Search results for: "Dukkha"

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  2. A Full Heart
    One of the teachings that the forest ajaans hold in common is that dukkha, suffering or stress, comes from a sense of lack—and that the lack is something we create. We don’t normally think in those terms. A lack is often something given. In other words, it’s what we start out with. We want to find something to fill the lack … 
  3. The Buddha’s Compassion
     … Then the Buddha concluded by saying, “It’s only stress that I teach and the ending of stress.” Or if you translate dukkha as “suffering”: “It’s only suffering that I teach and the ending of suffering.” Some people take that to say, “Well, in that case, all the teachings we have about devas and nagas and other levels of being are probably not … 
  4. Inconstancy
     … That helps you see the connection between anicca and dukkha, or stress and suffering. It’s because things are unreliable that you can’t trust them. You can’t really find any true happiness there. So you have to make yourself more reliable. Years back, when I was with Ajaan Fuang, there was a person in Singapore who had received a copy of one … 
  5. Cheating the System
     … When the Buddha talks about suffering—dukkha, which can also be translated as stress—there are basically two kinds. There’s stress in the three characteristics, which is a given in the world. As long as things are put together, they’re going to malfunction. Things put together tend to fall apart. That’s their nature. That’s normal. But then there’s another … 
  6. Three Parts of Right View
     … There’s stress or suffering—dukkha is the Pali word—the cause of stress, the cessation of stress, and the path leading to the cessation of stress. It’s like a doctor’s diagnosis: “These are the symptoms; these are the causes. It is possible to end this illness by attacking the causes, and here’s the way you do it.” Notice in that … 
  7. Understanding Aggregates
    In the Buddha’s first sermon, he defines suffering—or stress, the word dukkha—as the five clinging-aggregates. He states that our duty with regard to those five clinging-aggregates is to comprehend them. Elsewhere, he says that comprehension means getting rid of all passion, aversion, and delusion around them. In his second sermon, he shows how to do that. He talks about … 
  8. The Complexity of Pain
     … In Pali they’re the same word: *dukkha. *But here, it’s one of those rare cases where our vocabulary actually helps us. Try to see the subtle ways in which that distinction is a useful distinction until you’ve really mastered it, and you will have learned a lot.
  9. Where the Mind & Body Meet
     … Here he’s treating the word, loka—which is either cosmos, world, universe—as equivalent to dukkha: suffering and stress. It’s right here in this body with its perception and intellect that you can see these things. The world, of course, is the world of the senses as it’s sensed right here: Sights, sounds, tastes, tactile sensations all make contact right here … 
  10. Fix Your Views
     … There was a young monk one time who was asked by a member of another sect, “What is the result of action?” And the young monk answered, “The result of action is stress (dukkha).” The person asking the question said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard a Buddhist monk say that. You’d better go check that with the Buddha.” So … 
  11. Ask the Right Questions
    The Buddha once said that all he taught was suffering, or dukkha, and the end of suffering. But there were people who came to him with questions about things that were not related to that problem: In cases like that, he would put the question aside. He illustrated his decision with the story of a man who’s been shot with an arrow. People … 
  12. To Know the Buddha
     … He defines suffering—dukkha, stress, pain—as the five clinging-aggregates. Now, the act of clinging is an action, and the aggregates themselves are actions, even the body. As they say in Pali, rūpa ruppati, which means form deforms; feelings feel; perceptions perceive; fabrications fabricate; consciousness cognizes. They’re not things. When we talk about them as aggregates, it sounds as if they’re … 
  13. The Buddha Meant What He Said
    The Buddha said several times that all he taught was stress and the end of stress, or suffering and the end of suffering—however you want to translate dukkha. His very first sermon started with the topic of stress and suffering. His last teaching was on the path to the end of suffering. He really meant what he said. The issue of what causes … 
  14. A Home of Your Own
     … The Pali word dukkha covers all those things. That’s what we are working on understanding. Because that sense of pain is what makes it hard to live in this home of ours right here, and it drives us to do all kinds of things that we later regret. Our fear of pain makes us greedy, angry, deluded about things, fearful about things, jealous … 
  15. Categorical Truths
     … In terms of the four noble truths, the first one is the truth of suffering or stress—dukkha is the Pāli term. As the Buddha says, the truth here is basically that your suffering is in the way you cling. You cling to the body, you cling to your feelings, your perceptions, your thought constructs; you cling to consciousness of the senses. Wherever you … 
  16. Happily on the Path
     … We’re looking for the end of suffering, and that doesn’t come by simply saying, “Well, let’s just be okay with whatever comes up.” Some people take the word dukkha—suffering or stress—and translate it as unsatisfactoriness, as if the problem were simply that we’re not satisfied with things, that if we could learn how to simply be satisfied with … 
  17. Reflecting on Karma
     … There was one time when a young monk was asked, “What is the result of action?” and he replied, “All action results in pain.” Dukkha is the word, which means pain or stress. The person asking the question replied, “I’ve talked to a lot of other monks, and they’ve never said anything like that. You’d better go back and check with … 
  18. To Certify Yourself
     … In Pāḷi, they use the word dukkha, which we translate as suffering, to mean anything from a slight disturbance to really heavy misery. In this case, you’ll be learning how to look for the slight disturbances in your mind and learning how to drop what’s causing them when you can detect them. Then you have a good chance of seeing how it … 
  19. Working from the Inside
    The Buddha once said that all he taught was suffering or stress—the Pali word is dukkha—and the end of suffering and stress. Now, where do we experience that? It’s in a part of us that no one else can touch, no one else can experience. Each of us has our own sufferings. We can see other people suffering and that can … 
  20. Believe in Your Actions
     … The four noble truths seem to be all about suffering and stress—however you want to translate dukkha—but the pattern is that these things come from your actions. The end of suffering and stress also comes from your actions. This is why the Buddha talks about action so much. He calls his teaching a kammavadi, a teaching about action. That’s why right … 
  21. Duties
     … The word dukkha can mean either one. There’s the stress of what they call the three characteristics or the three perceptions of inconstancy, stress, not-self. The fact that things are inconstant means they’re stressful. And if they’re stressful, why call them your self? That kind of stress happens to everybody. But that’s not the stress that weighs us down … 
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