Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. Thoughts About Thinking
     … It’s in line with the four noble truths. We want to see which thoughts are part of the cause of suffering and which thoughts are part of the path away from suffering. It’s as if you have a factory here that’s producing very erratically—sometimes good products, sometimes bad—and you’re trying to figure out: Why is that? Sometimes it … 
  16. Willing to Learn
     … Still, he gives us the tools—his instructions on the four noble truths. Try to comprehend the suffering, he says. When you see the craving and the ignorance that underlie the suffering, try to let go. Develop the qualities of mind—whatever’s needed in terms of concentration or insight—so that you can really look at suffering long and hard. Look at stress … 
  17. Consciousness, Awakened & Not
     … Where are you causing suffering through what you’re doing? Each of the four noble truths involves an action. Clinging in the first noble truth is something to be comprehended. The craving in the second noble truth is to be abandoned. The third noble truth is dispassion—dispassion comes about as a result of looking directly at your actions. When an unskillful form of … 
  18. Right View Comes First
     … Now, in giving this talk, when the Buddha got people to this stage, when their minds were focused, gathered into one, he would teach them the four noble truths. This is right view on the transcendent level. He would have them look more deeply into their minds and tell them that whatever suffering they had was something they were doing—they were clinging, to … 
  19. To Stay the Course
     … It’s an excellent lesson, on a beginning level, in the four noble truths. After all, when the Buddha analyzes suffering, he doesn’t talk about just any old suffering. He focuses on the suffering that the mind creates for itself when it’s clinging. And where does that come from? It comes from the mind’s own actions. It comes from its cravings … 
  20. The Pursuit of True Happiness
     … So when he taught the four noble truths, he said, “With regard to the first truth, this is the task you want to accomplish: to comprehend suffering, to understand what’s creating such a burden on the mind.” He had discovered that there are two kinds of suffering: the stress in the changefulness in things in life, but also the unnecessary stress and suffering … 
  21. The Right Piece in the Right Puzzle
     … The other one is basically a subtler working out of that principle into the four noble truths: the truth of suffering, which is clinging; the truth of the origination of suffering, which is craving; the truth of the cessation of suffering, which is dispassion for that craving. And then there’s the truth of the path of practice that leads to the cessation of … 
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