Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. The Power of Intention
     … It’s one of the reasons why the Buddha, when he would describe the steps of understanding leading up to the understanding of the four noble truths, started with generosity—the intention to give. In this case, he tries to protect it as a free intention: freely chosen, a voluntary intention to give. For many of us, that’s our first real sense that … 
  3. Evaluation: The Voice of Heedfulness
     … And then that translates into the duties for the four noble truths. Those are your standards. They’re friendly standards. And they’re safe standards, because they make sure that you are heedful, but heedful of the right things, protective of the right things. So don’t try to run away from this voice. Learn how to train it, and it in turn will … 
  4. The Size of Your Eyes
     … The basic categories for sorting out our actions are the four noble truths. The unskillful cause, craving, leads to an undesirable result: stress and suffering. Skillful causes or skillful actions, like the path, lead to a desirable result: the end of suffering. They’re all about doing. When we do mindfulness practice, the qualities we develop are ardency, alertness, and mindfulness—and the wisdom … 
  5. The Need for Stillness
    The Need for Stillness April 12, 2005 One of the famous teachings of Ajaan Dune, who was one of Ajaan Mun’s students, is his definition of the four noble truths. The cause of suffering, he says, is sending the mind out, sending your attention, sending your awareness outside, and suffering is what results from that. The path, he says, is having the mind … 
  6. You’ll Wish You’d Meditated More
     … After all, one of the lessons of the four noble truths is that we suffer by the way we talk to ourselves. So learn to talk to yourself in a new way, a skillful way. Remind yourself of the dangers that will happen if you don’t develop these skills. That’s to motivate yourself to work more on them. And remind yourself of … 
  7. Allies
     … This is where you can really put to use the Buddha’s teachings on the four noble truths. The duty with regard to suffering and stress, he says, is to comprehend it. Most of the time, we feel threatened by it, we feel engulfed by it, surrounded by it, squeezed in by it, so the only thing we can think of it is how … 
  8. Strengthening Discernment
    Strengthening Discernment January 11, 2012 The standard definition of discernment is the comprehension of fabrications, or sankharas, and you try to comprehend fabrications in terms of the four noble truths: seeing, on the one hand, how some fabrications cause suffering and actually constitute suffering—suffering itself is a fabrication—and on the other, how you can turn some of these fabrications into the path … 
  9. The Door of the Cage
     … about the world, thinking about what you want out of the world—and you hold on to the teachings on karma. You hold onto the teachings on what’s skillful. The four noble truths are a variation, or a development, of the teaching on karma—what you do that leads to suffering, what you do that leads to the end of suffering. It’s … 
  10. The Energy in the Body
     … What you want to do is learn how to read your experience, get a sense of what’s skillful and what’s not, because this is the basis for the four noble truths. Skillful action, desirable result, unskillful action, undesirable result: Those are the basic parameters of the four truths. You have to develop your sensitivity as to what really is desirable and what … 
  11. Clinging
     … But the superego in the Buddha’s teachings, the duties of the four noble truths, are there specifically for the sake of true happiness, or long-term happiness. They’re on your side. So there doesn’t have to be a constant conflict between your desires and your sense of what should be done. It’s more a conflict among desires, a conflict among … 
  12. To Suffer Is an Active Verb
     … This is one of the reasons why, when we come to the four noble truths, the Buddha’s analysis of suffering, we have to take them on faith—because, in his analysis, to suffer is an active verb. It’s something we’re doing actively. It’s a choice we make. It’s a choice we make badly, out of ignorance. The suffering is … 
  13. Heightening the Mind
     … This is why the path is one of the four noble truths, on a par with the others. So keep this teaching in mind, this issue of the heightened mind. Watch out for when you allow the mind to lie beneath its objects, under the power of its objects, and when you’re able to lift it up above them, so that even though … 
  14. Selecting from the Teachings
     … Then we take the questions that the Buddha supplies, which basically come down to the four noble truths. The other day, we talked about skillful questioning, well, these are the terms of skillful questions: Where is there stress? What is the cause of stress right now? What teaching is effective to get rid of that particular cause? The books will tell you all the … 
  15. Fourth Truth, First Duty
    Fourth Truth, First Duty July 23, 2023 When the Buddha gave his first sermon, the topic was the four noble truths. But he didn’t start with the first truth. He started with the fourth, the path. In doing so, he showed that that was what the truths were all about. That’s the purpose they served, as part of the path to the … 
  16. Wisdom Through Doing
     … This is the one that’s informed by the four noble truths that we chanted about just now. When you’re judging your actions, you have to have a high standard if you really want to get the best results. The Buddha says the best is available. It is possible to put an end, a total end, to suffering. A lot of people just … 
  17. Heedful of What’s Precious
     … In the passage we chanted just now, the Buddha talks about the different duties appropriate to the four noble truths. These are the duties of a person who practices the Dhamma. You want to develop the path so that you can comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, and realize the cessation of suffering. So be very protective of this path. Do your best to keep … 
  18. Harmlessness
     … The whole function of right resolve is to remind yourself that simply knowing about the four noble truths, knowing about the teachings on kamma, is not enough. These are types of knowledge that demand action. They point out possibilities and they also point out dangers—in other words, the possibilities for the good things that come from training your mind and developing your goodness … 
  19. Right but Wrong
     … So how do you avoid being wrong even when you’re right? In the case of understanding where a teaching should be applied, always think about how it fits in with the four noble truths. For instance, with the three characteristics or the three perceptions: They’re useful for developing dispassion for suffering, developing dispassion for the origination of suffering. That’s why they … 
  20. Here Be Tigers
     … What can you do minimize the amount of unnecessary suffering you’re causing yourself? When the Buddha taught the four noble truths, he put this problem—the suffering caused by craving, suffering caused by the mind itself—as the top problem. This is the number-one priority. This is the problem that needs most attention. Once you’ve solved this problem, then nothing else … 
  21. Licking Yourself Clean
     … That’s how you see the four noble truths. You see stress, you see how it’s caused, you connect it to your own actions. You see what you do or don’t do that lets the stress be shed away. So think of the meditation as an experiment, something you try. You’re trying to prove a hypothesis: that you can put an … 
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