page...