Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Outside of the Box… If we don’t, who’s going to suffer? Well, we’re going to suffer. And when we suffer, we find it easy to make other people suffer, too. The Buddha doesn’t force anyone to practice. He simply says if you want to resolve the issues in your life, this is how they get resolved. This is what you have to do, and …
- Using Right View Rightly… Simply, “This is suffering, and this is the cause of suffering. This is the activity that leads to suffering, and this is the activity that leads to the end of suffering.” They get identified, and then you can look at your experience in those terms. You begin to see that even your sense of who you are or what the world is, and the …
- Feeding Instructions… We had that chant just now: “those who don’t discern suffering.” It sounds odd. When people are suffering, they should know they’re suffering, you’d think. But that’s not what the Buddha means. To discern suffering, he says, means to see what it really is: It’s clinging to the aggregates. As you know, his explanation of the first noble truth …
- Exploring Possibilities… You see possibilities in the mind, possibilities for letting go of old habits that create suffering. So when anything new comes up in the mind, keep reflecting back on that question: What does this new mind state show about the mind’s possibilities? What does it show about how the mind can relate to things in a way that involves less suffering? Keep your …
- The Treasure Hunt… the feelings of suffering and the knowledge of actions. The second knowledge suggested that there was a connection between the two, so the Buddha decided to see if this was true. These two are very certain things. When you’re suffering, no one can convincingly tell you, “That’s not really suffering; you’re not suffering.” Other things you might know can be shaped …
- Craving & Desire on the Path… After all, suffering is an inside job. It’s something that we’re doing to ourselves, and the end of suffering is going to require a skill so that we can stop doing the suffering. In the Buddha’s analysis, the causes leading up to suffering all come from ignorance, avijjā. The opposite of ignorance, vijjā, has two meanings in Pali: One, it means …
- Audacious & Undaunted… The first noble truth was the truth of suffering. He saw that suffering isn’t just pain. It’s clinging. We cling to the form of the body. We cling to our feelings. We cling to our perceptions, our thought constructs, our consciousness. And in that clinging is the suffering. Why do we cling? We cling because of craving. If you can comprehend the …
- Balanced Meditation… So meditation, when it’s done properly, encompasses both coming to understandings about your suffering and also allowing the mind to grow still. The two aspects need each other. If you can’t be still enough to look at the suffering, there’s no way you’re going to understand it. All you’re going to be doing is dealing with concepts about suffering …
- Unlimited Compassion, Limited Resources… So equanimity is there to keep us from suffering from our goodwill, compassion, and empathetic joy. As Ajaan Fuang once said, “If we don’t have the equanimity of concentration, then goodwill is suffering, compassion is suffering, empathetic joy is suffering.” So we work getting the mind to settle down to provide ourselves with a sense of well-being inside. Otherwise, we try to …
- Questioning & Conviction… This begins with the intention to put an end to suffering. And that’s based on the conviction that it’s possible to do it. Conviction starts with conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, that he did find the end of suffering and he did it through developing powers of his mind. And they weren’t powers peculiar to him; they were powers anybody …
- The Story-telling Mind… You realize that if you sit here telling yourself bad stories over and over again, you’re going to suffer. Do you want to suffer? Well, no. Do you want other people to suffer? Well, maybe. You may think about people who’ve wronged you, and of how much you’d like to see them get their just desserts. In cases like this, you …
- To Comprehend Pain… Remember, discernment has to be penetrative, which means that it sees which causes are good, which causes are not, which causes lead to the end of suffering, which ones don’t. You’re going to see those distinctions only through practice, through trying to get the mind free from suffering as you come to see what does and doesn’t work. That’s where …
- Life in the Buddha’s Hospital… Because, after all, who’s suffering because of our diseases? Other people may be suffering to some extent, but we’re really suffering. We suffer very little from what other people do, and a great deal from the lack of skill in our own minds. In the Canon the Buddha talks about how people should not give in to craving and conceit, and when …
- In Accordance with the Dhamma… that the Buddha said that suffering comes from resisting change, therefore there should be nothing wrong with changing the Dhamma, changing the Vinaya. But that argument is wrong from the very beginning, The Buddha never said that suffering comes from resisting change. He says it comes from clinging, which means that we have to turn around and look at what we’re clinging to …
- Knowing & Acting… The problem is that in its actions, it creates a lot of suffering for itself. If we don’t really know, we can act in ways that cause a lot of suffering not only for ourselves but also for other people. So this is what we have to work on. We have to be aware of what we’re doing so that we can …
- A Questioning Attitude… Where is there suffering? Why is there suffering? Is it possible to put an end to suffering? How do you do that? Those kinds of questions, those kinds of doubts are an essential part of discernment. This is why the Buddha said that the mind is purified by discernment. There’s the idea that by doing metta practice you burn away your anger or …
- A Load Off the Mind… In other words, suffering is optional, and it’s usually through our own ignorance that we take the suffering option. But as you meditate, you learn that there are other options as well. There is, as the Buddha said, the potential for rapture here in the body. There’s the potential for stillness, the potential for pleasure. These potentials are all here. You want …
- The Real Thing… But what does the Buddha talk about? “This is suffering, this is the cause of suffering, this is the cessation of suffering, this is the path.” No lights. No background music. Just something very simple. But notice the way the Buddha talks about the insight that gets you there. There’s one passage where he asks, “What do I teach? I teach, ‘This is …
- Well-armed Efforts… Without them, there’s no end to suffering. The Buddha didn’t teach just suffering. Some people accuse Buddhism of being pessimistic because it talks so much about suffering. But the Buddha’s like a doctor: He talks about suffering because he has a cure. And the cure’s not simply to watch things come and go on their own and to accept their …
- Training the Committee… The more we train our mindfulness, the more we train our alertness, our powers of concentration, our discernment, then the more good we can do, the less suffering we cause for ourselves, the less suffering we cause for others. So there are values that underlie this practice and it’s good to keep them in mind. As we’re sitting here focusing on the …
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