Search results for: "Suffering"
- Page 139
- The Graduated Discourse… You use the concentration to understand where it is that you’re causing unnecessary stress and suffering for yourself. What are you doing? What are you holding on to? Why do you cling? Try to apply the four noble truths to what you’re doing right now. If it seems too abstract to think in those terms, just remind yourself of the questions that …
- Shelter… After all, that’s what understanding suffering and stress is all about—it is *the big *problem. And the Buddha’s approach is a problem-solving approach. You look for the cause and then you attack the cause. That’s what puts an end to the problem. If you just attack the surface, the problem stays and festers. So when an issue comes up …
- Samvega & Pasada… your determination to get past suffering. There’ll be all kinds of other difficulties, other things you’ve got to let go of, but hold on to this until it’s taken you there. Then you let go. So, identify with this determination: You’re going to stay here with the breath and then see what else comes up. Whatever else it is, remind …
- Squeezing Goodness Out of the Aggregates… As the Buddha said, if you cling to them in the wrong way, there’s going to be suffering. If you cling to them in the right way, they can actually become part of the path—these activities the mind does in terms of feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness. This is how we make the path. And we look after it. That’s another …
- The Discernment of a True Person… It doesn’t mean you don’t have any preference for, say, happiness over suffering. You do prefer happiness. The issue of preferences has to do with the means. What do you have to do to gain that happiness? There are certain things that you’ve got to do if you’re going to find true happiness and release, and some of them go …
- Merit & Skill… But the highest motivation the Buddha gave is that you realize that you’re suffering, and this is the way out. You need to train the mind, because on the one hand, there’s the sense of ease and well-being that comes when you get the mind to settle down. And then there’s this greater happiness that comes as you’re able …
- The Story behind Impatience… For example, you can look at your past suffering, recognizing that a lot of it was caused by your own unskillful habits, and come to the conclusion that your skillful habits need some work. That kind of story helps bring you into the meditation. But there are a lot of other stories that pull you away. You’ve got to watch out for those …
- Your Tranquility & Your Insight… You try teaching the students and then you learn what works and what doesn’t work, until you solve this problem of why the mind wants nothing but happiness but keeps on doing things that cause suffering. When that problem is solved, you can really rest.
- Investing in Noble Wealth… Do you really want to put an end to suffering or are you just shilly-shallying around? Practicing when it feels convenient, practicing when it feels easy and then running away from the practice when you run into a problem: That’s not going to get you anywhere. So this is the underlying attitude that feeds all the other forms of noble wealth: the …
- Getting Connected Inside… After all, ignorance is the cause of suffering, and you’re trying to decrease that by spreading your awareness around, making it more inclusive, more connected. This is how you get deeper and deeper into meditation, by trying to re-establish connections or establish new ones. Because the more the breath energy is connected in the body, the less need you’ll have for …
- Mindfulness Immersed in the Breath… And we want a happiness that doesn’t inflict any pain, any suffering on anyone else. We’ve also realized that this happiness has to come from causes. The path that the Buddha lay down doesn’t simply float by. So we say, “May I be happy.” We’re also saying, “May I do the things that lead to happiness.” That’s why we …
- Sense Pleasures & Sensuality… He told me one night of a time when he was suffering from really bad headaches for weeks after weeks after weeks, having tried all kinds of medicine. Finally, he realized the pain was not something to try to run away from or to cure. The pain was something to be comprehended. So he sat up and watched the pain. From the way he …
- Sensual Passion… A lot of people complain, “Why look at the negative side of the body? People suffer from a negative body image already.” Well, one, if you weren’t really attached to the idea that you want your body to look good, this contemplation wouldn’t bother you. And two, you don’t want a happiness that doesn’t allow you to be honest—that …
- Insight Is a Judgment Call… Wisdom begins with those questions: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term harm and suffering?” Look at everything in terms of actions—this reality that we’re trapped in, that we’ve created, that we keep on creating through our own fabrication. You could say it …
- The Wisdom of Merit… And we have to be very careful, because sometimes the things we like to do give rise to suffering, and things we don’t like to do can actually lead to happiness. So when he tries to motivate us to be more generous, he points out that we really do benefit in terms of our own self-respect, our own state of mind, and …
- The Fetter of Perceptions… So what perceptions of the body, what perceptions of pain, are true for the purpose of gaining release, of learning how not to suffer? You can answer that question only when you first are willing to admit to yourself: “The way I’m perceiving my body may not be the most useful way of perceiving it, and my direct experience of the body, my …
- Sense Restraint… This is what the Buddha calls sensuality and it’s one of the things we have to resolve to overcome—both because it causes suffering right here and now, and because it gets in the way of the path. You’re trying to get the mind quiet. As the Buddha says, you’re secluded or withdrawn from sensuality; you pull out of those thoughts …
- Remember This… We can think of all the harm that other people have to done us, and we can stew in that for quite a while, thinking that we’re perfectly justified in wanting to see those people suffer. The mind gets sleepy? You tell yourself, “Ah, a sign that I’m getting drowsy. I’m getting tired. I need to rest.” In other words, you …
- Self-Control… What we need is a skill in learning how to deal with aging, illness, and death without suffering from them. This is precisely the skill the Buddha taught, so that no matter how much pain there is, no matter how much injustice there is in the world, we can still maintain our equilibrium. We don’t let somebody else’s injustice make us become …
- Against the Stream… As with all kinds of karma, the question is, “When is it skillful, when is it not?” And the skillful question is: “What when I do it, will lead to long term welfare and happiness? What will lead to long term harm and suffering?” It’s the same with your thoughts: Which thoughts, when you engage with them, will lead to long-term welfare …
- Load next page...
