Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. Mindful of the Buddha’s Shoulds
     … And you’re asking questions in line with the four noble truths and their duties again: Where is the clinging here? Can you see it come and go? And what’s the craving? Can you see that come and go? To see these things, you have to get the mind very, very still. And you’ll find that better than rapture and refreshment and … 
  3. Shame & Compunction
     … They’re built into the structure of the four noble truths, the noble eightfold path—all the really basic teachings. When the Buddha taught, he didn’t simply want to describe reality out there. He wanted to show a path, a path of action. He wanted his words to perform, to inspire you to follow that path, a path that leads to true happiness … 
  4. The Path of Giving
     … The Buddha started his graduated discourse with giving, and from there he worked up to the four noble truths. What’s the connection? Well, think about what you’re doing when you give a gift. You’re breaking down a barrier. The gift goes across the barrier around your sense of who you are as opposed to who somebody else is, whether it’s … 
  5. Appropriate Attention
     … When we’re sitting and meditating, we focus more of our attention on the four noble truths, which means focusing appropriate attention on the duties of the truths. Like right now, we’re trying to get the mind to settle down, create a state of right concentration, which is something we should develop. As for anything that would come up and interfere with the … 
  6. A Skillful Heart
     … You look at the four noble truths: The whole idea of focusing a teaching on the problem of suffering has to be motivated by goodwill. You look at all of his teachings, and you can see that there’s goodwill underlying them all. When you look at a particular teaching, you should always ask yourself: “If I have goodwill for myself, goodwill for other … 
  7. Lavish Goodwill
     … Whereas the leaves in his hand did—and the leaves in his hand stood for the four noble truths. So, the whole teaching of the Dhamma has a purpose, and its purpose is the happiness of all. Now, it’s not going to make them happy by saying pleasing things all the time. But it is going to make them happy by giving them … 
  8. Going Out of Your Way
     … When he was going to explain the four noble truths and wanted to prepare his listener, he would start out with generosity. And even though generosity is not mentioned in the noble eightfold path, it is mentioned as one of the precursors to the path. As the Buddha said, if you’re stingy with material things, stingy with the Dhamma, there’s no way … 
  9. Mindful Judgment
     … You bring your full presence of mind as to what’s appropriate, what’s not appropriate, what needs to be done in terms of the four noble truths. You want to understand suffering. You want to let go of its cause and you want to develop a path to the end of suffering, to abandon its cause so that you can realize the cessation … 
  10. Fighting off Ignorance
     … It’s more like the gradually developing knowledge that comes with a gradually developing skill, because each of the four noble truths has a skill, a task appropriate to it. You try to comprehend where there’s stress, where there’s suffering, so you can see the cause. You come to see that the cause is your craving, which is really unnecessary. When you … 
  11. Free Sources of Energy
     … If you bring some knowledge to it—in other words, you start thinking in terms of the four noble truths—you see that you’re suffering not because of the chores outside or the fact that you’re tired. You’re suffering because of craving and clinging. That puts a different cast on things. And if you can apply those categories to your situation … 
  12. A Passion for the Path
    Sometimes the question comes up that when the Buddha listed the four noble truths why did he list the cessation of suffering before the path to the cessation of suffering? The answer is in the third noble truth. He’s not simply stating the fact that there’s a cessation. He’s also stating a principle. The cessation comes when you develop dispassion for … 
  13. Feeding the Mind
     … Four is the four noble truths, five is the five clinging-aggregates, and so on up through ten. The most interesting question, though, is, “What’s one?” Some teachers might answer that there’s the oneness of the world, or the oneness of the underlying principle of all things. But the Buddha’s answer was something totally different. “What’s one” is “All living … 
  14. Delight in Stillness
     … You don’t have to look elsewhere, anywhere far away for the suffering of the four noble truths. Right there, where the mind is disturbing itself, that’s suffering. You want to figure out why: What’s the craving that’s getting in the way? What are you clinging to? So do your best to get the mind to settle down. Find the greatest … 
  15. Abusing Pleasure & Pain
     … That’s stress and pain in the four noble truths. And that’s not necessary. In Ajaan Lee’s phrase, the pains in the body are natural pains. The pains caused by craving are unnatural. We create them—and yet we don’t have to. That’s what you need to learn how to see. Why do you create these kinds of pains? Because … 
  16. The Uses of Pleasure
     … Pain, of course, you use as a topic of your analysis so you that can see the four noble truths. As you use pain, you have to be learn how to use pleasure so that you have a good place to back off when dealing with the pain gets too much. You’ve got the pleasure to depend on. And relating to the pleasure … 
  17. Where You Set Your Heart
     … In the four noble truths, the first two truths describe the way things are. The third and the fourth, though, describe the way things can be if you set your heart on them. It’s up to you to take those truths and make them true, make them realities in your heart. ** This is why the teachings on karma are so basic to the … 
  18. A Multilingual Mind
     … What is the cause, what is the effect? Which causes are better than other causes? Which effects are better than other effects? This is why the Buddha’s most important teachings are the four noble truths, because they point to cause and effect: skillful cause and unskillful cause, desirable effect and undesirable effect. Simple, very basic, basic terms: pleasure, pain, ease and stress, happiness … 
  19. The Need for Right View
     … The second level is to look at things in terms of the four noble truths. As you’re sitting here, what are you doing? It’s not the case that you just stop doing and are simply being. Being, again, is a type of activity. As the Buddha points out, becoming comes from certain choices. So what you want to choose is to focus … 
  20. The Walls of Ignorance
     … We tend to think of ignorance, or avijja, in very abstract terms — not knowing the four noble truths, not knowing dependent co-arising, not knowing the Deathless — but you can’t chip away at those forms of ignorance until you’ve chipped away at the more blatant, immediate ones: the mind’s habit of disassociating, of leaving gaps in its inner conversation. Say you … 
  21. Learn from the Ants
     … Shooting in quick succession means seeing things in terms of the four noble truths—being very quick to see, when something comes up in the mind, what’s the suffering? What’s the craving? Which mental states are part of the path? Piercing great masses is piercing ignorance. So, the work gets subtler. But there are still things you have to overcome, still battles … 
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