Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 36
  2. Calm & Insight into Pain
     … If they’re doing it in ignorance, there’s going to be suffering. If you can see how you’re picturing pain to yourself, how you picture your body to yourself, how you picture the mind to yourself, and you can see where it’s causing suffering, then tell yourself, “Maybe I can change the picture.” Now, you don’t have to change pictures … 
  3. Universal Truths
     … He doesn’t force anyone to carry out these duties—but the stress and suffering that we suffer from: They force us. If you really want to gain release from these things, you first have to comprehend them. You have to do the duties appropriate to each of the truths. One of the reasons we start with the breath is that it gives us … 
  4. Parsing Out Suffering
    The Buddha says that to get beyond suffering, we have to comprehend it. That’s the duty with regard to the first noble truth. And comprehending it basically comes down to understanding why we look for happiness in all the wrong places, in all the wrong ways. The Buddha could have simply said that—we want pleasure, but we’re not finding it the … 
  5. The Right Focal Length
     … What he meant, of course, was that they kept complaining about things outside, blaming their sufferings on conditions outside, and never taking seriously the idea that maybe their suffering was actually coming from within, and that your main focus should be inside. Actually, one of the purposes of having a monastery that’s not all that comfortable—particularly in a monastic life where we … 
  6. Respecting Death
     … It’s one of the few things that can see you through that experience so that you don’t suffer. And this is why recollection of death is traditionally used to spur you on the practice, to be heedful, to get over your laziness, realizing you don’t know how much time you have, and death is a big problem. Sometimes the suffering of … 
  7. Advice for a New Monk
     … Once your understanding of suffering falls in line with the right general principles, you’re a lot more likely to see the genuine cause and then dig it up, really understand the suffering enough so that you can put an end to it. Most of us know that we suffer, but we don’t really understand our suffering, so we keep pushing and pulling … 
  8. The Uses of Fear
     … You become heedful to try to develop skillful qualities, i.e., qualities of mind that will lead to good results, leading you away from suffering; and to abandon and avoid unskillful qualities, the ones that cause suffering. If you develop your mindfulness, your alertness, your concentration, you can do this. So fear isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s an important part of … 
  9. The Buddha’s Metaphysics
     … It’s very important because the big issue he addressed was the question of suffering and how to put an end to suffering. Well, suffering is something you do. The act of putting an end to it is also something you do. So the Buddha had to address the question of action, because questions about action address such issues as, “Is everything you do … 
  10. The Awful Truth
     … These are the things that cause us to act unskillfully, so that we cause ourselves suffering, and we cause suffering for the people around us. If these things can be uprooted, we’re not going to suffer; we’re not going to cause anybody else any suffering. When these things are uprooted, then no matter where you live, you don’t pick up the … 
  11. Ajaan Suwat’s Gift
     … And look in here as well for the cause of the suffering, and also for the solution. In other words, it’s not the case that we suffer because of things outside. There can be bad things outside, but we don’t have to suffer from them. We suffer from them because of our own lack of skill, our own lack of understanding. So … 
  12. Questions of Skill
    Sometimes the Buddha traces the causes of suffering down to craving, and sometimes he traces them further, to avijjā. This word is usually translated as ignorance, but it also means lack of skill. So, what are the skills we need? The skills having to do with the duties of the four noble truths. The truths are not just truths “about” something. They’re truths … 
  13. Fear of Others
     … And at the end of the hour, she turned to the woman who brought her here and said, “I’ve never suffered so much in my life.” Which just goes to show that the mind can create a lot of suffering for itself. In fact, as the Buddha pointed out, the suffering we create for ourselves is what really weighs down the mind, much … 
  14. Chanting Before Meditation
     … The food we eat—even if it’s vegetarian or vegan food—involves suffering for the people who have to work to farm the food and to get the food here. It takes work to fix it and to clean up afterwards. Clothing requires work. Shelter requires a lot of work. Medicine requires a lot of work. There’s a lot of suffering that … 
  15. Memory & Motivation
     … What’s skillful to do right now?—“skillful” being defined as what doesn’t lead to harm or suffering and actually leads away from suffering or stress. Some skillful things you’ve learned from others and some you’ve learned from your own experience. Not everything that looks good in the present moment is going to have good results. We’re not here just … 
  16. Study & Practice
     … 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 to learn how to recognize which part of the meditation … 
  17. Goodwill Permeates the Dhamma
     … We suffer and we don’t know why. We look for someone who can teach us a way to get out of suffering. So there’s bewilderment and a search. And he provides us with his own example as a way to get out of suffering, because he, too, used to suffer. He knows what it’s like. But he also knows what it … 
  18. Push Yourself
    We’re on the path to the end of stress and suffering, but that doesn’t mean that the path itself has no stress, no suffering. Ajaan Suwat would make a comparison with eating and being full. When you’re full, you can relax. There’s a sense of sufficiency. But while you’re eating, first you have to find the food, then you … 
  19. Practicing for Dispassion
     … So many people say that the Buddha teaches that everything is suffering or that life is suffering, but that’s not what he said. He said that clinging is suffering. And there’s a cause for the clinging: craving—craving for sensuality, craving for becoming, and then, paradoxically, craving for non-becoming, when you’ve developed a particular becoming but then want to see … 
  20. A Clear Agenda
     … You’ll also find that there are areas within you where you’re creating a lot of unnecessary suffering. That suffering is weighing you down. When you’re weighed down, you’re less able to deal with your responsibilities. So putting the issues of the world aside is not an irresponsible act. That’s one of your first agendas. It’s written into the … 
  21. Pride in Your Craft
    Everything we do is for the sake of happiness, to get away from pain, stress, and suffering. And yet so often the things we do cause pain and suffering. This is why we have to train the mind, to look more carefully at what it’s doing. Everybody everywhere tries to figure why there’s pain and suffering and how to get rid of … 
  22. Load next page...