Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Learning from What You Do
     … not understanding, say, when you’re suffering, which part of the suffering comes from something that you can control and which part comes from things you can’t control. The dukkha or suffering of the three characteristics is something that’s built into things. But the dukkha or the suffering and stress that comes from craving—the dukkha of the four noble truths: That … 
  3. Strategies for Happiness
     … But these teachings are meant to protect you from suffering. They’re there to remind you that if you latch onto the body as yours in a really strong sense, you’re going to suffer. If you can see it as a tool that you use toward happiness, that’s a different issue. But so many of us don’t see it in that … 
  4. Fabricating with Awareness
    Fabricating with Awareness August 10, 2012 When the Buddha explains the causes of suffering, he starts with ignorance, and from ignorance he goes on to fabrication. In other words, it’s because we fabricate out of ignorance: That’s why we suffer. Everything else follows from that. Now, the cure is to replace the ignorance with knowledge, knowledge in terms of the four noble … 
  5. The Language of the Heart (1)
     … This may be one of the reasons why the Buddha focused on the problem of suffering as the point of communication. Only when we admit to ourselves that we’re suffering, are we really open to listening to other people. As the Buddha himself said, there are two reactions to suffering. One is bewilderment: Why is this happening? The second is: Is there anyone … 
  6. Samsara
     … Because on the one hand when you act more skillfully, fewer people suffer. You suffer less, the people around you suffer less. And at the same time, you act as an example to them. You can show them the way that they can stop creating so much suffering for themselves. So it’s not so much a question of getting out of a particular … 
  7. Right & Wrong Decisions
     … The mind does have a tendency to create a lot of suffering for itself. We all want happiness. Everything we do and say and think, every intention we have, is an attempt at finding happiness or finding at least some pleasure, and yet it often turns around and creates a lot of suffering. This is why you have to bring a lot of alertness … 
  8. Choices in the Present
     … Now, to stick with the uncomfortable things coming up in the mind requires that you have strength to withstand them so that you don’t just fall in with them, and so that you’re not suffering while you’re watching the suffering. That’s why you have to develop mindfulness, alertness, and concentration, because as concentration comes, it gives a sense of well … 
  9. Equanimity & Endurance
     … But then there’s that area of your experience that no one else can peer into where there’s a big problem, and that’s suffering: the suffering that the mind places on itself. You experience it, nobody else can: what it feels like to you, the sharpness of the pain, the heaviness of the pain. No one can experience it, the same way … 
  10. Heedful, Attentive, Mindful
     … Appropriate attention is when you ask the right questions, particularly, “Where is there suffering? What is the suffering? How is it caused? Can it be ended? And what is the path to its ending?” When you ask those questions, then you get a better idea of where your heedfulness should be focused—on ferreting out the causes of suffering and protecting yourself against them … 
  11. Strength Training
     … The first one is to comprehend suffering. Then you let go of the cause of suffering, to realize the cessation of suffering, but to do that, you’ve got to develop the path. That takes work. So if you’re in this for the long haul, this means, one, that you try to set up a regular schedule, that you meditate every day. Don … 
  12. The Triple Training
     … The second principle is appropriate attention, looking at your actions, seeing where they’re causing suffering, seeing where you can make changes so you don’t have to cause the suffering again. And you keep at it. That’s how you combine commitment and reflection. In other words, this is a general principle, and the Buddha said you apply this to the threefold training … 
  13. In Earnest
     … He saw there was a real problem in life, the suffering—everybody’s suffering. There’s one point where he says he had a vision of the world before his awakening. It was of a puddle drying up, and there were fish in the puddle, lots of fish in the puddle, and they were struggling with one another to get what little bit of … 
  14. Dimensions of Right Effort
     … Look for the suffering and then ask yourself, “What is it about this that’s actually causing the suffering? Is it the thought itself or is it the way I relate to the thought? Is there any craving in the way I relate to it? What comes and goes with the suffering?” Because the suffering doesn’t stay all the time. Sometimes it comes … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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