Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Dedicating Merit… So all of a sudden, as she was meditating, she saw all these people who were suffering from having done bad kamma in one way or another. It was a good lesson in kamma for her. When she first started seeing these things, she didn’t want it to happen. She asked Ajaan Fuang how she could become insensitive to these things. But his …
- Right Speech, Inside & Out… Right after right view explains the causes for suffering — the three kinds of craving: for sensuality, for becoming, for non-becoming — you’d think that right resolve would focus on abandoning those three kinds of craving. But it doesn’t. You resolve on getting rid of sensuality, but then also on getting rid of ill-will and harmfulness, two types of unskillful qualities, which …
- Think… Okay, the insight was good, it’s part of the path, but the latching on to it is not part of the path, and it’s going to cause more suffering—which is why you have to be quick. Shooting far distances means seeing implications. There’s that passage in the Not-self Discourse where the Buddha talks about how you look at the …
- Physical Pains & Painful Words… Where do you not see the distinction? Where have you glommed things together? The mind has a tendency to glue all kinds of things together, to make a big mass and a big mess of suffering. Can you use perceptions that cut through that glue? Because the pain, on its own, it is something separate. It is something different. It’s a different kind …
- The Power of Choice… As the Buddha said, when you realize that everybody is working toward happiness, you can’t base your happiness on something that’s going to create suffering for other people, because they’re going to be working against your happiness. You may be able to fend them off a for a while, but eventually that kind of happiness will have to get destroyed. So …
- Kamma & Rebirth… We do know when we feel suffering and we know when we feel relative ease, but that’s about as much as we know. As we grow up, there are people to explain things to us. This is where human beings have an advantage over animals. There’s nobody to explain anything to a dog or a cat about how to live. There’s …
- What’s Relative, What’s Constant… They’re part of the teaching on the four noble truths, the part of the teaching that can help put an end to suffering. So, instead of seeing these teachings as weird artifacts of Asian culture that somehow got stuck in the Buddha’s teachings, realize that they’re something he thought about and he chose carefully as tools you can use. So learn …
- Sensitive to Fabrication… The Buddha’s saying basically that we suffer because we do all of this wandering around, all of this fabrication, out of ignorance. But if you can start learning how to do it with knowledge, you can stop wandering. The knowledge required is not just being aware of doing it. You have to try to look at these things in terms of: Where is …
- The Riddle Tree… The more natural the questions and the experience, the deeper the insight is going to go, and the more relevant it is to the actual suffering that’s going on in your mind. So this is why meditation is a process of exploration. You’re not trying to clone enlightenment. You’re trying to explore cause and effect as they reveal themselves in the …
- Figuring Out Concentration… Because after all, if you don’t work on this problem now, when is it going to get solved?—the problem of how the mind wants happiness, acts on desires for happiness, but can still suffer from its own actions. You’re sabotaging your own desire for happiness. Why is that? What’s going on? Well, here’s a chance to find out. Get …
- Cut, Cut, Cut… What are we doing right now that’s causing us suffering? You have to learn how to look right at your own actions, and that requires you to strip things down, make things as simple as possible. This is one of the reasons why the ajaans go into the forest, to go off to be on their own. They strip away as many issues …
- Infinite Good Humor… The things that people want most are the very things that make them suffer most. For a long time, before their awakening, the arahants had been doing that sort of thing as well. This is why when they laugh at this tendency, it’s not a harsh laugh. They know what it’s like; they’ve been there themselves. But they were able to …
- Technique & Attitude… It’s all simple, unadorned truth on the ways of the mind, and how the ways of the mind can be mastered so that you can get beyond suffering. These are good things to think about as a background to the meditation. Similarly with the recollection of the Dhamma. You just think about what kind of teaching this is. Recollection of the Sangha: the …
- The Power of Present Karma… In the same way, you’re here because you’ve been suffering and you want to find a way out, so that you’re no longer trapped. Being convinced that there’s a way out opens the possibility. If you’re convinced that there’s no way out, then there’s nothing you’re going to do. You’re trapped. You’re trapping yourself …
- Culture Shock… His totally overwhelming motivation was a desire for true happiness, a happiness with no drawbacks — in other words, a happiness that wasn’t going to cause suffering for other people either. It would have to be a happiness built on developing his inner resources, one that wouldn’t have to take anything away from anyone else. Instead of taking things, he lived off of …
- 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 …
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