Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. If These Walls Could Talk
     … Then the question is, how do you do it? How do you recognize when something’s not up to standard? And how do you encourage yourself to bring it up to standard? Remember that the Buddha’s purpose in establishing these standards—the duties of the four noble truths—was compassionate. The whole purpose of the four noble truths is to help you put … 
  3. Ways to Think
     … Transcendent right view focuses on the four noble truths, seeing how even a good rebirth and a good identity are still bound up in suffering. These truths teach you that, instead of thinking in terms of your identity—about who’s doing the action, who’s going to receive the results of the action—you just look purely at action in terms of cause … 
  4. In Search of What’s Skillful
     … The next question that came to his mind was: “What kind of views would take you away from having to be reborn? Is there a kind of view, is there a kind of action that leads to the end of views and the end of actions? That’s how he started looking into the four noble truths, which are a skillful application of the … 
  5. Your Highest Aspiration
     … And what it comes down to, as the Buddha says, is inappropriate attention, not seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. Now, this doesn’t mean just not knowing about the four noble truths. It means not really looking at our experience in terms of those truths, in terms of those categories, and not developing the skills based on those categories. The … 
  6. The Wisdom of Self-regulation
     … The other was the four noble truths: stress, the cause of stress, the cessation of stress, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress. Both of those teachings have built-in imperatives. The first one is obvious: If something skillful comes up in your mind, you want to develop it, to nurture it, to help it to grow. If something unskillful … 
  7. Not What You Are, What You Do
     … That’s the basic principle of the four noble truths. Each of the knowledges in the four noble truths deals with a task that you develop as a skill. That in and of itself is another important statement. If the ignorance at the root of the problem were simply a matter of not knowing your true nature, it would be an all-or-nothing … 
  8. A Meditative Life
     … As for the second level of Right View, the transcendent level, that means seeing things in terms of the four noble truths: stress and suffering, the cause of stress and suffering, the cessation of stress and suffering, and the path of practice to that cessation. Just look at the whole range of your experience: Instead of dividing it up into its usual patterns of … 
  9. Seeing Distinctions
     … This is why the Buddha gives you the framework of the four noble truths. That’s what you’re using to watch things with. When you look from that angle, then they separate out on their own. So discernment is a matter of seeing distinctions that builds on the oneness of concentration. Keep this in the back of your mind as you meditate, that … 
  10. Things As They Function
     … After all, that’s the message of the four noble truths. It’s because we approach our experience with ignorance that we’re going to suffer, and part of that ignorance has to do with the processes that follow after sensory contact: sights coming to the eyes, sounds to the ears, smells to the nose, tastes to the tongue, tactile sensations to the body … 
  11. Right Resolve in Real Life
     … The discernment begins with the realization that, as the four noble truths say, if the mind is suffering, it’s because of something in the mind. An abbot of a monastery in England was talking one time about a number of members of his community who were complaining all the time about the conditions in the monastery: This wasn’t right; that wasn’t … 
  12. A Larger Perspective
     … That’s why the four noble truths are the four noble truths. What’s noble about them is that they’re true across the board. The word ariya means not only “noble,” but also “standard,” “universal.” The way suffering happens, why it happens, what can be done to put an end to it: The basic outlines are the same for everybody. And it’s … 
  13. Relationships
     … And that, as you carry it through, relates to the four noble truths, because the unskillful part is whatever is causing suffering. The skillful part is whatever leads you away from suffering. So, say, when you have difficulties in a relationship, just look at what are the good parts and what are the bad parts. What are the skillful parts of your feelings about … 
  14. The Dhamma Wheel Shakes Up the World
     … You may have noticed that passage where the Buddha talks about the four noble truths and the three levels of knowledge with regard to each truth: He goes down the list, listing each truth and the three levels of knowledge as they apply to each. First there’s the truth of suffering—which is not that life is suffering. I’ve said it many … 
  15. Strength of Conviction
     … Then the question is, “Is there a set of views that could inform the way out?” That’s what the four noble truths are. Instead of looking at beings going through worlds, he turned around to look at his mind, and just saw events: Views. Intentions. Basically, instances of name-and-form. When he looked at things in those terms, he was able to … 
  16. Can Do
     … When the Buddha taught the four noble truths, that was the one teaching he gave where the earth quaked. It’s interesting that when he taught the five brethren the three characteristics, nothing quaked. But the four noble truths caused the earth to quake. He’s basically saying that suffering is something you can comprehend; you can abandon the cause, and you can realize … 
  17. Not-self as a Raft
     … In fact, he said that even the question of whether there is a self or is not a self was one to be put aside, because if you answered it either way, yes or no, you’d get entangled in what he called a thicket of views, and it would get in the way of looking at things in terms of the four noble … 
  18. Judicious vs. Judgmental
     … Back in the 70’s I read a book about Buddhism whose author tried to organize everything around the four noble truths but couldn’t figure how the four sublime attitudes fit into the framework of the four truths. They just didn’t seem to connect anyplace at all, so the author ended up treating them as an entirely separate topic. But actually the … 
  19. Fabricating with Awareness
     … Now, the cure is to replace the ignorance with knowledge, knowledge in terms of the four noble truths: exactly what is suffering or stress, what its cause is, the fact that it can be ended by eliminating the cause, and then the path to practice that can eliminate the cause. You know these things and you apply them to the fabrication of your experience … 
  20. Instructions for a New Monk
     … Seeing the four noble truths around suffering and stress is basically the way to the first level of awakening. Then learning how to see one of these effluents, becoming, and learning how to abandon it gets rid of ignorance takes you to full awakening. Becoming is basically your sense of identity in a world of experience, which can either be here in this human … 
  21. Time & Place
     … The other categorical teaching is, as he said, the four noble truths. The nature of suffering is always the same. The nature of its cause—its origination—is always the same. And the duties that fall to the truths are duties that are always incumbent on us: to comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize its cessation, and develop the path that attacks the problem … 
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