Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Thinking About Rebirth
     … Sometimes they think of karma as being very deterministic. “People suffer because they deserve to suffer, so there’s nothing you can do about it”—which is not the Buddha’s approach at all. Or we think that rebirth is selfing writ large, that the Buddha picked up the idea of rebirth from his culture and didn’t really think it through, that it … 
  3. A New Framework
     … Are you causing suffering? Or are you not causing suffering? You’re causing stress or you’re not. These are things that anyone can notice, yet most people don’t notice because they don’t look very carefully. Or they don’t make the connection between the fact that they’re suffering and the actions they’ve done. It’s so easy to blame … 
  4. Rooted in Desire
     … It makes the difference between the desires that lead to more suffering and the desires that lead to the end of suffering. The more knowledge you bring to these processes of fabrication and desire, the more they head in the right direction.
  5. Rightly Directed
     … We’re sometimes told that resistance to change will cause us to suffer. Well, there’s good suffering and bad suffering. In other words, there’s the suffering that leads to the end of suffering, and there’s the suffering that just piles more suffering on. So whatever stress is involved to make sure your mind stays headed in the right direction, you take … 
  6. When Your Will Is Ill
     … Similarly with suffering: Suffering is the clinging. Clinging is an activity; it’s something you do. So when people are misbehaving, treating other people wrongly, they’re already suffering. They may not admit it, but that’s because their faculties are impaired. When you see that in someone else, you have to turn and look at yourself. Your desire to see them punished is … 
  7. Asalha Puja
     … The first truth is the truth of suffering. It’s not that life is suffering, or that there is suffering. Suffering is clinging. That truth points inside. The five brethren who were listening to this realized that they were going to have to look inside themselves. Where was their clinging? What kind of clinging? Why do they cling? That was the second truth. Three … 
  8. Is It Worth It?
     … They can actually take us away from suffering. Acting on that kind of desire is an effort that’s really worthwhile. Life builds on our own actions, and our actions are built on our state of mind, which is why we’re sitting here meditating, to see if we can master the skills that allow our desires to stop creating suffering and actually create … 
  9. Look after the Source
     … When bad things happen in the world, you can take them as an opportunity either to suffer or to not suffer. The skill lies in not suffering. You’re protecting the source, the state of your mind. The less you’re suffering inside, the more you’ll have to offer outside. When you’re not suffering, you’re not clinging, even to the good … 
  10. Painful Feelings, Hurtful Words
     … But why do we suffer from them? We suffer from craving and clinging. This gets into the second feature of the Buddha’s way of analyzing the problem around these things that we have to develop patience and endurance for. That’s that we lay claim to things, lay claim to areas of our life, and then these things seem to come in and … 
  11. A Mind Like Earth
     … It’s creating suffering. It doesn’t want suffering, and it doesn’t want to create suffering, but it does. You’ve got to figure that out. It requires watching it and watching parts of the mind you don’t like and not getting shaken by them. This is why you have to make the mind like earth, so that it can be ready … 
  12. Inner Worlds
     … Because otherwise, there’s no real escape from the suffering we cause ourselves. Remember the Buddha’s teachings on the four noble truths: The suffering that weighs the mind down is the suffering that comes from inside, not from things outside. If we’re constantly focusing on things outside—“This is wrong, that’s wrong”—we’re missing the point. The point is that … 
  13. How to Straighten Out the World
     … What you can do, though, is work on the suffering that comes from craving and ignorance. That is under your power. If you can cut through that, then you’re in a good position. One, you yourself suffer a lot less. And two, when you’re suffering a lot less, you can see where you can really genuinely be of help to other people … 
  14. Delight
     … The first in the list is delight in the Dhamma—the fact that there’s a Dhamma teaching us that there is an end of suffering, and that it can be attained through human effort. This Dhamma explains how we suffer, why we suffer. It explains the big issues of life: aging, illness, death, separation. It gives reliable guidance in how to act, how … 
  15. The Path Converges Right Here
     … But, as the Buddha said, the best use of it is to figure out this problem of suffering. Why is it that we keep causing ourselves suffering? Exactly what is the suffering that weighs us down? Well, it’s the suffering we create, not so much the suffering that comes in through the senses. Notice when you take, say, a pain from outside, or … 
  16. Truth Through Training
     … So when he talks about abandoning the truth of the cause of suffering or comprehending the truth of suffering, it’s not a matter of comprehending the words or abandoning the words. You’re trying to realize: Where is the reality in my mind right now, in my heart right now, that’s creating the suffering and what is the reality of that suffering … 
  17. Truths of the Will
     … Looking at things the right way basically means looking at them in terms of the four noble truths, looking at the world in terms of suffering and the cause of suffering, the possibility for an end of suffering, and the fact that there is a path of practice leading there. You look at your mind and see which events in the mind fall into … 
  18. Magha Puja
     … But when there’s real discernment, real insight into seeing the mind as it’s creating unnecessary suffering for itself right then and there, seeing that it is suffering, seeing that it’s unnecessary, that’s all you really need to let go. This is how you purify the mind: seeing where you’re causing unnecessary stress and suffering. As the Buddha told Rahula … 
  19. Slings and Arrows of Ordinary Fortunes
     … They’re not engaged with the suffering; they’re not engaged with the cause of suffering. As part of the path, you nourish them. And when you reach the goal, you don’t have to do anything more. Even less of a burden. You look back and you see the way you were constantly feeding on things outside. That’s why you shoot yourself … 
  20. Comfortable as an Outsider
    Comfortable as an Outsider December 28, 2019 We suffer largely because of the way we talk to ourselves. That’s what the message of the four noble truths is all about. It’s not that we suffer from sights, sounds, smells, tastes, or tactile sensations. We suffer because of the commentary we apply to these things. And a lot of meditation is learning to … 
  21. How to Talk to Yourself
     … The basic principles of right view are that there is suffering in life and it’s caused by the actions of your mind. That’s not to place blame on you. It’s to point to you that there’s an opportunity: If you change the actions of your mind, then you don’t have to suffer. Suffering can be put to an end … 
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