Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Using What You’ve Got
     … The Buddha says suffering is what? The five clinging-aggregates. How are you going to learn about suffering? Well, you put those aggregates all together right here. You learn to put them together in different ways. You can make them into different levels of concentration, and once the concentration gets developed, you apply it to different issues. Ajaan Fuang used to say that there … 
  3. Ask the Right Questions
    The Buddha once said that all he taught was suffering, or dukkha, and the end of suffering. But there were people who came to him with questions about things that were not related to that problem: In cases like that, he would put the question aside. He illustrated his decision with the story of a man who’s been shot with an arrow. People … 
  4. Intro to Breath Meditation
     … And you begin to get sensitive to the ways that the mind causes unnecessary stress and suffering for itself. This is the big irony in our lives: We all want happiness and yet we cause ourselves a lot of stress and suffering. This is what the Buddha’s teachings on the four noble truths are all about: the stress and suffering we cause through … 
  5. Shoulds & Ideals
     … understanding suffering, what’s causing suffering, the end of suffering, and the way to the end of suffering. This is where his shoulds come from, because each of these four truths has a duty. Suffering is to be comprehended. You want to understand not only that it’s there, but also exactly what it is, to be able to observe it. It’s something … 
  6. Skills Needed at Death
     … Arahants have right view and they don’t suffer. They’re with pain but they’re not suffering from it. They’re with difficult situations in life and they don’t suffer from them. So the fact that you’re suffering means that you have wrong view in there someplace. When you can identify the different perceptions and stories that go around pain, ask … 
  7. Not Getting What You Want
     … You can look at something you don’t ordinarily like to look at, which is the extent to which you’re causing yourself suffering. When the Buddha analyzes suffering in the four noble truths, he talks about the suffering of not getting what you want, the suffering of having to be with what you don’t like, and of being separated from what you … 
  8. The Buddha’s Secret Weapon
     … If you want to use cause and effect to put an end of suffering, this is how you should look at things. Each of the factors of right view has a “should” tacked on. When there is suffering, you should comprehend it. When there’s a cause of suffering, you should let it go. With elements of the path rising up, you should develop … 
  9. The Third and a Half Noble Truth
     … that we can, through human effort, reach an end to suffering. It will involve some suffering along the way. But the Buddha was always the sort of person who would think strategically. Some pains are useless as part of the path; others are very useful. After all, we’re going to be learning about suffering. We have to comprehend it. What better way to … 
  10. Not-self for the Sake of Happiness
     … As the Buddha defines suffering, suffering is clinging, and clinging to a particular idea of self is one of the forms of suffering. This analysis goes against the grain. But depending on how insightful your reflective self has been, you’d be more or less inclined to listen to his arguments. This is one of the reasons why he gives the graduated discourse, to … 
  11. De-domesticated
     … As the Buddha pointed out, the problem in life is suffering. This is something that each of us experiences for him or herself. I can’t feel your suffering. You can’t feel my suffering. No matter what the politicians may say, they can’t feel your pain. This is something we each experience in a part of our awareness that’s exclusively ours … 
  12. Freedom, Conditioned & Not
     … And of course the issue of suffering places a lot of dualities on you right here and now. Suffering is different from not suffering; the cause of suffering is different from the cause of not suffering. Unless you’re totally dead, you’re going to prefer not suffering. So the fact of suffering forces dualities on us. And as the Buddha points out, it … 
  13. The Treasure of Equanimity
     … Politicians can say that they feel your suffering, but that’s politicians. They’ll say anything. You know that your suffering is your suffering. Other people can sympathize with it and give you condolences and try to do the best they can, but they can’t come in and take your suffering away. It’s like a child, crying uncontrollably. You hold the child … 
  14. Give of Yourself
     … After all, it is your suffering you’re dealing with—the actions you’re doing that are causing that suffering, and the actions you could do to put an end to suffering. How sincerely do you want to put an end to suffering? Here again we come to that issue of how you make yourself worthy of the Dhamma. The Dhamma isn’t something … 
  15. The Perception of Inconstancy
     … When you cling to things that change, you want them to be a certain way—but then they change into something else, so there’s going to be suffering. You want to comprehend that, that that’s where the suffering lies. It’s not so much in the fact that things change. Suffering lies in the fact that you’re clinging. So you try … 
  16. Food for Consciousness
     … But not only that, we’re also experiencing the causes of that pain and suffering from within, too. And even more important, we can manipulate them, we can do something about them from within so as to put an end to suffering. That’s the important part of his teachings. We’re not trying to solve our sufferings by changing the world outside. And … 
  17. Good & Independent
     … At the same time, when the mind settles down like this, it’s a lot easier for it to discern what’s actually going on—to see why it’s causing suffering. When blatant suffering comes up, you can see it really clearly. But there are subtle sufferings as well, and the subtle sufferings have subtle causes, which is why you have to get … 
  18. In Touch with Your Fabrications
    Modern psychology tells us that we’re suffering because we’re not in touch with our feelings. The Dhamma tells us that we’re suffering because we’re not in touch with how we create feelings. “Feelings,” here, of course, are emotions. They’re a kind of saṅkhāra, or fabrication, and there are basically three: bodily, verbal, and mental. Bodily is how you breathe … 
  19. Games the Mind Plays
     … You’re on this side where there’s suffering. On the other side is total freedom from suffering. You want to get over to the other side. When the image is simple and clear like that, it seems like this would just be a simple thing. You’re suffering. You don’t want to suffer. You get across the river. You follow the path … 
  20. Not What You Are, What You Do
     … To begin with, when the Buddha talks about the causes of suffering, he doesn’t trace it back to what you are. He doesn’t say you suffer because you’re basically bad, or because you’re basically good but somehow have been socially conditioned to forget your true inner goodness. He comes back instead to what you do. That right there is a … 
  21. Accepting the Way Things Function
     … If you catch yourself feeling ill will to the point where you actually want to harm somebody, you’ve got to stop and think: “This person is suffering already. We’re all suffering already. And you want to add more suffering to yourself by making that other person suffer more?” That’s a useful way of thinking. At the very least, it reminds you … 
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