Search results for: "Suffering"
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- The Power of Intention… And as he found, it was the way to end suffering. Then he spent all the rest of his life teaching that way to other people as the most valuable thing that he could teach. His main message was that the suffering is not due to unpleasant things outside—sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. The suffering comes from our craving. It comes from …
- Maintaining Stillness… Most of the harm and evil you see in the world these days is because people cause so much suffering for themselves. They’re suffering, so they find it easy to make other people suffer as well. The cure is for each of us to turn around and look at the ways in which we’re causing ourselves to suffer, realizing that we have …
- The Larger View… The teaching on karma gives you more levelheaded attitude toward people’s suffering—your own suffering, the suffering of other people—and it puts it in a much larger perspective. It’s simply a question of action and result. You’ve got to be careful about your actions. That’s the take-home from all this. Whenever the Buddha would teach about the universe …
- “May I Be Happy”… Even if you’re not in a position to offer help, you do wish for that person to end his suffering, even when the suffering is self-inflicted. And as often happens when people inflict suffering on themselves, they have a little extra left to spare so they inflict suffering on other people. It would be a lot better if they learned how to …
- The Uses of Pleasure & Pain… When pain and stress and suffering come, you want to comprehend them. Comprehending pain and stress teaches you a lot about the mind. The Buddha never said that life is suffering. He just said there’s suffering in life, which is a very different teaching. As long as there’s going to be pain, as long as there’s going to be suffering, get …
- Think… Think about these things.” If the problem of suffering could be solved by not thinking, then why do we have so many books and books and books in the Pali Canon? All that Dhamma that the Buddha uses to explain the problem of suffering is because suffering has so many implications, so many ramifications, so many ins and outs. You’ve got to learn …
- You Are Not a Textbook… Why are they causing you suffering even though you don’t want to suffer? Why are they causing you stress even though you don’t want to experience stress? There are times when there is dukkha in your concentration. And it’s certainly not suffering, but it is stress. This is why we have to translate dukkha with that phrase, “stress and suffering,” to …
- Lessons from the Buddha’s Awakening… It’s all a great oneness.” But if everything were a great oneness, what are we doing here? The Buddha said of the things that arise and pass away, and especially suffering: It’s real, not other than what it seems to be. It really is suffering. The cause of suffering really is a cause of suffering. And the path really is the path …
- The Buddha’s Wisdom… The problem is suffering—the suffering we inflict on ourselves but don’t have to. The suffering he identified as clinging to the five aggregates. And he defined clinging as desire and passion. The cause of suffering is craving. Craving, too, is desire and passion, the difference being that the word for craving, taṇhā, is also the word for thirst—you’re looking for …
- Abandoning Effluents (2)Luang Pu Dune, one of Ajaan Mun’s most senior disciples, had a famous short explanation of the four noble truths, in which he said that the cause of suffering is the mind flowing out. The path to the end of suffering is the mind knowing the mind. This teaching fits in with what the Buddha taught about asavas, or effluents: the things that …
- The Power to Transcend Suffering… When the Buddha talks about suffering, we think he’s being pessimistic. Actually, we’re the ones who’ve been pessimistic, thinking that we’ve got to suffer. He says that the suffering in the heart is unnecessary, and that there’s a way out. So that’s what we’re working on here: the way out of suffering. But it requires getting acquainted …
- One Thing Clear Through… But why have ill will for them? Why ask for them to have even more suffering? They’re going to be suffering from their past actions anyhow. And it’s not the case that when people suffer, they begin to realize the error of their ways. All too often, they dish out more suffering, excrete more greed, aversion, and delusion into the world. It …
- Evaluation… In that way, you find that you can face any kind of suffering, any kind of pain at all with a sense of confidence—remembering that that kind of suffering is optional, the suffering that comes from your own ignorance, so that you don’t have to keep on being a victim over and over again.
- Own Your Actions… The things that are coming in may be the raw material for creating that suffering, but you don’t have to create suffering out of them. Now, some people don’t like to hear this. It makes them think that they’re being blamed for their sufferings. But it’s not so much a question of blame, it’s just noticing where the cause …
- Learn from the Ants… The end of suffering comes when you just accept that. Look for the fact that whatever you love and hold on to is going to leave you someday. Accept that, and then when it leaves you, you’re okay. That’s accepting suffering and claiming it to be the end of suffering. Again, that wouldn’t have satisfied the Buddha. And don’t let …
- The Uses of Equanimity… But that doesn’t really end the suffering. And that’s not what the Buddha taught at all. He didn’t claim to teach only one thing. He taught suffering and the end of suffering as two different things. There is a way out. There is an escape. Suffering does end. But you have to learn to accept where there is suffering and what …
- Right View, Right Attention… Appropriate attention is the quality of mind that takes what you’ve learned from right view about what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, what leads to suffering, what leads away from suffering, and actually applies that knowledge—in this case, each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out. What this means is that you’re approaching the present moment with …
- People Suffer from Their Thinking… After she left, he commented to one of his students, “People these days suffer because of their thinking.” It’s interesting the way he said that—“people these days”—as if people didn’t suffer from their thinking in the past. Maybe he meant that prior to that time, Thailand was poor and most people were just worried about eating, surviving. Now that people …
- More than Just Letting Go… that the Buddha said he wanted to end all suffering in the world. Well, no. He wanted to end the kind of suffering that people cause themselves unnecessarily. That’s what he focused on. He couldn’t go out and erase their suffering for them, but he could teach them how to solve their own sufferings themselves. After all, each of us suffers from …
- Assumptions… to question the assumptions we have that make us suffer. And as part of the path, you replace them with other perceptions, some of which you learn from other people, such as the Buddha, and others of which you actually notice for yourself. So you don’t feel so compelled to keep on suffering. You start noticing what you’re doing that’s causing …
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