Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Unfabricated Happiness
     … This helps you gain a sense of how the way you normally fabricate things causes a lot of unnecessary stress and suffering. The more stirred-up your fabrications, the more you’re going to suffer: one, simply out of the effort to put these things together, and two, you can come up with all kinds of ideas, perceptions, thoughts, feelings, that can wreak a … 
  3. The Management of Suffering
     … Instead of the truth of the cessation of suffering, it’s the truth of the management of suffering. If you don’t have any plans to go all the way on the path, you have to realize that wherever you set your sights, there’s going to be disappointment at some point. A lot of people say, “I’m not ready for the ultimate … 
  4. Alighting on the Dhamma
     … Appropriate attention is where you take what you’ve been listening to and ask yourself, “How does this apply to the question of suffering? Is the Buddha talking about suffering itself, or is he talking about the cause of suffering? Or the path? And how does this apply to me? What am I doing right now that’s suffering? What am I doing that … 
  5. Truths of the Will
     … But then there’s also the suffering that comes from craving, especially unskillful craving. The first kind of suffering you can’t do much about, but you can make a difference with that second kind. This is an area where your will has a lot to say, has a lot of impact if you focus it properly. Putting an end to suffering is a … 
  6. Breathing Skillfully
     … how to breathe, how to think, how to talk to ourselves in a way that doesn’t cause suffering. As the Buddha said, we suffer because we do very simple things in ignorance. But he wasn’t satisfied with just talking about how people are ignorant. He wanted to train them so they could overcome their ignorance. One of the things he said that … 
  7. A Meditative Life
     … stress and suffering, the cause of stress and suffering, the cessation of stress and suffering, and the path of practice to that cessation. Just look at the whole range of your experience: Instead of dividing it up into its usual patterns of me and not me, simply look to see, “Where is there suffering? Where is there stress? What goes along with it? What … 
  8. Pay Careful Attention
     … Then you apply appropriate attention, asking how this teaching applies to the problem of suffering, the cause of suffering, or the end of suffering. Then you practice the Dhamma in line with the Dhamma as you’ve understood it, for the sake of dispassion, for the sake of being unfettered. Those were two of the tests that the Buddha gave to his stepmother: True … 
  9. Forest Bathing
     … What the Buddha has to say about suffering is really counterintuitive. When we think about suffering, we just think about pain. The Buddha says No: Suffering is clinging. The part that’s hard to bear is the clinging, yet we run to cling to things. The cause of suffering is the craving, and yet we keep taking our cravings as our friend. This is … 
  10. Equanimity & More
    We chant the brahmaviharas every night before the meditation, expressing a wish for happiness for all beings: “May all those who are suffering be released from the suffering. May all those who are already happy not be taken away from their happiness.” Those are wishes. But as the Buddha said, if things could be made true simply by wishing, there would be nobody who … 
  11. Renunciate Grief
     … It is possible to put an end to suffering. People have done it, but you’re not there. Renunciate joy is the joy you feel on reaching the goal, and renunciate equanimity is the equanimity that you feel when you have tasted that joy. The Buddha makes an interesting comment. He says that when you’re suffering from householder sorrow or householder grief, you … 
  12. Trust Your Desire for Happiness
     … What drives you is the suffering that exists in your life and your desire to find a way out. The Buddha never forced you. He never said you have to believe his teachings. But he advises you to look at your life. If there’s suffering, then you might want to try this path because it explains why there is suffering and gives you … 
  13. In the Light of Karma
     … This takes a lot of the sting out of your own personal sufferings. Everybody going through life is suffering: They’ve got aging, illness, death, separation. And they’ve got their karma, too. You can think about devas having a good time up there in heaven. Well, they’re like trust-fund kids. As long as the stock market’s doing well, the trust … 
  14. A Happy Tradition
    When the Buddha taught people how to put an end to suffering, he never asked them first, “Do you deserve to suffer?” You look at the people he taught: In many cases there were people whose karma was such that they were going to die soon. But he’d teach them how to become awakened anyhow. Even his foremost disciple, Ven. Moggallana, had some … 
  15. Study & Practice
     … This is where it’s useful to read what the Buddha has to say about how you might comprehend suffering, say, or how you might abandon its cause. Look at the way he defines suffering so that you can get a sense of what in your life really is suffering. Because sometimes there are things that he classes as suffering that we actually like … 
  16. What Right Mindfulness Remembers
     … At the end of the hour, the friend opened her eyes and said, “I have never suffered so much in my life.” Just sitting there breathing. Of course, it wasn’t just that she was sitting there breathing: Her mind was racing through all kinds of things, adding a lot of unnecessary suffering. The woman who brought her in the meantime had had a … 
  17. Gaining the Dhamma Eye
     … At the very least, we can see our mind in action, see where it’s causing stress and suffering, and learn to stop whatever actions are causing stress and suffering. In the course of doing that, we can gain the Dhamma eye. So that’s the first requisite: associating with people who let you know that this is possible. It’s not just hearsay … 
  18. What Are You Doing Right Now?
     … It’s possible for us to act in such a way that we can put an end to suffering. As he said, that’s what his teachings all about: suffering and the end of suffering. Both of these things involve doing. There are certain things we do that cause us to suffer, and others we can do that can put an end to suffering … 
  19. The Buddha’s Standards or Yours?
     … Or maybe I shouldn’t hold onto that particular preference in this particular circumstance.” This is probably one of the reasons why the Buddha focuses on suffering, because it’s only when you see yourself creating suffering that you’re willing to change your ways. Otherwise, you just keep banging your head and complaining about the wall being in the way, without thinking, “Maybe … 
  20. Battling Darkness
    Battling Darkness August 6, 2005 One of the standard analogies for meditation is that you’re going into battle with all the habits of the mind that create suffering. They’re called defilements because they darken the mind. As the Buddha once said, the mind is luminous, but these defilements come creeping in. If the mind didn’t have some luminosity, you wouldn’t … 
  21. Just Events
     … Healthy is when you see that if you identify with something, there’s going to be suffering. And so you have to choose your mode of thinking—personal or impersonal—with knowledge. As with so many factors in life, if you do it in ignorance, it can lead to suffering, but if you do it with knowledge, it’s actually part of the path … 
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