Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. Strategic Thinking
    If you look carefully at the four noble truths, you begin to realize that the Buddha was a very strategic thinker. He takes elements out of the first two noble truths—suffering and the cause of suffering—and puts them to use in the path to the end of suffering. Remember that suffering, as he said, when you boil it down to its essence … 
  3. Training Your Inner Teacher
     … When the Buddha sets out the four noble truths, he says that the thoughts that give rise to suffering come from craving for sensuality, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming. Then there are the thoughts that lead away from suffering, starting with thoughts of right view, right resolve—your intention to follow the duties of the path—then right speech, right action, right … 
  4. Afraid of Inner Pleasure
     … This is *the *basic message of the four noble truths, that the suffering we experience in the world, the suffering that really weighs down the mind, comes from inside. People can be cruel outside; people can do horrible things outside. And they do. But it’s how you respond, how you process that: That’s what makes you suffer. This is why we hear … 
  5. Universal Truths
     … What this means is that the four noble truths are not some abstract teaching whose truth is peculiar to India 2,600 years ago. They’re things happening right here, right now, and they’re happening very directly in your awareness. To chip away at that ignorance, you start by focusing on something more obviously happening right here, right now: the breath. In the … 
  6. Mindfulness & Perception
     … That’s why right view is expressed in terms of the four noble truths, the causes and the effects related to suffering and its end. You’re not just watching things arise and pass away. If you get to a stage where that’s all you’re doing, okay, that’s because for that particular moment in the meditation, that’s the most useful … 
  7. Values of the Noble Ones
     … After all, the four noble truths talk about suffering. We know there’s suffering, but then the Buddha says it’s not because of people or things outside. It’s because of our own cravings. Now, that’s unexpected. Then the Buddha says that you can actually have dispassion for your cravings and find happiness. That, too, is unexpected. Then the path he gives … 
  8. Fangs in the Static
     … Years back, I was teaching the four noble truths to a group up in Orange County. When we got to the third noble truth, about nibbana, they said it didn’t sound all that attractive. Then we got to the fourth noble truth—where we have jhana, the practice of right concentration, which includes pleasure and rapture: That, they said, sounded attractive. As I … 
  9. How to Read the Dhamma
     … At the very end of his life, he mentioned that his main teachings were the four noble truths and the four establishings of mindfulness. You read his life story, though, and there’s very little detailed information about how he explained those teachings. Instead, there are a lot of other details to give you a sense of inspiration. So when you read the Dhamma … 
  10. Stop Shooting Yourself
     … This is where you get into the suffering that’s not just part of the three characteristics; it’s part of the four noble truths. This is the suffering that really digs deep inside. And that’s the suffering, as the Buddha said, that comes from craving and clinging. We crave for things to be a certain way. Then we cling to our notions … 
  11. The Path Is and Isn’t the Goal
     … Originally each of the four noble truths has its own duty. You try to comprehend stress. Let go of its cause. Realize the cessation of stress. And then develop the path. So you do a lot of work at developing the path, turning those five aggregates into a path. But that will involve a very subtle clinging. Then when the path has been fully … 
  12. Tranquility & Insight Through Jhāna
     … Now, if this were all we had in possibilities for happiness, we’d say, “Well, who cares about the drawbacks? I want to go for this.” But the Buddha reminds us, “There is a greater pleasure to be found by developing dispassion for these things.” This is why we always have to think about the Buddha’s teachings in the context of the four … 
  13. Cooking Skills
     … you have your wits about you, you can make a difference in the mind. That’s where the Buddha’s medicine focuses. The Buddha’s often compared to a doctor. The four noble truths are compared to the doctor’s approach to treating a disease: There’s the diagnosis, suffering. Then there’s the analysis of the cause. Then there’s the prognosis that … 
  14. Living Honorably
     … But you could also apply the Buddha’s underlying question to other parts of the teachings, such as the four noble truths. Stress and suffering are the problem, and you’ve got to do something to find a long-term solution. The Buddha’s first recommendations are to comprehend suffering and abandon its cause. So how are you going to figure out a way … 
  15. Control
     … He wanted to bring them up to the level of the four noble truths. He would start them with generosity, something that they had had experience with—knowing that when you give up something you’re going to get something better in return, a better kind of happiness. The happiness that could come from, say, eating some food is much less satisfying than the … 
  16. Bless Yourself
     … This quality of generosity is so basic to the practice that when the Buddha was going to introduce the four noble truths to anybody, he’d start with generosity. As he said, a person who’s stingy can’t even get into the right concentration, much less gain any awakening. So these are all qualities that strengthen you, that will protect you. These are … 
  17. The Uses of Pleasure & Pain
     … Look at the four noble truths. Truth number one, of course, is stress and suffering. But buried down in number four, the path, you find the most important factor of the path, right concentration, which involves getting the mind focused on the breath with a sense of ease and rapture. This rapture comes from seclusion: seclusion here meaning that you’re not thinking about … 
  18. Fabricating against Defilement
     … This is one of the reasons why we develop mindfulness—keeping the breath in mind, keeping the Four Noble Truths in mind. It means just this: remembering what led to suffering in the past is probably going to lead to suffering again, no matter how attractive it may seem right now. Other practices that did lead the mind to clarity in the past will … 
  19. Bad Stuff Happens
     … And it’s in seeing the clinging that you’re actually performing the duties of the four noble truths. You want to understand these things. You want to comprehend the clinging to see that that’s it: The suffering is the clinging. And if you can find the craving that underlies that clinging and you can abandon it, you don’t have to suffer … 
  20. Sensuality Is a Fetter
     … You’ve got to clean out the whole stable, always keeping the four noble truths in mind. That possibility of the cessation of suffering is not just a negative thing. It seems to be expressed in negative ways like “the ending of suffering,” or non-this or non-that. But what the “non-” means is that there are no more limitations on your happiness … 
  21. The Purpose of Empathetic Joy
     … That’s when the mind is ready for the four noble truths, to see the extent to which you’re creating stress where you don’t have to. You work on developing dispassion for the stress, you abandon the cause, and the mind opens up to cessation. Cessation doesn’t mean only that these things stop. When they stop, there’s an experience of … 
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