Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. The Five Faculties Confirmed
     … As the Buddha says, we suffer because of our clinging. Our knee-jerk reaction is usually that we’re suffering because of things other people have done or because of situations outside. Or we may say that we’re suffering because we ourselves are bad people: Our nature is inherently bad, so we deserve to suffer. Those ideas the Buddha says to put aside … 
  16. Work on Your Mind
    In Thai, they have a phrase, “tam jai,” which literally means “to work on your mind.” They use it usually when you’ve suffered a loss or a setback, and you calm the mind down so that you’re not too upset, so that you can actually think straight, figure out what to do next, and not let the loss or the setback get … 
  17. Mindfulness Gets Intimate
     … That has to do with the Buddha’s analysis on how suffering is caused. He says that we suffer because of the type of craving that leads to becoming. Becoming is a sense of your identity in a world of experience. But he also warned that one of the types of craving leading to becoming is craving for non-becoming. In other words, hoping … 
  18. The End of Uncertainty
     … suffering arising, suffering passing away. Everything else he taught is arranged around that, even Right View: It’s right to the extent that it helps put an end to suffering. Your thoughts are skillful or unskillful, your words and your deeds are skillful and unskillful, depending on the extent to which they put an end to suffering. So always keep this principle in mind … 
  19. To Go Where You’ve Never Gone Before
     … After all, animals all suffer. I remember hearing a Zen teacher one time say that “Animals don’t suffer, because they don’t have any sense of self.” But you look at them, and they’re obviously suffering from fear. After all, they have all the forms of clinging: There’s sensuality clinging. They have a sense of the pleasures they want to find … 
  20. You Can’t Clone Awakening
    It may seem incongruous or ironic that here we are, hoping for total release from suffering, stress—the freedom of nibbana—and on the way there, we’re hoping for states of infinite space, infinite consciousness, bliss, rapture, and yet what are we doing? We’re focusing on our breath. We’re sitting here in a posture that may or may not be comfortable … 
  21. The Noble Pursuit of Happiness
     … She’d been meditating, she’d learned all about emptiness and all these big Buddhist concepts, but they weren’t any use for the suffering of these kids. If you’re going to help other people who are suffering, you first have to learn how not to suffer yourself. Now, you don’t have to wait until the very end of the path before … 
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