Search results for: "Suffering"
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- The Meaning of Happiness… As for compassion, you have to realize that if your happiness depends on other people’s suffering, it’s not going to last, it’s not going to be true happiness. So you have to take their needs into account. As for purity, you look at your actions and see: Do they really fall in line with your values, your desire to be compassionate …
- A Home of Your Own… But we’re dealing with something that’s important inside, in the same area of your awareness, and that’s pain, stress, suffering. The Pali word dukkha covers all those things. That’s what we are working on understanding. Because that sense of pain is what makes it hard to live in this home of ours right here, and it drives us to do …
- Appreciating Merit… Often when people are suffering from addictions, one of the things they’re taught is on an evening or a day or a night when you don’t give into your addiction, then the following morning you should remind yourself how good you feel from having not given in. Hold that sense of happiness in mind to remind yourself the next time around. That …
- Tranquility & Insight with the Breath… You can begin to ask yourself, “Do I really need those? Do I really need that identity? Am I causing myself suffering by holding onto these ideas?” No matter how right they may be, there are times when you’re holding onto something and you’re right—but it’s totally useless. It serves no purpose at all, aside from weighing the mind down …
- In Charge of Your World… Back in the 19th century when Westerners were beginning to read some of the Buddhist texts, and all saw was suffering, death, aging, illness, As a result, they wrote Buddhism off as a very pessimistic religion. But when they went to Asia, they saw that Buddhists in general were very happy people. The temple fairs, the various observances in the course of the year …
- The Importance of Being Focused… This skill becomes really handy as you get older, as you start suffering illnesses and as you approach death. When an illness arises, it’s so easy to get upset about what you suddenly can’t do, how the illness is getting in the way of other things you’d like to do. That doesn’t help at all. You realize you’ve got …
- Training Your Inner Teacher… What does the talk have to tell you about how you’re creating suffering for yourself where you don’t have to, and what you can do about it. So it’s always good to reflect, when you hear the Dhamma: “How does this apply to me, to what I’m doing right now?” And of course, “right now” doesn’t mean only while …
- A Good Mood to Meditate… When the Buddha describes suffering, he talks about clinging to the five aggregates. And we hear that one of the aggregates is feeling. People often assume that means our emotions, but that’s not where the emotions are in the aggregates. The emotions are under fabrications. They’re put together. What are they made out of? They’re made of, one, the way you …
- Issues of Control… The fact that you’re creating suffering for yourself and a lot of it spills over to burden other people: That’s where you’re responsible, so that’s where you need to develop a good sense of self as being responsible. Ajaan Lee comments on this a lot. That observation that we do have some control over the aggregates, and that’s what …
- Helping Yourself by Helping Others… This way, the meditation becomes an activity that you really look forward to, and you do develop the kind of sensitivity that’s going to be an important part of your discernment into suffering and its causes. So the outside helps the in; the inside helps the out. Sometimes Theravada is criticized for being focused solely on getting your mind in shape and not …
- The Dangers of Sensuality… Yet if you want to put an end to suffering, you can’t keep feeding on that kind of food. It’s bad for you. So you’ve got to see the dangers of sensuality. You’ve got to see the drawbacks of sensuality. Examine your sensual fantasies and look at them as part of a cause-and-effect process. The Buddha recommends that …
- A Confident Ego… The first is anticipation, which in the Buddha’s teachings is heedfulness—the ability to see that there are dangers down the road, and if you don’t get your act together, you’re going to suffer. You have to have that heedful sense of self in order to function properly. You have to be able to use it to overcome your desire to …
- Relating to Results… After all, we’re not here to learn about Buddhism, we’re here to learn how to overcome our own suffering. And although the general principles may be the same now as they were 2,500 years ago, the particulars are ours and those are the things we have to deal with directly. And it’s by learning how to apply the principles to …
- Identifying Weeds… the preference to develop states of mind that really do give a greater sense of ease, a greater sense of well-being in the present moment, and lead on to things that are even greater, ultimately to the end of suffering. Those are the plants you want to foster. Anything that gets in the way is a weed. Do your best uproot the weeds …
- Right View about Right View… to develop dispassion for suffering, to abandon its cause, to realize its cessation, and to develop the path. In other words, they’re meant to serve a purpose. And because they don’t qualify as categorical, that means that they’re useful only for certain times and situations. It’s important to keep that point in mind. The forest ajaans bring this point out …
- The Kindness of Body Contemplation… It’s also meant to overcome any kind of attachment to the body, realizing that this attachment can cause all kinds of problems, all kinds of suffering. I read recently about a lay teacher who decided that this was a bad kind of contemplation, meant to make women feel inferior, and so she had decided to substitute it with another one, having goodwill for …
- Goodwill for the Whole Committee… Other identities that you’ve taken on yourself, that you’ve cobbled together from other people’s examples, are things you had to think up on the spur of the moment when you were suffering. Each of these identities is based on a desire, on a certain idea about the happiness you want, and a certain strategy for how you’re going to go …
- Right Now… And when that sensitivity is fully developed, it can take you all the way to the end of suffering. So what you’re doing right now is very important.
- The Lightness of the Concentrated Mind… And because that stuff is done in ignorance—that’s why it leads to suffering. So when you sit down to meditate, as the Buddha said, first your thoughts of sensuality fall away. Your thoughts of unskillful qualities fall away. Then your directed thought and evaluation falls away. Then the movement of the breath falls away. These different layers of sankhara, fabrication, fall away …
- Meditator, Mediator… So it’s through the path that you find the end of suffering. The qualities of mind that you need in developing that skill are the ones that eventually will reach the point where they really can’t see it through on their own. The only way they can see through is by sharpening them through the practice. So you don’t just do …
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