Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. The Demands of Goodwill
     … There was a book years back, a survey of early Buddhist teachings, that organized everything under the four noble truths and then, at the very end, tacked on the brahmaviharas—as if they were somehow not integral to the practice. The author said they formed the social dimension of Buddhism, whereas everything else was totally devoted to the training of your mind—as if … 
  3. This Fathom-Long Body
     … All aspects of the four noble truths, starting with understanding suffering, stress, and pain, are things you do right here in the body. Understanding the causes of suffering and stress and pain: You can learn them if you keep careful watch over how the mind relates to the body. The path to the end of suffering is this body together with this mind. Use … 
  4. The Power of Attention
     … Remember, appropriate attention means asking these questions related to the four noble truths. Inappropriate attention means you’re asking other questions. Then, when your attention is inappropriate, you start making inappropriate effort—and all the potentials for having the right factors of the path turn wrong. So instruct your act of attention, how you pay attention to things. Realize that you do have the … 
  5. When You’re Discouraged
     … After all, what do the four noble truths tell us? What you’re doing is wrong. Something in what you’re doing is wrong. You’ve got to learn how to stop that and do things more skillfully. What you’re doing is the craving and the clinging. Because you’re used to craving and clinging, the Buddha says, “Here’s something better to … 
  6. Focus on the Precepts
     … You look at things in terms of the four noble truths. You follow the duties appropriate to those four noble truths, one of which is to comprehend suffering. Suffering itself is an action. It’s the act of clinging to the aggregates. The aggregates are actions, too. The Buddha defines them as verbs. Form deforms, feelings feel, perceptions perceive, and so on. Then you … 
  7. The Wisdom of Restraint
     … After all, that’s the basic teaching of the four noble truths. What we’re doing right now is leading to suffering. We can change our ways, act in different ways that can lead to the end of suffering. All the factors of the noble eightfold path are telling you: This is how you change your habits. So we’re not here to be … 
  8. Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters
     … You’ve got to know the four noble truths from the very beginning to get a sense of what the landscape is and what you’ve got to do. But the other four fetters have their good points. They’re actually useful. You don’t let them go until you’ve gotten some use out of them. For instance, with conceit, the sense that … 
  9. Intro to Breath Meditation
     … This is what the Buddha’s teachings on the four noble truths are all about: the stress and suffering we cause through our craving, through our ignorance. We love ourselves, we want happiness, and yet we cause ourselves suffering. It’s because we’re not watching, we’re not attentive. This is one of the reasons why we want to settle down in the … 
  10. What You Bring to the Moment
     … You’re learning to explore the process of conditioning, trying to bring appropriate attention to what you’re doing—in other words, seeing it in terms of the four noble truths. You have certain ways of conceiving things that create unnecessary stress, unnecessary suffering, and you can change those preconceived ways. But if you don’t look for them, you are not going to … 
  11. Choiceful Awareness
     … That’s the basic principle of the four noble truths: Our choices matter. So choose well.
  12. Just One Person
     … This is the message of the four noble truths. We’ve been acting in ways that lead to suffering. We’ve got to change the way we act—which means you can’t simply wish for the path to come together. You have to take responsibility. So, Yes, you are doing this and, Yes, you will benefit from it. And you’re the one … 
  13. De-domesticated
     … What he taught us was just a handful of leaves, i.e., the four noble truths. He saw that the problem, the suffering that we cause ourselves, is the number-one problem. When that problem is solved, everything is solved. But it’s an inner problem. And the work to get beyond suffering is inner work. Now, the fact that you’re focusing in … 
  14. The Making Of
     … That’s where you begin to see things in terms of the four noble truths—where the Buddha talks about the clinging that *is *suffering, and the craving that goes into the clinging. Ideally, you develop a sense of dispassion, seeing the allure of these thought worlds, but also the drawbacks of just wandering around from one thought world to another to another—like … 
  15. A Meditator’s Environment
     … You might say the four noble truths are all about figuring out which desires are worth following and which ones are not, gaining a strong sense of what’s skillful, what’s not. When you’re suffering, learn where to look, both to understand the suffering itself—to comprehend it—and to find out what the cause might be right now. We don’t … 
  16. You Are Not Redundant
     … That’s what the four noble truths are all about. You wonder what the Buddha would think about teachings that are said in his name nowadays: that you don’t do the practice; that there’s no “you” there to do the practice, it’s just conditions happening. That sort of thinking defeats any sense of your worth as a person, or of the … 
  17. Older than the Cosmos
     … Knowledge in terms of the four noble truths, which finally cuts through the craving, doesn’t come until the path has been fully developed. But right view as a beginning factor gives you some direction. So when your views are in line with right view, remind yourself: That’s when you’re beginning to see clearly. That’s when you’re beginning to point … 
  18. Skilled in Aims
     … Then, of course, with the four noble truths, the fact that you’re trying to put an end to suffering shows that you have goodwill for yourself. The way you do it is through the noble eightfold path, and that involves right view, right resolve, all the way down through right concentration, including right speech and right action—again, virtue. You’re acting in … 
  19. Concentration as a Skill
     … This was how the Buddha discovered the four noble truths, realizing that clinging is what’s creating a burden for the mind. If his mind hadn’t been in concentration, he wouldn’t have been able to see that, because when we cling to things usually we’re not paying attention to the act of clinging. We’re paying attention to the things we … 
  20. The Steadiness of Your Gaze
     … Why is the mind causing itself suffering? Why is it causing itself stress in ways that don’t have to be there? In the context of the Three Characteristics, the Buddha does point out that anything fabricated is stressful, but in the Four Noble Truths he focuses more on the issue of the stress of clinging and craving. The craving causes the clinging, and … 
  21. To Depend on Yourself
     … He wants you to learn how to put an end to your own suffering, and if you realize that that’s probably the best thing you could ask from anybody, then you take on the duties that he talks about in terms of the four noble truths. Try to understand or comprehend what exactly you’re suffering from. Try to find the cause so … 
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