Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"
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- Appropriate Attention… So, as you go through your meditation and you run across something that wears the mind down, weighs the mind down, ask yourself, “What are you craving? What are you clinging to? And how?” If you can see that you’re craving something that’s placing a weight on the mind, how about letting it go? Each of the four noble truths has a …
- Equanimity Isn’t Apathy… Look at the Buddha’s teaching on the four noble truths. You treat the cause of stress differently from the path to the end of stress. You try to abandon the cause and to develop the path. It’s not that you say, “I don’t care which happens, whether it’s stress or not stress.” You do care. You care so much that …
- Factors for Stream Entry… It basically comes down to thinking in terms of the four noble truths, trying to figure out, “Where is the stress here? What is the stress?” The Buddha identifies is as clinging to the five aggregates. What are the aggregates? What is clinging? You want to explore that. You want to comprehend what’s going on as you’re doing it, because all too …
- Clinging to Karmic Diarrhea… That’s one of the duties we have with regard to the four noble truths—and, as the Buddha said, to comprehend means to develop a sense of dispassion. You might think, “Why would we be passionate for suffering?” The problem is that there’s a side to suffering we like. In other words, the things that we do that cause suffering hold some …
- The Buddha’s Good News… After all, the four noble truths focus on suffering. You look at his worldview, and there are a lot of hells. The possibility of falling to the realm of the animals, hungry ghosts, is a possibility. But then you look at the people who listened to the Buddha’s teachings when he was alive. They found those teachings to be good news. The good …
- Determination… This is the basic teaching of the four noble truths. There are certain kinds of craving that lead to suffering. There are certain desires, in the factor of right effort in the path, that lead to the end of suffering. So the Buddha’s basically giving us guidance in how to sort through our desires. That guidance comes first in the path as right …
- To Understand the Path… Sariputta once said that the four noble truths cover all the Dhamma, encompass all the Dhamma in the same way that the footprint of an elephant can encompass the footprints of all the other animals on land. So when you’re practicing, it’s good to think in terms of the four noble truths, not only what they are but also the duties appropriate …
- Thinking About Rebirth… when he focused on the present moment, saw things in terms of the four noble truths, completed the duties for those truths, and gained full awakening. But the Buddha didn’t get to the present moment without having gone through his knowledges about rebirth and the role of karma in rebirth. The way he went from knowledge of his own rebirths to the role …
- Discernment… So, what kind of knowledge about arising and passing away would lead to the deathless? And to the right ending of stress? The Buddha goes on to define discernment in terms of the four noble truths. Here’s where he lays it out: what’s skillful and what’s not. Craving is an unskillful cause because it leads to clinging, which is suffering; the …
- No Happiness Other than Peace… Instead of looking at your experience in terms of yourself and other people or the world, i.e., objects in the world, you look at things simply in terms of the four noble truths—as stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path leading to its cessation—terms that don’t refer to people at all. But each of these terms carries a skill …
- Something New… In fact, that’s what the four noble truths are all about. Why are we suffering? We’re suffering because of things we’re doing, but we don’t have to keep on doing the things we’re doing. We can change. We can bring something new into the world. In fact, with every moment, we have that possibility. You can bring something new …
- Solo Practice… And that’s what connects to the four noble truths. You see what the mind does that creates suffering, you see what it does that puts an end to that suffering. That’s the basic pattern. Those are the basic questions. They start from the simple process of learning to be observant of your breath. And then the focus moves inward so that you …
- Mistakes… Even before he would teach people the four noble truths, he taught something called the Graduated Discourse. It starts out with generosity, the joy that comes with generosity and then the long-term benefits. Virtue was the next topic, and again, the joy of being virtuous, of looking at your behavior and seeing that there’s nothing in your behavior that you could criticize …
- The Safety of Dualities… In fact, I was reading just the other day a passage where the author said that when the Buddha was teaching the four noble truths, he was coming from a position of non-duality, which doesn’t make any sense at all. If any number is dual, it’s four: a dual duality. And the truths are four precisely because the Buddha’s trying …
- Bless Yourself… It was all about the four noble truths. And the four noble truths are about what your desires can do. There are desires that can lead to suffering; there are desires that can lead to the end of suffering. The Buddha deals with the problem that you feel within—suffering—but he also says the cause of the problem is also within. And the …
- Why We Bow Down… He never claimed that he could give you a logical proof of nibbāna, for example, or of the four noble truths—even of the principles of mundane right view, that your actions really are yours. In other words, you’re the one who decides what to do. It’s not some outside force acting through you. And they really do have an impact. Your …
- Resisting the Germs of Defilement… Sometimes this quality is equated with seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. And that doesn’t mean just knowing what the four noble truths are, but remembering what they’re for: They’re for dividing up our experience so that we know what to do with it—because each truth has a duty. Suffering, or stress, is to be comprehended. Its …
- Believe in Your Actions… The purpose of that teaching is to inspire you to be ready to listen to the four noble truths, to think about, “What would it be to put an end to the causes of suffering, totally?” As for mundane right resolve, that grows into transcendent right resolve by actually putting the principles of right view into practice, learning how to divide your thoughts into …
- Stress… There’s the stress in the three perceptions, and there’s the stress in the four noble truths. The stress in the three perceptions has to do with the raw material from which you’re trying to create a state of happiness, create a state of well-being, realizing that the raw material is the raw material for that purpose. But it’s like …
- Pleasure & Pain… He started with the four noble truths. What’s the duty with regard to the first noble truth of stress and pain? Our duty is to comprehend it, to understand it, which is very different from the way we normally react to pain. Usually, when pain arises in the body, we do our best to push it away or to will it away. All …
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