Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. The Teacher Inside
     … It’s still suffering here. It wants to do something about it. With time, the teacher part of the mind has more and more to offer, because it’s more and more experienced. As Ajaan Fuang used to say, this teacher inside the mind is a very important part of the meditation, first to make sure the mind does its work on time. He … 
  3. Analysis of Dhammas
     … What is skillful, what is not, what leads to long-term happiness, what leads to long-term suffering and pain—which is a good working definition for skillful and unskillful. But you’ve got to look. You get ideas from other people but then you’ve got to test them. As the Buddha said, he points the way, but it’s up to you … 
  4. Verified Confidence
     … Whereas if you believe that your actions do have consequences and that it is possible through your actions to put an end to suffering, that opens possibilities that you would otherwise close off. Why close them off when you’re not one hundred percent sure? So those are the pragmatic proofs. It’s up to us to decide whether they’re convincing and worth … 
  5. A Sense of Time & Place
     … Sometimes we think, “I’d like to have that social position and I’d like to have this security and I’d like to have things this way.” But then you look at people who have things that way, and you have to remember they have the same types of suffering that you do. You begin to wonder: Is it really worth having that … 
  6. Beyond Gratitude
     … But look at the suffering involved in the interconnected system we live in: It’s not really all that wonderful. Other people deny that they have any debts at all. But that’s like going down to the bank, after you’ve borrowed a lot of money, and telling them, “Okay, I don’t have any debts to you anymore.” The bank’s not … 
  7. Working Hypotheses
     … But he said a lot of those things would be totally useless in the task of putting an end to suffering. He taught what was only absolutely necessary, and he saw this part of that handful—this leaf of karma, this leaf of rebirth—as necessary. So give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he knew something you don’t know. Everyone takes … 
  8. Evaluating Your Practice
     … Patience, of course, requires equanimity, the ability to step back from things and watch them, not to identify closely with things that are causing you to suffer. That requires the mindfulness to remember that you have the choice: If a feeling comes up in the mind and it seems really heavy, really painful, you do have the choice not to identify with it. You … 
  9. A Good Independent Self
     … It’s a good practice when, for example, you’re suffering from a disease, and there are a lot of things you can’t do, you can still think thoughts of goodwill. That way, the goodness and happiness of your mind don’t have to depend on the health of your body. Think of the case of the Buddha. Devadatta had rolled a stone … 
  10. Yes & No
     … See them in the light of what the Buddha teaches about the causes for suffering. In other words, you don’t deal with the world on its terms. You bring the world into your mind on your terms so you can see the extent to which your concept of the world is a construct. You watch the mind as it makes that construct and … 
  11. In the Details
     … Can you hold on to the perception of that person being a suffering person, someone worthy of compassion? Here again, the root causes of anger may not go away, but it doesn’t hurt to cut the grass off at ground level. When you see it sprout up a little bit, cut it off again. What’s really important is that you learn to … 
  12. Housecleaning
     … If you have work you need to do, you can do it right here—because your work is to figure out how the mind causes itself unnecessary stress and suffering, and that work is best done right here. When you’re rested, you can do this work. When the work gets tiring, you can just go back and rest again. This home we have … 
  13. Part II : Common Problems
     … That’s how we get to know the third noble truth—the cessation of suffering, the cessation of stress—which you don’t have to comprehend beforehand. Just know that it’s really good and it’s something you can realize. Your duty is to comprehend stress and to abandon the cause by developing the path. The cessation will then happen on its own … 
  14. Concentration Nurtured with Virtue
     … These things involve suffering one way or another, not only for yourself in trying to get these things, but also for other people, other beings, that are involved in one way or another in the production chain. That thought is meant to give rise to a sense of samvega. If you want to be totally harmless, you have to get out, you have to … 
  15. A Dhamma Bucket List
     … The Buddha calls this penetrative discernment into arising and passing away that leads to the right ending of stress and suffering. You don’t simply watch things come and go. As you meditate, you try to get a sense of which things are good things to come and which things are good things to go. That’s what’s meant by penetrative. And you … 
  16. Separate
     … There’s nothing that the world outside can grab hold of to make you suffer. So, in independence there’s freedom, and then, in that freedom, you’re free from fear. When you’re free from fear, there are no handles that anybody can get on your mind. In that way, the mind has a strong sense of its separate goodness. It’s not … 
  17. The Six Properties
     … As with all of the Buddha’s teachings, the importance of the teaching is what you do with it, and what it does for you in helping to gain insight into how stress and suffering are created in the present moment — and how you don’t have to create them, if you pay attention, if you work at these skills.
  18. Safety in an Uncertain World
     … Remember the questions that lie at the beginning of wisdom and discernment, "What when I do it will lead to my long term harm and suffering? What when I do it will lead to my long term health and happiness?” When the Buddha says long-term, he means really long. Many, many lifetimes. Our unskillful actions can have an impact not only in this … 
  19. Pleasures & Pains on the Middle Way
     … At the end of the hour, the friend opened her eyes and said she’d never suffered so much in her life. We can do this to ourselves. You can sit here and be miserable, feeling that you’re undergoing sensory deprivation. Or you can have the right attitude, seeing that here is your opportunity to learn something about the breath, to learn how … 
  20. An Anthropologist from Mars
     … As for pain, we all know that the Buddha said that pain, suffering, stress—however you translate dukkha—is a noble truth. There’s a lot to be learned there. So try to face the ways of the world with equanimity and not let yourself get sucked into the narratives or systems of values that people use to tie you in, to keep you … 
  21. Gladdening the Mind
     … In other words, you show homage to the Buddha by gaining release from suffering for yourself. That’s all he asked for. His was the most compassionate of motives. So when you’re getting discouraged about the path, think about the other paths you might be following in life and realize there’s nothing quite like this one. Even when you haven’t yet … 
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