Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 24
  2. Determined to Practice
     … Where is the suffering here? What’s causing it? How can it be put to an end? When you recognize where there’s suffering, you realize that there’s a duty to be done: to try to comprehend it. This is not our normal reaction to suffering. Our normal reaction is to run away or to push it away. But if you run away … 
  3. The Missing Truth
    The Buddha says that when we experience pain, stress, suffering, the mind has two reactions. One is bewilderment. We don’t understand how the suffering has come. The second is a search: “Is there anyone out there who knows a way or two to put an end to the suffering?” This means that we’re looking for three kinds of truth. We’re looking … 
  4. Dhamma is Timeless
     … The cause of suffering, the cause of stress, is something that should be abandoned; the path is something that should be developed. So the four truths take those two principles of skillful and unskillful qualities, and divide them up into cause and effect. The cause of suffering is something you abandon, the suffering itself is something you want to comprehend. The path is something … 
  5. Stop Weaving
    That dog is suffering, so it wants to spread its suffering around. That’s the usual response of living beings. Simply the fact of having a body, having feelings, perceptions, thought-constructs, consciousness, clinging to these things, we suffer. Carrying these things around as a burden, we suffer. It’s because we weigh ourselves down that we feel overburdened. When you’re overburdened, the … 
  6. The Heightened Mind
     … After all, we’re here to solve the problem of suffering which is the big problem in life, and suffering is not out there in the world.* *The suffering is inside the heart, inside the mind in a part of your awareness that nobody else can reach. No one else can sense your suffering. No one else can experience it directly. You can focus … 
  7. Sources of Lasting Happiness
     … They keep piling on more and more suffering. When the Buddha talked about suffering as his first noble truth, this is what he was focusing on: the suffering we create for ourselves unnecessarily. He never said life is suffering. He simply said there is suffering in life in the way we cling. And clinging comes from where? It comes from actions of the mind … 
  8. Battling Negativity
    The work of looking into the mind, ferreting out the causes of suffering and figuring out how to put an end to them, is very delicate work, very precise work. Which is why you have to get the mind very still in order to do it. It’s like threading a needle. You hold your breath, get the rest of the body still, and … 
  9. Doubting the Buddha
    The Buddha said several times that all he taught was suffering and the end of suffering, or stress and the end of stress. But people tend not to believe him. They want him to teach other things as well. If you look at the history of Buddhist thought, you see people taking his teachings and squeezing them to answer all kinds of questions that … 
  10. Acceptance Isn’t the Issue
     … After all, when the Buddha talked about suffering, he didn’t say life was suffering. He just pointed out that there is suffering in clinging and that it’s possible to stop that suffering and to find the ultimate happiness. And the happiness the Buddha taught is not only at the end of the path, it’s all along the way. You can enjoy … 
  11. Comprehending Pain
     … The third noble truth is the cessation of suffering or stress. The first knowledge is knowing that the cessation of suffering equals dispassion for those three kinds of craving. In other words, you attack the problem at the cause. The duty here is to realize this: What would be to have all stress and suffering end? Then finally you realize you have fully realized … 
  12. The Burning House
     … Because if you don’t get the right perspective on the present moment, there can be a lot of suffering. Even just trying to be right here in the present moment—if you haven’t learned how to master the present moment—can entail a lot of suffering right here. There’s the suffering of the aggregates, there’s the suffering of clinging and … 
  13. Solo Practice
     … And when you see that it’s creating suffering and that the suffering is unnecessary, that there are other things you can do to react to that particular set of circumstances, then that particular cause of suffering gets dropped. You don’t have to tell it to let gfo. As long as you feel that you have to do things a particular way, that … 
  14. The Perfection of Freedom
     … On top of that, there are the limitations each of us suffers from, in terms of our knowledge, our wealth, our energy, our health, our life span. The world seems be closing in all the time. When you have a chance to step back a little bit and not be totally concerned with your own suffering, you begin to see other people’s suffering … 
  15. One Thing at a Time
     … As the Buddha said, the mind is what creates the problem of suffering to begin with. You can think of all the things in the world that you might be suffering from—what other people have done, what other people have said—but the Buddha says that those are not the real cause of suffering. The real cause lies inside. Even before we see … 
  16. The Path of Action
     … And he realized that if there was going to be an end to suffering, he would have to change them. So he said, if the end of suffering is possible, then the possibility of changing the way you act is possible, the possibility of looking at what you do and thinking of different ways of doing it has to be possible. And so, acting … 
  17. What Are You Taking into the Future?
     … People can direct their entire lives on ideas that are formulated in ignorance and lead to nothing but suffering and more and more and more suffering. Or they can learn how to take apart the present moment and see where the mind lies to itself, where it’s being true to itself, and carry that knowledge into the future. At the very least, it … 
  18. Unsentimental Goodwill
     … Then ask yourself, “What would you gain from this person’s suffering?” And part of you may say, “Well, they deserve to suffer.” The Buddha never says anything about people deserving to suffer or not deserving to suffer. He simply speaks in terms of actions that lead to suffering and actions that lead to happiness. Everybody’s mix of actions is very complex. And … 
  19. Action & Result
     … How do you develop the path? How do you do the duties of the four noble truths? How do you comprehend suffering to the point where you have no more passion for it? We don’t usually like to think that we have passion for suffering. But after all, how is suffering defined? It’s the clinging-aggregates. You cling to things because you … 
  20. To Make Suffering Crumble
     … As he analyzed the problem of suffering, he came down basically to something that’s not immediately intuitive. First he gave examples: There’s the suffering of aging, illness, and death; there’s the suffering of pain, distress, despair. Those things we’re familiar with. But then he said what they all have in common is the act of clinging to five aggregates. This … 
  21. Life Well Lived
     … Now, there is a certain amount of suffering involved in the path to the end of suffering. It’s not comfortable sitting here cross-legged for hours on end. It’s not easy to fight against your desires and periods of anger. But that kind of suffering is worthwhile because it leads to an end of suffering. Most suffering just goes nowhere, just gets … 
  22. Load next page...