Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Playing by the Buddha’s Rules
     … Why does the mind create suffering around these things? Through its clinging. Where is the clinging? You often hear it said that the Buddha says that life is suffering, which is not a very useful message. He actually says that clinging is suffering. And that’s useful, something you can do something about. And he gives you the tools. It’s important simply that … 
  3. Tenacity
     … the determination not to come back and suffer. Simply going around being mindful and apathetic and emotionally blank doesn’t really accomplish anything. You’re just feeding off old karma and creating blank new karma, which doesn’t lead to the end of suffering. The end of suffering requires a determination that you hold to, that there’s got to be a way out … 
  4. Remembering Ajaan Fuang
     … The mind is suffering. It’s creating its own suffering, even though it wants happiness. Why? How? What can we do to stop? We’re happy to accept help from those who’ve found a reliable way to the end of suffering. But, as they all point out, the work is up to us. So you end up having to do what I did … 
  5. Working Through the Breath
     … But, as the Buddha points out, they’re as fabricated as anything else in your experience, and if you see that the emotion is unhealthy, causing suffering to you, causing suffering to other people, the fact that you’ve been working with the breath and working with these different types of fabrication gives you a handle for freeing yourself from it. At the very … 
  6. Hitting a Wall
     … And each of us has very particular sufferings, very particular ways of suffering, particular issues that weigh down the mind. But there’s also a sense in which it’s something we all have in common. After all, we all do suffer. We recognize that. And as the Buddha pointed out, there’s a common pattern to the suffering. The same issue applies to … 
  7. Fourth Truth, First Duty
     … This is going to be really important because in the Buddha’s analysis, suffering is clinging to the aggregates. So you’re getting to know the aggregates as you develop them in the right direction. It’s one of the ways in which developing the path helps you to comprehend suffering, which is the duty with regard to the first noble truth. You get … 
  8. Living Forward, Understanding Backward
     … Compassion is what goodwill feels toward people who are suffering, or who are creating the causes for suffering. You don’t want to pile more suffering on top of them. If you find yourself in a position where you can help, go ahead. You’re happy to help. If you’re not in a position to help, you extend that wish—may they be … 
  9. The Truth of Transcendence
     … There is a total end of suffering; there is a total release and it’s totally unconditioned. Another teacher I was reading said that release is something conditioned. She cited a text in the Canon where the Buddha starts out with dependent co-arising up through suffering and then from suffering talks about how suffering gives rise to conviction and conviction gives rise to … 
  10. Some Assembly Required
     … We do things that cause stress and suffering. We cling to things: That’s the suffering. We crave them: That’s what causes it. There are things we like. That’s why we cling, that’s why we crave—when we’re not willing to see the suffering that goes along with them. It’s only when you can see that, that you’re … 
  11. Shame & Acceptance
     … These are all the things you need.” And so a lot of his Dhamma talks focused on, one, the fact that people were suffering; and, two, they had the resources that, if they worked at them, could take them out of suffering. That’s the important point: if you work on them. You need to have a strong sense that where you are is … 
  12. An Auspicious Birth
     … If there’s suffering, the duty is to comprehend it. If there’s craving or clinging, the duty is to let it go. As for the cessation of suffering that comes when craving is abandoned, you have to realize that, even on a momentary level. You should try to be very clear that when you let go of a particular craving, the corresponding suffering … 
  13. Lessons of Right Resolve
     … He taught it for everybody—everybody who realizes that they are causing their own suffering. They’re sick and tired of blaming it on other people, because that goes nowhere. They turn around and ask what can they do so that they don’t have to suffer. And to whatever extent they’ve been causing suffering for themselves or others in the past, that … 
  14. Goodwill for the Breath
     … After all, if the Buddha didn’t base his teachings on goodwill, on the desire for true happiness, why would he focus on suffering as is his main issue? It’s because he wanted to free himself and free us from suffering: That’s why he focused there, so he wouldn’t have to keep putting up with false happiness all the time. The … 
  15. Death Is Normal
     … You’ve got human capabilities, and among those capabilities is the ability to train your mind so that regardless of what happens, you don’t have to suffer. The people with untrained minds are the ones who flail around and cause themselves suffering. They cause other people suffering, too, because when you see someone really suffering like that, you want to do your best … 
  16. Open Are the Doors to the Deathless
     … All too often, Buddhism is described as being pessimistic because it focuses on pain and suffering. Well, the Buddha never said that life is suffering, but he did say, there is suffering and this is what it is: clinging to the five aggregates, which are activities of the mind. So, it’s something you’re doing. And why are you doing it? Because of … 
  17. Unskillful Thinking
     … Things that shouldn’t make you suffer make you suffer. Yet it’s not really that they’re making you suffer: You’re making yourself suffer over them. That’s the problem. As the Buddha pointed out, there are two kinds of suffering in the world. There’s the natural suffering of having a body, of having a mind that’s full of change … 
  18. Visakha Puja – True Homage
     … The candles stand for discernment that throws light on our actions, revealing to us how we cause suffering and how we can learn how not to cause suffering. Those are the symbols, but we don’t want just the symbols. We want the reality. So let’s meditate. Focus on your breath. Know when the breath is coming in, know when it’s going … 
  19. Only Natural
    Only Natural May 16, 2020 One of the main reasons for suffering is the way the mind talks to itself. Now, the solution is not to just stop talking. You have to understand the process of what’s going on as the mind talks to itself. Who’s talking? Where does it come from? Where does it lead? When you understand it, then you … 
  20. A Path of Aggregates
    There’s a strange phrase in the chant we had just now: “those who don’t discern suffering.” You would think that everybody can discern suffering. But from the Buddha’s point of view, he was the first to really discern it. When he explains suffering, the noble truth of suffering, he starts out with common examples of suffering: aging, illness, and death; sorrow … 
  21. Feeding the Mind
     … That’s suffering as well. The word for sustenance, upadana, also means clinging. Wherever the mind clings, that’s where it’s feeding. And the process of clinging, the Buddha said, is suffering. The process of having to depend on other things like this: That’s suffering. Interrelatedness is no fun, because the system that we’re dependent on is just so much out … 
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