Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Light Merit
     … that whatever’s coming up in the present moment, you don’t have to suffer from it if you have the right attitude. If you have the right perceptions, the right insights into what’s going on, you can release yourself from that suffering. Even if it’s just a temporary release, it’s an important lesson, an important skill, so that whatever comes … 
  3. The Right Piece in the Right Puzzle
     … the truth of suffering, which is clinging; the truth of the origination of suffering, which is craving; the truth of the cessation of suffering, which is dispassion for that craving. And then there’s the truth of the path of practice that leads to the cessation of suffering, which is the noble eightfold path. In that sense, the craving is the unskillful action that … 
  4. Fear & Insecurity
     … 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 over there, the Thais, they discovered, were very happy. And their assumption was, “These people don’t understand their own religion.” Well, of course, it was the social scientists who didn’t understand the religion. There’s a sense … 
  5. Clinging & Feeding
    When the Buddha defined suffering or stress in the four noble truths, he gave lots of examples and then summarized them all as the five clinging-aggregates. Notice he didn’t say five aggregates. It’s the clinging-aggregates that are suffering. It’s because we cling to them that the mind suffers. The aggregates may have stress simply in the fact they arise … 
  6. Lean into the Present
     … The ease helps, but we’re here for the sake of seeing how the mind creates suffering out of things it doesn’t have to suffer over. There can be pain in the body, but the mind doesn’t have to suffer from the pain. There can be crazy thoughts going through the mind, but the mind doesn’t have to suffer from them … 
  7. Unlimited Mind, Limited Resources
     … You have to be able not to suffer from that. Ajaan Fuang once commented that goodwill without equanimity is a source of suffering. So try to get good at all four of the brahmaviharas, so that instead of causing you suffering, they can give energy to your practice and a sense of spaciousness to the mind.
  8. What Should & Shouldn’t Be Done
     … two courses of action, one course leading to suffering, another course leading to the end of suffering. And here again, he recommends that you abandon the cause of suffering and that you develop the path to the end of suffering. This dichotomy runs all the way, even to his teachings on dependent co-arising, which are considered his most advanced teachings, in which he … 
  9. You Can Make a Difference
     … As he says, people are bewildered because of their suffering, and they search for a way out—they look for somebody who knows a way to put an end to that suffering. If you’re telling them that what their suffering is, is totally beyond their control—that what’s causing it is already set in motion, you can’t do anything about it … 
  10. No Arrows, Nothing
     … If your present karma is unskillful, you can suffer from even really fine conditions. If your present karma is skillful, then no matter how bad the situation in the body, the mind doesn’t have to suffer. The minds of arahants are totally free from suffering. They’re like the rest of us in that their bodies have pain and pleasure and neither-pleasure … 
  11. A Light in the Darkness
     … I recently received a letter from a doctor who was claiming that modern psychology has made an advance over Buddhism in that Buddhism deals only with the problem of suffering, while modern psychology deals with suffering and also gives meaning to life. I don’t think he understands the depth of the problem of suffering. Once you really eradicate suffering, what remains to your … 
  12. Monologue on the Breath
     … Where is there discomfort, suffering, stress—however you want to translate *dukkha. *There are different levels of dukkha, so you can think of it as spreading out among these words. Sometimes it’s simply a little bit of stress or a little bit of discomfort, a sense of construction or tightness. Doesn’t feel like any great suffering. But it still qualifies as a … 
  13. Training Your Minds
     … If your happiness involves the suffering of other people, there are going to be a lot of problems down the line. So you want to ask yourself: What kind of happiness would not cause other people to suffer? Well, it is possible to develop a sense of well-being purely from developing your inner resources. That’s what we’re doing as we meditate … 
  14. Encouraging Perceptions
     … This is a skill that requires time, requires patience, so that we can comprehend suffering, let go of its cause, develop the path so that we can experience or verify for ourselves that there is a cessation to suffering. The hard part here is comprehending the pain, because pain, both physical and emotional, is something we tend to run away from. Who wants to … 
  15. Frame Your Questions Well
     … And as long as you think in those terms, you’re going to suffer. The way out is to start thinking in terms of actions and results. Look at the Buddha’s own quest. As he said, we start out bewildered by suffering and begin to realize that true knowledge would be seeing how to put an end to suffering. And who knows how … 
  16. The Wheel of Dhamma
     … But the Buddha pointed out that the best way to do it for the purpose of overcoming and putting an end to suffering is to see things in terms of these four truths or four categories: stress or suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. The first step is to learn how to identify exactly what in your experience is … 
  17. A Refuge from Aging, Illness, & Death
     … We forget about all of the suffering that goes on around those things. Of course, the fact that we’re missing them now so intensely means that when we gain them again, we’re going to lose them again, and suffer again, just as intensely. The question is: When are you going to have enough? In the king’s case, he had no sense … 
  18. Strong-hearted
     … We tend to think pain is suffering, and in Pali they use the same word for both. But when the Buddha defines suffering, it’s clinging to the five aggregates. This shows it’s not just ordinary pain. It’s something the mind is doing. We try to understand these things—why? Because we want to put an end to suffering. Why do we … 
  19. The Primacy of the Mind (2)
     … After all, with the four noble truths, when the Buddha searches out the causes of suffering, they don’t come from outside—they come from within. It’s because of craving and ignorance that the mind creates suffering for itself. When you look at dependent co-arising, you find the same thing: Almost half of the factors are prior to sensory contact, our knowledge … 
  20. Actualizing Your Potentials
     … But of course, the issue of suffering keeps forcing itself on all of us, and it’s important that we understand where it actually comes from, because that helps us prioritize. As the Buddha said, the real suffering in the mind comes from craving and ignorance, and specifically, three kinds of craving: craving for sensuality, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming. It’s … 
  21. Breath Teaches the Bramaviharas
     … The circulation gets cut off to a particular organ because the breath energy’s been cut off there, and it’s going to suffer. But that can be remedied. So this is a lesson in compassion: Just because someone is suffering doesn’t mean they have to keep on suffering. That applies to you, and it applies to other people too. The teaching on … 
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