Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. The Karma of Self
     … This is where the other side of self comes in, the self that’s experiencing the happiness and suffering coming from the things you do. You have to keep reminding yourself, yes, you will suffer if you’re not skillful, but if you do develop skillfulness, if you put the effort in right now, it’s going to bring good results right now and … 
  3. Looking Off to the Side
    We’re here because we aim at awakening, the end of suffering, a totally unconditioned happiness. So what are we doing looking at the breath? Why do we spend our time playing with the breath? Why aren’t we going straight to the goal? Because the goal isn’t something you go straight to. It requires strategies. One, because it’s a huge goal … 
  4. The Culture of the Practice
     … You also realize that your attitude toward suffering has to be noble. In other words, you accept responsibility for whether you’re going to suffer or not, and then you look into the machinations of the mind to see where they’re creating suffering. You may say, well, it’s because there’s pain here, there’s pain there. But why do you suffer … 
  5. Guardian Meditations
     … That’s what starts suffering in motion. When you replace the ignorance with knowledge, that cuts the chain of causes and conditions leading to suffering. So it’s good to know precisely what kind of knowledge is called for here: knowledge of the four noble truths. This is why right view is always given as the first factor in the noble eightfold path. It … 
  6. Faith in Awakening
     … When the Buddha talks about the noble truth of suffering, it’s not that suffering is noble. But when you realize that clinging is suffering, and you’re going to comprehend your clinging to the point of dispassion for it, that’s a noble act. When the Buddha talks about the awakened ones being noble, this is precisely the kind of nobility he had … 
  7. Choices
     … If it weren’t for that fact, there’d be nothing you could do about suffering, nothing you could do about stress. You’d just have to sit there and endure it. But it’s through our ignorance that we’re choosing to make ourselves suffer. When we gain knowledge, we can choose to make ourselves suffer less. So choose knowledge Try to be … 
  8. The Buddha’s Good News
     … The good news is that there are things you can do to avoid suffering. After all, the four noble truths don’t just stop with the first noble truth. There are four of them. They explain the cause of suffering. They say that it is possible to put an end to suffering, and they lay out the path. And the path to the end … 
  9. Hold onto the Breath
     … We cling to the five aggregates, and the clinging itself is the suffering. Then, later on in the talk, I mentioned that there’s got to be some clinging in the path. Someone in the audience said, “Aha.” They’d caught me in a weak point. “That means you’re saying that there’s going to be suffering on the path.” And I said … 
  10. The Buddha’s Shoulds
     … In other cases, there were more general principles about how certain actions lead to happiness, and other actions lead to long-term suffering. Based on that, you can decide; he gives you principles for deciding. And he attacked any teaching that would not provide you with those principles. So the shoulds are really important. You see them at the very beginning in the four … 
  11. Abandoning & Developing
     … We want to put an end of suffering: the suffering we cause ourselves, the suffering we cause others. That’s a worthy goal. The Buddha called it part of the noble search, the search for something that doesn’t age, doesn’t grow ill, doesn’t die—totally free from suffering. **But we have to relate to that goal in a skillful way. If … 
  12. The Swinging Balance
     … That’s what’s making us suffer. This was his real insight: that no matter how bad things were on the outside, it is possible to develop skill inside so that you don’t have to suffer from those things. If you’re not making yourself suffer, you’re placing less of a burden on others as well. So whatever amount of time it … 
  13. Goodwill Is Respect
     … You have to realize that if your happiness depends on the suffering of others, it’s not going to last. One, they’re going to try to do what they can to destroy it if they can. And two, it’s just a fact of karma. The fact that you’re making your happiness rely on other beings’ suffering means that you’re creating … 
  14. Scribe Knowledge, Warrior Knowledge
     … As the Buddha said, the feeding is related to suffering, because suffering is clinging, and the term for “feeding” or “taking sustenance” is also the same as the word for “clinging.” But the Buddha thought strategically. He realized that you couldn’t just stop feeding off of form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. If you forced yourself to stop, parts of the mind would … 
  15. Perplexity
     … When stress or suffering comes, that’s to be comprehended. You’ve got to look and see: What is actually the suffering there in the mind? You have to ferret it out. As the Buddha said, it’s something that’s not obvious: clinging to the five aggregates. If you go out to ask the average person on the street, “What’s suffering?”—it … 
  16. When Things Aren’t Going Well
     … You’re suffering and this is the way out. What is that way out? As the Buddha says, right view comes first. In his analysis of dependent co-arising, the prime factor causing suffering is ignorance. You don’t see things in terms of the four noble truths, and your attention goes wandering off to all sorts of other places. Or if you do … 
  17. To Strengthen the Path
     … All too often we hear that the Buddha bad-mouthed desire, calling it the cause of suffering. But not all desires cause suffering. Some desires are part of the path, like the desire to get the mind in a good state with a sense of well-being with the breath. Breathe in a way that feels good. And if it doesn’t feel good … 
  18. Treasures Beyond Death
     … As you learn how to master the duties of the path as skills—comprehending the suffering until you understand it; when you see what’s causing it, you let that go; you develop the factors of the path so that you can realize the cessation of suffering: That’s the greatest treasure there is. That’s what enables you to stop creating the suffering … 
  19. Focus on the Precepts
     … What exactly are you doing? You’re doing the causes of suffering someplace in your mind, and you want to see those actions along with why you do them. You want to develop the actions that lead to the end of suffering. So you want to get very, very sensitive to your actions and the intentions that motivate them. The precepts get you started … 
  20. Noble & True
     … After all, desire is a part of the path, and yet craving is the cause of suffering. So you have to learn how to distinguish what kinds of desires are good and which ones are bad. Craving for sensuality, the Buddha said, is going to make you suffer. Craving to become this, to become that or, once you become something, to have that becoming … 
  21. Cultivate a Limitless Heart
    Cultivate a Limitless Heart November 24, 2015 We each have our own sufferings that no one else can feel. And the work to put an end to suffering is often something that no one else can even see. As we’re focused on our own issues, things can get very narrow. On the one hand, it’s good that the sufferings that weigh down … 
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