Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"
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- 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 …
- Is ‘I Am’ the Problem?… But as long as the duties of the four noble truths are not done, their duties are not done. They’re just shirking their duties, saying, “Well, I’m just going to find joy in not doing what I have to do or in telling myself I don’t have to do anything.” But the duties haven’t been done yet. Suffering hasn’t …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Patient & Inquisitive… What does he mean? And why would that be suffering? He sets out the four noble truths not simply as a nice thing to think about. He’s challenging you. Each one of the truths is a challenge. Your cravings are making you suffer. Yet we think that our cravings are what enable us to find happiness. He says it is possible to put …
- Comfortable as an Outsider… That’s what the message of the four noble truths is all about. It’s not that we suffer from sights, sounds, smells, tastes, or tactile sensations. We suffer because of the commentary we apply to these things. And a lot of meditation is learning to talk to yourself in new ways. In fact, the whole practice is about talking to yourself in new …
- The Right to Repair Your Mind… else has to do this for you. But he’s saying that you’ve got the wherewithal within yourself to solve the mind’s problems, particularly the problem of suffering. The four noble truths are his repair manual. They’re things you can find within yourself. They’re right here, right now—all four truths. And the reason we haven’t seen them is …
- Hold a Mirror to Your Mind… it give insight into the pattern of action in shaping the world, but also focused in on, “What am I doing that’s causing suffering?” That’s the beginning of the four noble truths. It’s not just actions from the past, it’s actions in the present moment that really matter. Seeing that got him to the third knowledge, and that was the …
- Streams of Anger… This is what the dynamic of the four noble truths is all about—wherever there’s suffering, turn around and look inside. Things outside may really be bad, but the suffering is not caused by the things outside. Look at dependent co-arising: Suffering doesn’t begin with unpleasant sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. Those come in the middle of the sequence. It …
- Cause & Effect… Because when the Buddha talks about the four noble truths, he’s not talking about something abstract and far away. It’s something extremely personal: the fact that our unskillful desires give rise to suffering; skillful desires can bring an end to suffering. Our desires are about as intimate a part of ourselves as you can imagine. Yet we often don’t examine them …
- Alone & Together… ask yourself: To what extent are they true, and to what extent is the opposite true? After all, there are only a few things that are true across the board: the four noble truths, the duties of those truths, and the basic principle that unskillful qualities should be abandoned and skillful ones should be developed. Everything else has its time and place. Even the …
- Strengthening Your Goodness… In other words, you’ve got your own inner set of duties, what the Buddha sets out in the four noble truths: to comprehend the way the mind creates suffering for itself, to abandon the cause, to realize the cessation of suffering by developing the path. It may seem a little disconcerting that here are even more duties for you, but these are the …
- A Pleasure Not to Be Feared… In the chant just now, the four noble truths are about suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. The focus seems to be on suffering, but notice that the truths don’t just stick with suffering. They’re also about how to find an end to it. And the end of suffering is true happiness. So those four noble truths …
- Study & Practice… That’s what the four noble truths are all about. You have to learn to distinguish between stress and suffering on the one hand, and its cause on the other. Then there’s the path, which does involve some stress and suffering. After all, it’s made out of aggregates, which are subject to conditions. But you have to use them, so you have …
- Basic Wisdom… They’re embodied in the four noble truths. Craving leads to suffering. That’s an issue of action and result. The path leads to the end of suffering. That’s another action and result. And you see the path as preferable to the craving, because the results are on different levels. Then you figure out that the best way to develop the path is …
- Thinking Your Way to Stillness… They’re the ones that will eventually lead you to see things in terms of the four noble truths: looking at what’s going on simply as events and connections between events, seeing what the events do, and learning how to use that knowledge for the purpose of putting an end to suffering. So meditation does involve some thinking. It’s not simply being …
- Cornered… It’s easy to say that everything is fabricated, is inconstant, stressful and not-self and then wonder, “Okay, well what next?” What does all that mean? What do you do with that insight? The insight is useful only in the context of figuring out what you can do in terms of either the four noble truths or dependent co-arising. If you look …
- The Skill of Not Suffering… And that’s related to a second kind of suffering, the suffering of the four noble truths. This suffering is optional; it doesn’t have to be there. It comes from our own ignorance, from our own craving and clinging, and those things can be changed. We bring our awareness to the present moment to minimize our ignorance. We try to look at our …
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