Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. Cook Your Mind
    The passage we chanted just now, Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion, often leads to the question, “Where’s the wheel?” It’s in the part where the Buddha talks about how he came to a realization of each of the four noble truths that had never occurred to him before, and not just noting what the truth was in each case, but … 
  3. The Brightness of Life
     … These reflections seem to confirm the statement that you often hear about the four noble truths, especially the first noble truth “The truth of suffering is that life is suffering.” But the Buddha never said that, and those reflections don’t stop at the first four. They include the fifth, which is that we’re the owners of our actions. In the same way … 
  4. Admirable Friendship
     … In other words, you look at things in terms of the four noble truths and their duties, as best you understand them. And you try to get better and better in your understanding. That’s where admirable friendship comes in. You want to be with people who are wise, but not only wise: generous, virtuous, people who have a sense of conviction in the … 
  5. The Treasure of Equanimity
     … When the Buddha’s talking about issues of the four noble truths—i.e., the fact that there’s suffering, there’s a cause of suffering, and there’s a path to its end—he’s talking about things that you experience from within that nobody else can experience for you. Politicians can say that they feel your suffering, but that’s politicians. They … 
  6. No Extra Arrows
     … That second arrow stands for the suffering covered in the four noble truths. That’s the suffering we can do something about. That’s the suffering that weighs down the mind. Without that suffering, the pain comes, the pain goes, but the mind doesn’t suffer. After all, the Buddha had backaches, he endured other pains, but he didn’t suffer. He just had … 
  7. Ardency
     … Appropriate attention means seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. You see that there is stress, there is a cause for stress—something arises along with it, something you’re doing right now that creates the stress. There’s the basic stress that’s in everything that’s compounded, but here particularly we’re talking about the stress that comes from things … 
  8. Fighting Spirit
     … That’s the difference between the suffering in the three characteristics and suffering in the four noble truths. In the three characteristics, the simple fact that things change leads to stress. As long as you’re experiencing a body and experiencing the human world around that body, there’s going to be change, and there’s going to be stress coming from that. But … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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