Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Appropriate Attention
     … How do these teachings relate to how I’m suffering right now? How do they relate to how I’m causing suffering for myself? How might I use them to put an end to suffering?—that’s called appropriate attention. That’s when you get the most out of the talk. Just keep in mind that while you’re meditating, you’re already doing … 
  3. The Strength to See
    In order to gain release from suffering, we first have to comprehend it. That’s a message we don’t like to hear. We’d rather get swept straight to nibbana in waves of bliss. But it doesn’t work that way. If you’re going to get beyond suffering, you have to understand what it is, why it is, and how the mind … 
  4. Truths That Are Noble
     … The first one teaches that suffering is clinging. What’s noble about clinging? Its cause is craving. What’s noble about craving? The nobility is not so much in the suffering itself, or the clinging, or the craving; it’s in your willingness to see that that’s what the truth is. In other words, you take responsibility for your suffering. You’re willing … 
  5. In Your Power
    When the Buddha tells you to look inside for the causes of your suffering, it’s not a case of blaming the victim. He’s trying to remind you of what does lie in your power to change. There may be a lot of things outside that contribute to you suffering, but you can’t change them. Or you could change them if you … 
  6. Encouragement
     … We can tell other people about our suffering and they can sympathize with it, but they don’t experience our suffering. So there is a loneliness that comes with suffering. But when you start reflecting, “Everybody has their own sufferings,” it helps to take away some of the sting when it seems like the suffering is being aimed exclusively at you. So it’s … 
  7. The Choice Not to Suffer
     … the skill that allows you not to suffer from pain. Some people look at pain and all they see is suffering. Other people look at pain, and they see an opportunity to go beyond suffering. So pose that question in the mind: If you had the opportunity not to suffer, if you had the choice not to suffer, would you go for it? And … 
  8. Doing Aggregates
     … You’re getting practice in watching it in action, and that’s how we begin to comprehend the problem of suffering, what suffering is. You’ll notice the Buddha doesn’t say we’re simply on the receiving end of suffering, or that suffering is the pain you feel when something or someone attacks you. Suffering, he says, is your clinging. It’s something … 
  9. In Terms of the Four Noble Truths
     … As you stop the process of feeding it, the suffering disbands. That’s all that really matters. For as the Buddha said, all he taught was suffering and the end of suffering, stress and the end of stress. And it’s all an issue of doing. Suffering is something you cause, through the activity of the mind. The path to the end of suffering … 
  10. Four Noble Questions
     … the suffering you’re causing yourself. That’s the big problem. You can focus on all the problems that are being created out there in the world, but we suffer from them simply because we approach them in the wrong way. If we changed the way we approach our inner sufferings, we wouldn’t have to suffer from things outside. So the issue is … 
  11. Cheating the System
     … When we talk about the cessation of suffering, that’s the suffering we try to make cease. And when we can learn how to do that, then we’re going out of the normal. The normal way of things is that people have pain, and they suffer from the pain, and then they act under ignorance trying to get rid of the pain, and … 
  12. Protest Your Virtue & Right View
     … And goodwill, of course, can lead to suffering. This is where you fall back again on right view, the realization that the suffering that really matters is the suffering you add on to what’s happening outside. It’s all too easy to say, “I’m suffering because of so-and-so.” And there’s a lot of talk nowadays about how we should … 
  13. Nibbana Is Better than You Think
    The Buddha said that he taught just suffering and the end of suffering. Suffering is the problem he focused on, and he proposed a solution. First he was able to solve that problem inside himself. Then he taught other people to solve it within themselves. It seems fairly simple. You look at all the suffering in the world, and it’s obvious that it … 
  14. To Know the Noble Truths
    The Buddha says we suffer because of ignorance, and he defines ignorance as ignorance of the four noble truths: not seeing things in terms of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path to the cessation of suffering. Now, for anyone who has read much about Buddhism—not even all that much—you’ve probably read about the four noble … 
  15. The Focus on Suffering
    We suffer, but we don’t discern suffering. It’s an important distinction. Suffering is something we all know very directly. It’s one of the most direct experiences in the mind—it comes before thought. But we don’t really discern it because we’re not looking at it very directly. We’re off looking someplace else. In particular, there’s one form … 
  16. Your Highest Aspiration
     … But as the Buddha points out, that’s not where the true cause of suffering lies. Pain doesn’t have to induce suffering. Unpleasant sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations don’t have to induce suffering. We suffer because of our ignorance, and through our ignorance we suffer because of our intentions, we suffer from what we bring to sensory contact, which means that … 
  17. The Most Important Thing to Be Doing
     … And notice he doesn’t say physical pain leads to suffering or that disappointment leads to suffering. He says it’s the craving, the clinging that lead to the suffering. Those are things that happen within. Which means that it’s within your power to change the cause of suffering into the path to the end of suffering. If the cause of suffering were … 
  18. The Choice Not to Suffer
    The Buddha started and ended his teaching with the issue of how to put an end to suffering, and it’s easy to agree with him that this is an important issue to address. Some people, though, wonder if that’s all he addresses. Just put an end to suffering? What else is there? Aren’t there bigger issues in life? Actually, it was … 
  19. Karma-ism
     … The Buddha once said that the basic questions we face coming from suffering are two: One, there’s a sense of bewilderment: “What’s going on? Why is there so much suffering?” And then the second one is a search, “Is there somebody who knows a way out of this suffering?” And it’s important that we keep those two questions in mind. The … 
  20. Ironies
     … Even the way you breathe, if you breathe in an ignorant way, the Buddha said, contributes to your suffering. The way you relate to pleasure and pain, if it’s done in ignorance, contributes to your suffering. The things you pay attention to, if you do it out of ignorance, contribute to your suffering. There are lots of causes, so many that it’s … 
  21. Complaining Rights
     … We sometimes think that if we can get other people’s sympathy for our suffering or at least express our suffering to the world, then the suffering wouldn’t have been in vain. But, again, that desire to get the sympathy is going to stand in the way of your seeing, “This is what I’m actually doing that’s causing the suffering.” The … 
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