Search results for: "Suffering"
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- As Days & Nights Fly Past… And the other way around, people who have done lots of bad things in their life, but they suddenly get right view towards the end of the life—that can delay the results of the bad karma they would have had to suffer. What you’re doing as you’re dying, the state of the mind in the present moment, is an important thing …
- Antidotes… After all, some of the worst delusions that meditators suffer from come from a concentrated mind. Ajaan Fuang had a number of students who became quite psychic through their meditation. In some cases, the more psychic they were, the more they were impressed by how accurate their intuitions were. But then when mistaken intuitions came up, they wouldn’t recognize them. They wouldn’t …
- The Path of Adventure… It’s just a lot of suffering and it’s aimless. Sometimes you go here, sometimes you go back, sometimes you go around and around, and you go off someplace else. But nothing really gets accomplished. There are billions and billions of steps in samsara, and even then, if you don’t get on the path, there’s no point of arrival. So just …
- In the Eyes of the Wise… They were going to make him a teacher, but he realized that the skills he had learned under them didn’t constitute the end of suffering. He wanted to find something better than that, so he didn’t let their praise turn his head. He tried the path of extreme austerities for six years but realized that that, too, led to a dead-end …
- Locate Your Craving… If it’s harming somebody else, we say, “Well, that person doesn’t matter,” or “It’s not really harming them,” or “Their suffering has nothing to do with my actions,” and we get into huge denial. This is why the pleasure of concentration is so important. It gives you an alternative pleasure so that you can look at these other pleasures and be …
- Subduing Greed & Distress… The mind has a strange tendency to want to stay in areas where it’s familiar even though they involve suffering. The fact that the mind is familiar with these old ways of acting tend to make it unwilling to move into something new because the new areas are new. They require new skills, and there’s a different sense of you. After a …
- Taking Responsibility… So reflect on the topic of appropriate attention, this ability to ask questions that give you insight into why there is suffering and how it can be stopped. You’ve got your laboratory right here: the body and the mind. These things have been showing their truths for who knows how many lifetimes, but you haven’t noticed. If you learn to observe, the …
- Mindfulness Defined… As the Buddha says, there are times when affection is a cause for suffering, so you have to watch out. Sometimes mindfulness is defined as appreciating the moment for whatever pleasure it can offer. In the Buddha’s vocabulary, that’s contentment. Contentment is useful in areas where you’re experiencing physical difficulties, but it’s not always useful in the area of the …
- Concentration & Insight… So many times we do things that lead to stress and suffering and harm, and yet we wonder, “Why?” Well, it’s because we don’t know what we’re doing. But when the mind is centered and still like this, you can see more clearly what’s coming up in the mind—what intentions are beginning to form—and you can decide whether …
- The Limits of Old Kamma… That’s something we all suffer from every day, every day. This is why we have the reflection on the four requisites. If we didn’t have food, clothing, shelter, and medicine, the body would die. We’re born with these gaping needs. But at the same time, you can learn how to use the body as a basis for the practice. You can …
- More than a Sliver of Mindfulness… As the Buddha said, we suffer because we fabricate things in ignorance, but we can bring knowledge to the process of fabrication. Then it becomes part of the path. And it’s sustained by developing a sense of well-being that you can then learn how to carry through the day. For example, as you’re doing walking meditation, remember: You’re trying to …
- Mindfulness of Death… Your daily habits, your meditative skills—these are the things that will determine whether you suffer or not. This way, you’re prepared emotionally, but you’re also prepared in terms of the skills you’ll have to bring to bear. When you approach mindfulness of death from this perspective, then you’re going to get the most out of it. So as the …
- Help Others, Help Your Mind… They include the principle that skillful actions should be developed, and unskillful actions should be abandoned, and then the four noble truths, which are basically the application of that first principle to the problem of suffering. The discernment comes in seeing what’s skillful and what’s not, in your own mind. When you follow certain patterns of thinking, where do they lead? The …
- Paying Off Your Debts… realizing that whatever suffering there is in life comes from within, from your own actions, particularly from actions of the mind. But you have the freedom to change, the freedom to learn from your actions. There’s a passage where the Buddha says that the mind is luminous and it’s defiled by passing defilements. The common image is the sun, with clouds blocking …
- A Leap of the Heart… You’ve been feeding on things, the feeding is suffering, and now you’ve seen enough so that you don’t want anymore. When you want to stop feeding, that’s disenchantment. And from there, the dispassion comes in. The dispassion then undercuts any motive for continuing to fabricate whatever you used to take as food. So this is the process. Look for the …
- Standing Outside Your Thoughts… But then you find yourself falling into the present, this gift that you’ve given to yourself, and sometimes that can involve a lot of suffering because your thoughts can take you in all kinds of places. As we meditate, we’re trying to get some control over this process. There’s the belief that meditation involves no thinking at all, which is not …
- Observant & Ingenious… Remember your major duties—to comprehend suffering, abandon the cause, realize its cessation by developing the path—and then follow those duties by being observant, by being ingenious. That’s how awakening becomes your own, because you’ve developed the powers of your own mind.
- Dhamma Medicine… One is the question, “What when I do it will lead to my long-term harm? What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” In other words, start by seeing the connection between your actions and the happiness and well-being you’re going to experience, or the harm and misery, the suffering you’re going to experience …
- Three Levels of Evaluation… Hakuin, the famous Zen monk, talks about suffering from Zen sickness. Basically it was breath energy getting stuck in his head. To counteract it, he’d visualize a ball of butter on the top of his head melting down over the body. That was how he brought the energy back down. You might also think of the breath energy coming in and out the …
- The Power of Truth… what you’re doing that’s causing stress, what you can learn how to stop doing that’s causing stress, and seeing the state of the end of stress, the end of suffering that results. We’re not here trying to clone someone else’s insights. We’re following a path, and this is the path of looking for the stress, learning to comprehend …
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