Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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