Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Stake Out
     … There’s a lot of suffering that you’re creating out of nothing, and the suffering is real. I was listening to someone recently talking about how he was in dialogue with a monk who had been studying some Mahayana texts. At first he felt really offended by those texts, because they were saying suffering isn’t real. Suffering doesn’t exist, the cause … 
  3. In the Context of the Path
     … There’s the perception of inconstancy, the perception of stress or suffering, and the perception of not-self. These perceptions play a role in two of the duties of the four noble truths: the duty to comprehend suffering and the duty to abandon its cause. What is suffering? The Buddha gives a list. There’s the suffering of birth, aging, and death. The suffering … 
  4. Why Mindfulness
     … We’re here to train the mind, to understand how the mind creates suffering for itself, and how it can learn not to create suffering. Yet all of a sudden, we find ourselves running restaurant reviews through the mind, planning for tomorrow. Memories of childhood come through and you say, “Boy, I haven’t thought of that in a long time. Let’s look … 
  5. Victory
     … Get to know this area really well, because your lack of skill in dealing with it is what causes the suffering. But that lack of skill can be turned into skill if you bring the right knowledge. 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 … 
  6. Antidotes to Craving
     … the resentments, the feuds, the desires for revenge.” So poor people suffer the way poor people suffer. Rich people suffer the way rich people suffer. Devas have their suffering. Everywhere you can go, there’s going to be suffering. That chant we have on the five recollections: It’s only a part of the sutta. The other part of the sutta says, “It’s … 
  7. Samvega
     … And again, it’s not that we’re going to have to suffer in order to get out. You’re sitting here with the pain, the question should be, “Okay, why is there suffering?” Remember that the Buddha says it’s not necessary. Remember that the suffering of the four noble truths and the suffering or stress in the three characteristics are two different … 
  8. The Dualistic Path
    The Buddha once said that all he taught was suffering and the end of suffering—or you can translate it as stress and the end of stress. Those are two things right there. And it’s an important distinction to keep in mind, because everything else in the Dhammais based on that distinction. You can say that it’s dualistic, but it’s dualistic … 
  9. We All Start with an Impure Heart
     … He taught the end of suffering for all beings, and he didn’t ask them ahead of time, “Is your motive for coming here pure?” Or, “The suffering that you’re suffering from, is it something that you deserved?” He could have said that, based on your passed kamma, you deserve to suffer, so he could just leave you there. But he never said … 
  10. Dedicating Goodness, Spreading Goodwill
     … But for the happiness to be true, you have to look squarely at suffering, to see what the mind is doing. Because both happiness and suffering, in the Buddha’s analysis, are things that you do. Usually when we’re suffering we think that we’re on the receiving end of something bad. That may be the case. There are a lot of bad … 
  11. Tranquility & Insight in Tandem
    The Buddha said he taught two things, suffering and the end of suffering, or in other terms, stress and the end of stress. That’s why we’re here. In fact, that’s what all the teachings really are all about, understanding suffering and stress, and then doing what we can to put an end to it. With each of the four noble truths … 
  12. Strategic Thinking
     … He takes elements out of the first two noble truths—suffering and the cause of suffering—and puts them to use in the path to the end of suffering. Remember that suffering, as he said, when you boil it down to its essence, is five clinging-aggregates: form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness as they’re clung to. The cause of suffering is craving … 
  13. The Psychology of Harmlessness
     … that by letting go of the craving and clinging there is an ultimate happiness that has no suffering, no stress at all. That truth changes the landscape. The things that you’re holding on to look pretty paltry in comparison with the possibility of the total end of suffering. Why are you holding on when the end of suffering is possible when you let … 
  14. Adult Dhamma
     … The first was his saying that the path is basically a matter of learning to embrace our sufferings together with our pleasures in the world, to realize that you can’t have the pleasures without the sufferings—which is pretty much saying that there is no real end to suffering. The other disturbing point was that he illustrated his principle with a story about … 
  15. Goodwill as a Guardian
     … But, then you have to ask yourself further: “What do I gain from their suffering? What would the world gain from their suffering?” You might say, “Well, maybe they’ll come to their senses.” But a lot of people, when they suffer, don’t come to their senses at all. They just get more and more entrenched in their old ways. The world would … 
  16. Patient & Inquisitive
     … So here the Buddha’s saying that the way we feed is making us suffer. In fact, the need to feed is his paradigm for suffering. So you have to figure out: What does he mean? And why would that be suffering? He sets out the four noble truths not simply as a nice thing to think about. He’s challenging you. Each one … 
  17. Warrior Knowledge
     … But there’s also a lot of suffering that’s totally unnecessary: the things we inflict on ourselves through our own lack of skill in managing our minds. That’s something we can work on in the meditation, learning how to deal more skillfully with issues as they arise, recognizing which patterns of thought are skillful and don’t lead to suffering, which ones … 
  18. Not-self as a Raft
     … And all of those ways are suffering—the first noble truth. There’s a duty with regard to each of the four noble truths, and the duty with regard to suffering is to comprehend it, i.e., to develop dispassion for it. The duty with regard to the cause is to abandon it. The cessation of suffering is to be realized and the path … 
  19. Discernment Is in the Doing
     … In other words, you see people who are down—they’re in a position of weakness and suffering—and you’re not going to pile on. You want them to get out of that suffering. Of course, that applies to you, too. You see that you’re suffering, so you want to get out of that suffering. This is the motivation for our practice … 
  20. Noble Standards
    Noble Standards May 15, 2012 The truths the Buddha taught about suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the way to its cessation are called noble truths. And the question is, what’s noble about them? To begin with, they’re motivated by the desire to put an end to suffering—which on the one hand may seem pretty common. Everybody tries to suffer less … 
  21. Bad Stuff Happens
     … He’s saying, “Look inside for the causes of your suffering. If you take care of those causes, then things that happen outside won’t make you suffer.” So we have to be willing to look within. What are we holding onto? That’s his analysis. We suffer because of clinging. Sometimes this is hard to admit to ourselves, which is one of the … 
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