Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Asalha Puja… One is because, after explaining the four noble truths, the Buddha sets out three levels of knowledge for each truth. He then goes through each truth, giving the three levels of knowledge for each truth. In English, we would call that a table where you set out different variables, and run through all the permutations. In India, they called it a wheel, the idea …
- Deconstructing Suffering… When the Buddha started his teaching career, he started with the four noble truths, and he really meant it. This is what he was going to be teaching for forty-five years. It boils down to two things: suffering and the end of suffering. All his tools are for that purpose. When we use them for that purpose, then we use them properly, and …
- Controlling… Appropriate attention is when you look at things in terms of the four noble truths or in terms of the question of how to develop what’s skillful and how to abandon what’s not. These are all attitudes you want to bring to your contact at the senses. They come down to what you’re paying attention to, how you’re paying attention …
- Pain & Patience… So as the Buddha said, with the four noble truths, you’ve got to learn how to comprehend your suffering, comprehend your pain. That means developing all the qualities you can muster to sit with it. This is why we develop right concentration, so that there’s at least some sense of well-being in the mind as you look for the pain. In …
- One Thing Clear Through… Look at the Buddha’s teachings on the four noble truths. What are they motivated by if not goodwill? The desire for an end of suffering, the desire for happiness that doesn’t place any burdens on anyone else: What is this if not compassion? And look at his teaching career. Wherever there was anyone ready to learn the Dhamma, he would go there …
- Stay with the Knowing… That’s the whole point of the Buddha’s teachings on the four noble truths. The mind goes looking for trouble and then it blames other people. But your craving, your clinging, and your ignorance: Those are the causes of your suffering. You can’t blame them on anybody else. You can’t say, “I was born without craving and without clinging. People taught …
- Deconstruction… It’s basically seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. Suffering is to be comprehended—and not just witnessed or acknowledged. You have to understand what is it. The Buddha was very precise in defining it: clinging to the aggregates of form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, and consciousness. The clinging is in the desire and passion you have for those things. The …
- Two Kinds of Middle… Once you look at your experience in those terms, then the imperatives of the four noble truths kick in. Where there’s stress, you’ve got to comprehend it. In other words, you look at your experiences, not with the question of “Is there something behind there? Is there nothing behind there?” “Behind there” is not the issue. The issue is what you’re …
- Our Variegated Minds… In other words, you bring knowledge and awareness in terms of the four noble truths to the process of breathing: That’s the verbal fabrication. Mental fabrication is learning how to perceive the breath in such a way it becomes more and more of a home, leads to more reliable feelings of well-being, rapture. It’s with these building blocks that we create …
- The Equanimity that Doesn’t Give Up… He said to think in terms of appropriate attention, to think in terms of the four noble truths. Ask yourself questions as to what’s skillful and what’s not. Put things to the test, evaluate them. There’s a lot of thinking in following the path. So we’re not trying to cut off our brains and just say, “Okay, well I’ll …
- Fear of Missing Out… You know how to ask questions in terms of the four noble truths. Where is the suffering right now? Can you detect the clinging? What are you clinging to? Why are you clinging? What’s the craving? Is it a sensual craving? Is it a craving for becoming, a craving for non-becoming? Are you developing the path to know these things better so …
- Where the Mind & Body Meet… And right here is where the Buddha said that we do the work of the four noble truths. Or in one formulation he says that it’s where we find the world, the origination of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path to the cessation of the world. There’s a sutta where a deva comes to see the Buddha and …
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