Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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