Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"
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- A Positive-Sum Game… That’s the beginning of the four noble truths right there. So this is a positive-sum game. If you learn to live life playing this game rather than getting involved in other games, everyone comes out ahead.
- The Right Focal Length… He made an interesting observation that the problems stemmed from the fact that a lot of the people in the community didn’t take the four noble truths seriously. What he meant, of course, was that they kept complaining about things outside, blaming their sufferings on conditions outside, and never taking seriously the idea that maybe their suffering was actually coming from within, and …
- Goodwill as a Guardian… When the Buddha saw that his listeners could acknowledge these drawbacks, then he’d teach them the four noble truths. Those truths are counterintuitive in a lot of ways. But once he had prepared you to accept these truths, you’d be inclined to follow the duties with regard to them. Many times, as he would teach people these truths, they would have their …
- Wise Endurance… The same when you apply the teachings of the four noble truths: Being with what is unpleasant, being with what is unloved, is one of the examples of suffering listed in the first noble truth. But remember: All the forms of suffering that are listed there boil down to the five clinging-aggregates: clinging to form, feeling, perception, thought fabrications, or consciousness. In particular …
- Sensitivity & Skill… And as you master this as a skill, you start adopting the four noble truths because they’re a way of looking at things directly related to the approach of someone who wants to master a skill. Where are things not going well? What’s causing it? How can you attack the cause? And what do you have to do to attack the cause …
- Why Limit Yourself?… Why would you want not to believe in these things? Why would you not want to believe in the four noble truths that suffering is clinging, it’s caused by a craving, it can be ended by ending the craving, and there is a path of practice to follow? This is a set of beliefs that offers hope. If you don’t want to …
- How to Be Self-Centered… After all, that’s the Buddha’s analysis in the four noble truths. We suffer not because of what other people do, and the path to the end of suffering doesn’t lie in straightening other people out. We suffer from what we’re doing, and the path lies in straightening out ourselves. So that’s where our focus has to be. That’s …
- Customs of the Noble Ones… When you look more carefully at the Buddha’s teaching, you realize that, in the four noble truths, he divides desire into two types: There are the three types of craving under the second noble truth; and then there’s the desire that you generate under the factor of right effort in the path, the fourth noble truth: You generate desire to abandon unskillful …
- Keep It Simple… And you’re applying the four noble truths as you do that. Wherever there’s any stress that you notice is unnecessary, just stop the cause, abandon the cause. In other words, stop doing whatever is causing the stress. So as we’re meditating, we’re just progressively making ourselves less and less burdened. The trick lies in being consistent. This is why restraint …
- Comfortable With the Truth… When they talk about ignorance of the four noble truths, that’s precisely what they mean: We don’t see our own craving, we don’t see our own ignorance in action, and so we keep doing things to cause suffering and we don’t realize what we’re doing. Or when we happen to do things right and we’re not causing ourselves …
- Inner Worlds… Remember the Buddha’s teachings on the four noble truths: The suffering that weighs the mind down is the suffering that comes from inside, not from things outside. If we’re constantly focusing on things outside—“This is wrong, that’s wrong”—we’re missing the point. The point is that we’re making ourselves suffer from this thing or that thing. And we …
- Don’t Believe Everything You Feel… The duties that the Buddha assigns, of course, are the duties in the four noble truths—and they’re duties in your favor. It’s not that he’s some god who has come down and simply ordained that this must be that way and that must be this way. Instead, the Buddha as an expert discovered the best way to treat suffering: comprehending …
- The Power of Intention… That’s the basic message of the four noble truths. The role of intention in that is so important that, even though the Buddha didn’t make a habit of going around and arguing with people, he would go out of his way to argue with people who taught teachings that would deny the power of your intentions. Those who said that there really …
- The Tricks of Denial… That’s looking at wisdom and forgetting the four noble truths. Because when issues arise, you want to see what’s the cause, what’s behind them. That’s seeing the connection between cause and effect—and that’s real wisdom. That’s real discernment. So in this case, you want to see, when something’s arising that pulls the mind in, what’s …
- Four Determinations… But the whole point of the Buddha’s teachings, the whole point of the four noble truths, is that the cause for suffering is inside. The things outside are simply excuses. The real cause is our own clinging and craving, our desire and passion. When you understand that, you look inside and you can see where you’re disturbing yourself. Or as the mind …
- Centered on Concentration… It gives you a sense of proportion, a sense of direction in the practice—what the Buddha calls appropriate attention, seeing things in terms of the four noble truths: in other words, looking at the present moment and realizing there’s not just one thing you can do in the present moment, there are actually four things you have to look for, four things …
- Quiet in Every Way… You can take this approach as a basic principle all the way through the practice because it embodies a lot of different teachings, like the four Noble truths: look for where there’s stress, in this case the disturbance; see what you’re doing to maintain it; let it go. This approach also embodies the teachings on emptiness. Notice what your mind is empty …
- Being a Buddhist… What he learned about karma, what he learned about rebirth, what he learned about the four noble truths: You take that as your guide. You take the Buddha’s awakening as the event in world history by which you look at the rest of your life, you look at the rest of the world, to get a sense of the possibilities within you and …
- Cooking with Kamma… But, as the Buddha’s pointing out in the four noble truths, the suffering’s not necessary. There’s the suffering in the three characteristics, which is in the way that things change. But that, he says, isn’t the suffering that weighs the mind down. The suffering that weighs the mind down comes from craving and clinging. Craving and clinging he defines in …
- The Heightened Mind… But to do that, you need the daily practice of sitting here with nothing else to do, no other responsibilities, no other duties—just the duties of the four noble truths, one of which is to develop concentration, to develop discernment, to develop your mindfulness, all the factors of the path that things you need right here. In this part of your awareness that …
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