Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. In Touch with Your Fabrications
     … When you realize that something even as basic as physical pain is a construct, that you don’t have to construct that way, then you can start asking yourself about your emotional pains. “Do I have to construct them in this way? If it’s causing me to suffer, why am I putting this together like this?” The whole message of the four noble … 
  3. A Clear, Calm Lake
     … When you develop that principle even further, it turns into the four noble truths and their duties, as we chanted just now. Stress is to be comprehended. Its cause is to be abandoned. Its cessation is to be realized, and the path to cessation is to be developed. How do you do that? You develop qualities of ardency, alertness, and mindfulness. These things will … 
  4. Wisdom for Dummies
     … The distinction between skillful and unskillful forms the basis for the four noble truths. When you dig deep down into why people suffer, you find that it’s because of craving. How can people stop suffering? By developing the path, which is primarily composed of good qualities of mind. So you realize the mind has to be trained. That’s another basic principle of … 
  5. Mindfulness: Get with the Program
     … You can begin to see them from the perspective of the four noble truths. Where, in a particular mind-state, is there craving? Where is there clinging? Then you remember: What do you do with craving? What do you do with clinging? You try to abandon craving. You try to comprehend clinging. You remember these things because you’re close to your landmark. This … 
  6. Potentials for Rapture
     … Appropriate attention basically means seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. You can ask yourself, “Where is the pain?” Or you can ask yourself, “What’s the path right now? What can you do to develop the path?” To be able to focus usefully on the pain requires that you have a sense of well-being, a sense of being here in … 
  7. The Language of the Heart (2)
     … is why it happens. This is how I can put an end to it.” And part of putting an end to it requires that you understand it in those terms. The four noble truths, the factors of dependent co-arising: These teachings may seem foreign at first, but that’s an indication of how alienated we are from our own minds or from understanding … 
  8. Selfing & Not-selfing
     … We’re talking about the duties of the four noble truths, and there is the duty of realizing unbinding, but once you’ve realized it, there’s nothing more you have to do with it. It’s there. It’s outside of the four noble truths. There are no duties with regard to it. But to get to that point, you have to learn … 
  9. Dispassion & Delight
     … We have to remember that when the Buddha introduced the idea of these three perceptions, it was to people who, one, had already gained stream entry, and two, had learned the four noble truths along with the duties appropriate to those noble truths. It’s the noble truths, along with their duties, that provide the context for these perceptions. A lot of the duties … 
  10. The Bright Tunnel
     … When the Buddha talks about the four Noble Truths, he says our duty with regard to suffering is to comprehend it. Comprehending means understanding to the point where you can let go. When you see that the suffering isn’t necessary, that the mind itself is what’s creating the causes, then you stop naturally. As long as you feel that you’ve got … 
  11. Mundane Right View
     … Most of us, when we first hear about the Buddha’s teachings, learn the transcendent level of right view, which is the four noble truths, about suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. We tend to skip over the mundane level of right view. But that mundane level forms the basis for understanding the transcendent. As with any kind of … 
  12. Endurance Through Discernment
     … Because this relates to the Buddha’s explanation in the four noble truths. When he explains the noble truth of suffering, he starts out with things we ordinarily relate to suffering: aging, illness, and death, separation from the things we like, having to stay with things we don’t like, not getting what we want. But then he points out the common denominator in … 
  13. Fear & Insecurity
     … Back in the fifties, when social scientists were sent over to Thailand to figure out how to use Buddhism to help protect Thailand from the Communists, many of them went over having read something about the four noble truths. They came to the conclusion that Buddhism was all about suffering, suffering, suffering, suffering, and it seemed pessimistic to their eyes. But when they went … 
  14. Put Your Books Back on the Shelf
     … There are the four noble truths. Each of them has a duty. Your duty right now is to develop the path. The path is going to be your breath: the mind with the breath. That’s all you have to pay attention to. Now, it may happen that problems come up in the meditation. You remember something you’ve read that will help, but … 
  15. Delight in the Breath
     … Just now we chanted the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, which is all about the four noble truths. It starts from a very basic question: Why is there pain? Why is there suffering? And is there a way to put an end to it? The Buddha explains why there’s pain, and he also explains that, Yes, it is possible to put an end it. Human beings … 
  16. Anger
    Anger August 28, 2003 The Buddha’s basic teaching on insight is the four noble truths. We tend to lose sight of that fact, thinking that insight means seeing the inconstancy, stress, and not-selfness of things. It does in part, but that insight has to take place in a larger context, which is of the four noble truths. And these truths in turn … 
  17. Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
     … If you decide to take the Buddha’s path, you start out with conviction in the four noble truths, and you try to apply that. That turns everything into the path. When the path really comes together, it leads to something that is beyond. You have your first taste that it really is true what the Buddha said: There is this dimension outside of … 
  18. Potentials
     … That’s the whole message of the four noble truths. If you’re going to get rid of something unskillful, you’ve got to find the cause—the potential that gives rise to it—and put a stop to the cause. Only then can you be safe from it. But there are also good potentials. We read about the Buddha seeing that certain people … 
  19. All Your Old Baggage
     … After all, the whole notion of skillful causes and good results, unskillful causes and bad results lies at the essence of the four noble truths. So the Buddha never said not to pass judgment on things or not to be judicious in what you’re doing. There’s a difference between passing judgment and being judgmental. Being judgmental coming to a situation with a … 
  20. Make a Difference
    When we first hear the four noble truths and we have a sense of conviction that they’re true, the proper response is to see them as an opportunity to make a difference. You realize you’ve been acting in ways that lead to suffering, but you don’t have to continue in those ways. This means that the Buddha doesn’t simply teach … 
  21. Just Rightness
     … You want to resolve to put an end to the stress, to do the duties that are appropriate for the four noble truths. That’s how right view and right resolve go together. Building on that, there’s right speech, right action, and right livelihood. These factors help create a situation where it’s easier to get the mind to settle down. If you … 
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