Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. The Karma of Narratives
     … Then, from that larger point of view, he was able to focus in on the present moment and look at the four noble truths as they were showing themselves in the present moment. Where is the stress right now? What’s causing the stress right now? What can be done right now to put an end to stress? But notice that pattern. He got … 
  3. Defilements at the Door
     … Then, when we see them, we can figure them out in line with the four noble truths: Where’s the craving here? What’s the craving based on? What feelings? What intentions? What acts of attention? When you look at dependent co-arising, you see that the really interesting factors are the ones that come before sensory contact: name and form, or fabrication. What … 
  4. One Thing at a Time
     … The senior monk was taken aback, and he said, “Well, that shows that you know how to listen.” So how *do *you listen? You keep the Buddha’s teachings on the four noble truths in mind. What is the stress? The stress is in the clinging. Where does it come from? It comes from our own craving. Can that craving be stopped? Yes. How … 
  5. Dependent Co-arising in Fifteen Minutes
     … What’s the relationship between dependent co-arising and the four noble truths? Everything up through craving in the list is the second noble truth. Everything starting with clinging, going through becoming and birth, aging, and death, is the first noble truth. When you bring knowledge to these processes, that’s the path. Once you’ve got the path, that leads to the end … 
  6. The Path of Action
     … He taught the noble eightfold path before he taught the four noble truths. And his last teaching was a path of action. The teaching he gave to his very last student was, again, the noble eightfold path. And his very last words were an imperative: “Bring about completion,” he said, “through heedfulness.” All these are things that we do. And although it’s a … 
  7. Joy in Effort
     … What this means in practice is that you learn how to question your efforts in terms of the four noble truths until you arrive at something that lies beyond effort, beyond the path. But you can’t get to the “beyond” unless you go through the effort of the path. In fact, it’s in focusing on the doing of the path that you … 
  8. The Noble Path to Happiness
     … Sometimes we’re told that it’s seeing things in terms of the three characteristics, but, one, the Buddha never used the term, “three characteristics.” And, two, the four noble truths are actually the context, his definition of right view: the question of where there’s stress and suffering, and what’s causing it, what you can do to put an end to it … 
  9. Persistence
     … You’ve got the four noble truths and they’re telling you to do this: If you run into any stress or suffering, you want to comprehend it. If you can see what’s giving rise to that stress, you want to let that go. As for the factors of the path—everything from right view through right concentration—those are things that you … 
  10. Not Swept Away
     … All too often the Buddha is accused of being pessimistic, but the whole import of the four noble truths is that you don’t have to suffer. You don’t have to get blown away. At the very least, suffering is manageable. As someone once said, the the third and half noble truth, when you haven’t quite gotten all the way to the … 
  11. A Passion for the Path
    When the Buddha first explained the four noble truths, he also explained that each truth had a duty. Suffering was to be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation was to be realized, and the path was to be developed. At another point in his career, he explained “comprehension” a little bit further: He said that you comprehend suffering to the point of dispassion. That … 
  12. Something to Stand On
     … And two is to look at experience in terms of the four noble truths, because those truths are what form what he calls vijja, the Pali word that means both knowledge and skill. This is a skillful way of looking at your experience so you can develop the other skills you need in order to overcome suffering. That’s the protection he offers. Like … 
  13. The Message of Mindfulness
     … Sometimes it involves keeping the four noble truths in mind: remembering that we’re here to look for stress, its cause, its cessation, or the path to its cessation. And then you have to remember the duties that go along with those four truths. If stress or pain comes up, you have to remember, “Don’t run away,” because it’s so easy to … 
  14. Samvega
     … Remember that the suffering of the four noble truths and the suffering or stress in the three characteristics are two different things. The three characteristics apply to everything: That’s simply the way they are. Everything that’s fabricated has to be inconstant, stressful, and not-self. But the stress that comes from craving and clinging: That’s not necessary. So you sit with … 
  15. Judging Just Right
     … The other is the four noble truths. As for other teachings, they have their time and their place. For example, when you’re working on concentration, the questions of things being inconstant, stressful, not-self: Don’t apply them to the concentration. Apply them to the things that would pull you away from concentration, because you’re trying to make the concentration constant, easeful … 
  16. A Noble Warrior’s Path
     … One is the four noble truths, and the other is the principle that skillful qualities should be developed and unskillful ones should be abandoned. Those two teachings are true across the board. As the Buddha showed, the three characteristics—or rather, the three perceptions—should be applied only in certain times and certain places. There was once a young monk who was asked by … 
  17. Right Speech, Inside & Out
     … One was the distinction between what is skillful and unskillful behavior—that skillful behavior should be developed and unskillful behavior abandoned—and the other was the four noble truths. The truths about yourself as a meditator don’t fall into those categories. In other words, the question of whether you’re a good meditator or a bad meditator is never true across the board … 
  18. Gratification
     … That’s what the four noble truths are all about. The suffering that really gets to the mind is the suffering that comes from craving—not from the arising and passing away of things but from the craving that makes us try to take these things that arise and pass away and turn them into a foundation for happiness. But they’re not reliable … 
  19. Concentration Nurtured by Virtue
     … And you can regard those disturbances as the suffering in the four noble truths, if you want to analyze them. This is one of the teachings that Ajaan Suwat would give. You sit here trying to get the mind still. If there’s any disturbance in the stillness, you can say, “Okay, this is suffering.” When the Buddha talks about stress and suffering, it … 
  20. Levels of Truth
     … There’s the level of the four noble truths, where he doesn’t talk about beings or worlds. He simply analyzes the problem of suffering. This is for use when your powers of concentration get better and you can start analyzing things simply in terms of stress, the mental movements that are causing the stress, and what to do so you can see those … 
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