Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"
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- Better to Give than to Consume… It’s the first of the perfections, the first of his teachings in the gradual discourse, when he’s leading people step-by-step up to the four noble truths. He starts with generosity and then moves on to virtue, the rewards of virtue in heaven, then the drawbacks of those rewards, and then finally the value of renunciation. Once the mind can see …
- Observing the Mind at the Breath… In a lot of cases, the Buddha taught people just the four noble truths, and that’s plenty right there. And a lot of his instructions on meditation are simply variations of the duties of the four noble truths. Getting to see, as he said, a disturbance in the mind, which is another name for subtle stress, is a beginning step in comprehending stress …
- Clinging & Its Cure… But from the Buddha’s point of view, the shoulds he recommends, the shoulds of the four noble truths, are designed specifically for your true happiness. So even though there’s conflict in the mind, it doesn’t have to always be there. We have to understand these forms of clinging because we have to use some of them, their skillful forms, on the …
- Passion for Dispassion… This is why, when you think about the Buddha’s teachings, you should always think about the four noble truths, and in particular about the third noble truth, because it’s telling you that there is this opportunity, there is this possibility. If you learn how to have dispassion for your old ways of looking for happiness, there’ll be genuine well-being. Finally …
- Choices in the Present… Is it something to be encouraged or not? This is where the Buddha’s teachings in the four noble truths come in. The Buddha didn’t simply sit around thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have four truths to teach to people? How about five or how about three?” He wasn’t thinking in grand terms that way. He said, there are four …
- Here to Learn… We start out with our ignorance, and we’re learning about the four noble truths and the duties that are appropriate to them. But we’re not going to really know them until we’ve completed the duties. In the meantime, we’ll gain a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong, but even for those who gain the Dhamma eye—in …
- Mindfulness Aims at Concentration… That, of course, connects with the four noble truths. In the standard formulation for arising in the Dhamma-eye, you’ve seen that everything that is subject to origination is subject to passing away. Again, it’s not “everything that arises passes away”—it’s “things that are caused,” and we’re talking about causes coming from within the mind. You’ve learned about …
- The Power of Present Karma… In other words, try to figure out where it fits in the scheme of the four noble truths. What’s going on in the mind? There are things, he said, that you want to see as inconstant, stressful, not-self. A lot of your thoughts are just that. He says, “Learn to see them as alien, an emptiness,” to take some of their heavy …
- Victory… When the four noble truths talk about suffering, they’re talking about this suffering, the suffering that’s caused from within. So explore this area. Like the body from within: How do you know the body from within? You know it through the breath. And the breath here is not just the air coming in and out of the lungs; it’s also the …
- A Victory that Matters… He defines ignorance not so much as ignorance of his teachings as a whole, but more ignorance of the four noble truths and the tasks appropriate to them: comprehending suffering, abandoning its cause, realizing its cessation, and developing the path to its cessation. Just knowing those things doesn’t end the problem. You have to actually look at things in terms of the noble …
- Cut the Currents… The final effluent is ignorance—not seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. In other words, you see things in terms of “me” and “mine,” “what I want,” “what I don’t want,” whereas the four noble truths don’t talk about who you are or where you are. It’s just: There is suffering here in the clinging, and it’s …
- The Origination of Suffering… When the Buddha set up the four noble truths, he set up the path that we’re following to attack the problem not at the problem itself, but at the cause. It’s like having a boat with a leak, and water’s coming into the boat through the leak. If you just spend your time bailing out the water, bailing out the water …
- Nothing Wrong with Right & Wrong… And he taught the four noble truths as truths that lead reliably to a noble goal, i.e., a goal that was unconditioned, a goal that was not subject to death. That’s what he meant by “noble.” The truths are both noble and true in that they reliable set out the right duties for getting to a dimension that doesn’t die. Those …
- Complaining Rights… What’s the connection between the four noble truths and the three characteristics? Which noble truth do they fall under? Well, the three characteristics—they’re actually three perceptions—are tools for performing the duties of the four noble truths. They don’t come under any one particular truth. You apply them to the stress so that you can see the arising and falling …
- Strength of Conviction… When you follow that process into its subtler levels, you discover that that issue of skillfulness and unskillfulness is what underlies the four noble truths. The four noble truths are ways of looking at experience. You’re not so much concerned about who you are; you’re simply concerned with which actions are skillful and which actions are not. What’s causing suffering? What …
- Jhana: Responsible Happiness… That’s what the four noble truths are all about. They’re like a doctor’s prescription. What’s the illness? Where does it come from? Cure the illness by getting rid of the cause. Everything the Buddha taught was meant to be healing, a means to happiness that’s blameless. So if you start feeling guilty about practicing concentration, remind yourself this is …
- The Challenge of Right View… He talks about the four noble truths and how each noble truth has three levels of knowledge associated with it. He goes through all the permutations: Three times four is twelve. That’s why the Dhamma wheel on the wall over there has twelve spokes. The first level of knowledge is knowing the noble truth—in other words knowing suffering, knowing the cause of …
- Infinity… What kind of intentions, what kind of actions right now, what kind of views right now, would lead to the way out? As the answer to that question came, he saw that the way out was to see things in terms of the four noble truths, to understand what suffering is, and what he was doing right now to cause suffering right now. He …
- Concentration & Insight… The best questions have to do with the four noble truths—where is there any stress or suffering right here?—although there are other useful ones as well. Say you sense that there’s greed, anger, or delusion lurking around in the mind. The Buddha says if you really want to understand them to the point of getting past them, you have to understand …
- Skills to Make a Difference… So even these basic principles of action teach you a lot—and get you ready for the other set of categorical teachings, which are the four noble truths. These truths, too, don’t just sit there. They have duties associated with them. The first truth is the fact that stress is in clinging to the aggregates. The duty is to comprehend that: in other …
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