Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. The Buddha’s Shoulds
     … You see them at the very beginning in the four noble truths. Each truth has a duty: Suffering is to be comprehended; its cause is to be abandoned; its cessation is to be realized; and the path to its cessation should be developed. If you appreciate the state of peace—in other words, if you believe that the cessation of suffering is something that … 
  3. The Wheel of Dhamma
    The Buddha started his teaching career with the four noble truths, as we chanted just now in the Discourse of Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion. These truths are not just statements about reality. They’re a guide, a guide in how to look at things. You can look at reality in all kinds of ways. You can look at your experience in … 
  4. Acceptance
     … That led to his third knowledge, the four noble truths. The important part of the four noble truths is that they have duties. Suffering is to be comprehended. Craving, its cause, is to be abandoned. Cessation, dispassion for craving, is to be realized. You do that by developing the path. So there are things you have to do in order to gain awakening. You … 
  5. Ready for the Truth
    The Canon tells us that the Buddha’s most important teaching was the four noble truths, and that it covers everything else he taught. So this is the most important thing for us to learn to understand. But it’s also interesting to note that when the Buddha taught the four noble truths, especially to lay people, he prepared them first, with what’s … 
  6. Develop Your Inner Observer
     … So why am I doing this to myself?” This is where we get to the question we had this morning about seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. The four noble truths provide a framework for how to look at things so that we can stop suffering. Now, we may have other purposes: We may be looking at things in terms of … 
  7. Not-self
    If you want to understand the Buddha’s teachings on not-self, you have to see how those teachings fit into the context of the four noble truths. Remember that the four noble truths have their duties. Suffering, or stress, is to be comprehended. Craving, the cause of suffering and stress, is to be abandoned. The cessation of stress and suffering is to be … 
  8. Believing & Knowing
     … There seem to be two stages in that last knowledge, first in terms of the four noble truths that led to what’s called the arising of the Dhamma eye, and then—once the duties that are appropriate to the four noble truths have been completed—the four noble truths about the effluent of sensuality, the effluent of views, the effluent of ignorance. You … 
  9. Let Go Like a Millionaire
     … Up until that point, though, the perceptions are there as tools for helping with the duties of the four noble truths. So always keep that in mind: that the four noble truths provide the context, and the three perceptions function within that context. This becomes important when you find yourself holding on to things that you think are constant. You have to tell yourself … 
  10. The Meaning of Insight
     … They’re there implicitly in terms of the duties of the four noble truths, under the insight into the drawbacks of the things to which you cling, the insight that’s for the sake of developing dispassion. But the Buddha never explicitly mentions them. He’s explicit about the four noble truths, though. He says that when you see those truths and see them … 
  11. Patience & Sensitivity
     … That’s how you can be said to know the four noble truths—you’ve actually done the duties; you’ve seen the results. To get that kind of insight, the Buddha recommends his five-step program. And it’s important to notice that this program is derived from the four noble truths. Seeing the origination—that’s the first step. Seeing the origination … 
  12. The Psychology of Harmlessness
     … This is why the techniques of meditation cannot really be separated from the values when doing them, because of the duties that the Buddha recommends for the four noble truths: Those duties embody values. In the beginning we do that out of conviction. I was struck a while back when hearing someone say that the four noble truths are not beliefs. Well, they’re … 
  13. Duties
     … After all, that’s the message of the four noble truths: There may be pains caused by the world outside—hurtful words, hurtful situations—but the real suffering that stabs at the mind is the suffering we add to things outside. The Buddha’s image is of two arrows. You get shot by one arrow, and that’s not enough, you shoot yourself with … 
  14. The Desire for Things to Be Different
     … Back in medieval India, when they introduced the four noble truths in the basic textbooks for Buddhist doctrine, they would start with the five aggregates; move quickly to the three characteristics, and then get to the four noble truths. In other words, they started with a picture of reality: Reality is composed of aggregates, and the aggregates are marked by the three characteristics. The … 
  15. Skillful Thinking
     … The basic evaluation here is based on the four noble truths. This is the Buddha’s guideline for discernment. Actually his guidelines go back even more simply than that, pointing out that there are actions that you may like to do that give good results, actions that you may like to do that give bad results, actions you don’t like to do that … 
  16. Two Hands Washing
     … The reason for this is that you’re trying to learn how to think in terms of the four noble truths. When the Buddha talked about appropriate attention, he defined it in terms of the four noble truths. Learning to see where the stress is, where’s the cause, where’s the cessation of stress, and what you’re doing to help the stress … 
  17. Universal Truths
     … And the other is the four noble truths: stress, its origination, its cessation, and the path of practice leading to its cessation. That’s it. Those are the teachings he taught as really basic. Those are the teachings that form the framework of the questions that he encourages people to ask. In terms of skillful and unskillful action, he said, this is what you … 
  18. A Graduated Discourse
    If you take a class on Buddhism in a college or read an introductory book on Buddhism, they often start with the four noble truths. And when the Buddha taught the five brethren that’s what he started with, too. But with a lot of people, he didn’t. He saw that their minds had to be readied, prepared to accept the four noble … 
  19. For the Cessation of Dukkha
     … It’s why the practice begins with the four noble truths, not with the three characteristics. The simple fact that there are things that arise and pass away that are dependent on conditions, fabrications, and there’s a stress inherent in the fact that those things are dependent on conditions and are inconstant.: That’s not the beginning of the practice. It’s simply … 
  20. Bare Attention
     … After all, goodwill is what underlies the teachings on the four noble truths. If there weren’t the desire for happiness, why would suffering and its end be the central issue of the teaching? The motivation for teaching the four noble truths had to be based on goodwill. The wisdom here is actually training your goodwill, training your compassion, both for yourself and for … 
  21. Habits of Perception
     … Ignorance of what? Ignorance of the four noble truths — and he’s not talking about not having read about the four noble truths. All of us here have read about them and thought about them. Ignorance means not seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. We see things in other terms, the big ones being our sense of self, our sense of … 
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