Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. To Comprehend Suffering
     … The second kind is the stress in the four noble truths, dukkha, which can also be translated as suffering or dis-ease. That, the Buddha said, we have to comprehend. And he gave us tools for comprehending it: the five aggregates. If there’s any stress weighing the mind down, you can know for sure that it’s because you’re clinging to any … 
  3. Take Nothing for Granted
     … That’s what the four noble truths are all about: actions you’re doing in the present moment, some of which are leading to suffering, some of which are leading away from suffering. The Buddha gives you some pointers, but you’ve got to see for yourself: Exactly what do those pointers point to? What are you doing right now? Where is the craving … 
  4. Factors for Stream-entry
     … asking questions in terms of the four noble truths. What’s skillful and unskillful? The Dhamma is Dhamma not because you can defend it with rational arguments, or you can put up very elaborate lists of citations that this comes in that passage, and that comes in this passage. Those aren’t the criteria that the Buddha mentioned. His first criteria are: If it … 
  5. Factors for Stream Entry
     … Appropiate attention means basically looking at things in terms of the four noble truths, seeing how whatever teaching you’ve learned from the Dhamma applies to the problem of suffering in your life: Where are you suffering? And what are you doing to cause that suffering? Notice that’s the question: What are you doing? We don’t blame the suffering on things outside … 
  6. A New Framework
     … You measure them in terms of the four noble truths: Are you causing suffering? Or are you not causing suffering? You’re causing stress or you’re not. These are things that anyone can notice, yet most people don’t notice because they don’t look very carefully. Or they don’t make the connection between the fact that they’re suffering and the … 
  7. No Foolproofing
     … What little things are you still doing that are knocking it off balance? The answers to these questions again fall under the duties of the four noble truths. What are the things that you want to comprehend? What are the things you want to abandon? What are the things you need to develop, and what are the things you simply want to realize? So … 
  8. Solid in the Face of Death
     … He saw that it lay in mastering the four noble truths, which meant looking straight at the issue of suffering. In particular, he was looking to see what the mind is doing that keeps it coming back, back, back to suffer even more. So on the one hand, depersonalizing it helps make it all easier to bear. When it’s easier to bear, you … 
  9. To Certify Yourself
     … When the Buddha set out the four noble truths, the first truth was the truth of suffering. He says suffering is something you want to comprehend. That means you want to see it in action—exactly, what is the suffering in the mind? Then you want to see the cause, because if you’re going to put an end to suffering, you have to … 
  10. It’s All about Action
     … how they relate to actions, you understand them a lot better: where he’s coming from and what the teachings are supposed to do. The Dhamma is connected with action. The four noble truths have their duties. The meaning of the Dhamma: the word attha is often paired in Thailand with the word Dhamma. It means “meaning”: what the Dhamma means but also what … 
  11. The Wisdom of Wising Up
     … When you consider the Buddha’s teachings—for example, the four noble truths, the three characteristics, the five hindrances—it’s easy to dismiss them as cultural relics or somebody’s personal proclivity. Why not five or three noble truths? Why does he focus on these particular teachings? Why focus on suffering? Was there something about his culture that kept him from seeing the … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
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