Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. Your True Responsibility
     … Take the Four Noble Truths: They deal with suffering and the end of suffering. What do you do to bring about the end of suffering? In other words, how do you arrange the issues in your mind skillfully so that they no longer lead to suffering? Even the Buddha’s teaching on causality can be compared to modern theories about learning. He tells precisely … 
  3. Compassionate Duties
     … In this case, you’re keeping in mind the duties that the Buddha set out in the four noble truths, as we chanted just now: Suffering is to be comprehended, its cause is to be abandoned, the cessation is to be realized, and you do that by developing the path. It’s a way of dividing up your experience so that you know what … 
  4. Don’t Focus on Jhana, Focus on the Breath
     … One of Ajaan Lee’s most important insights into concentration practice is that this is how evaluation starts out, paying attention to a simple question that’s very closely related to the four noble truths. “Where is the stress? What can I do to alleviate the stress?” In this case, “Where is the discomfort in the breath?” How do you breathe in? What are … 
  5. Joy in Getting It Right
     … As for the mind states, they’re usually paired—concentrated, unconcentrated; released, unreleased—the implication being, if you think of the duties of the four noble truths, that if an unskillful mind state is there, you want to switch it over to its skillful counterpart. So we are trying to get things right. After all, the duty of mindfulness is not simply to watch … 
  6. Gratitude, Goodwill & Generosity
     … We often read the texts that right view consists of seeing things in terms of the four noble truths, but there’s a more preliminary form of right view that reminds you of the power of your actions. In particular. it focuses first on the power of your good actions:, that there is a special value to generosity. There’s a special gratitude you … 
  7. A Concentration Diet
     … It starts with: “What is one?” “What is two?” “What is three?” and it goes all the way up to, “What is ten?” For example, “What is four?” The four noble truths. “What is five?” The five aggregates. “Eight?” The noble eightfold path. The most interesting answer, though, is the answer to, “What is one?” And that is, “All beings subsist on food.” And … 
  8. Playing by the Buddha’s Rules
     … The second set of rules are the duties of the four noble truths: to comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize cessation of suffering, and develop the path to that cessation. These rules and duties are very different from the rules and duties that the world places on you. So as you engage with the world, engage with your family, with people around you, especially … 
  9. Wisdom as a Tool
     … Remember that only the four noble truths are true everywhere, so use wisdom in how you interpret the limits of the insights you’ve gained. Ajaan Mun had another piece of advice, which you can read about in Ajaan Maha Boowa’s account of Ajaan Mun’s passing away. Ajaan Maha Boowa was feeling really abandoned after Ajaan Mun’s death, and then he … 
  10. Right View: Feeding Instructions
     … So an important part of adopting right view is not only learning to look at your experience in terms of the four nobles truths, but also realizing that this is the important problem. It takes precedence over everything else. That may sound selfish, focusing on your own suffering, but look at the people in the world. The fact that we’re making one another … 
  11. The Buddha’s Cost-Benefit Analysis
     … realizing that—given the four noble truths, particularly the truth of how suffering is originated—you want to avoid any thinking that would originate more suffering. So you learn how to step back from your thoughts, step back from your desires, and view them in this context of a cause-and-effect chain—where they come from, where they go—so that you can … 
  12. Perceptions for Training the Mind
     … When you’re doing that, you’re acting in line with the duties of the four noble truths. And, as the Buddha said, when you stay on the path, you’re safe. It’s when you wander away from the path that you get into danger. Here again, he gives an image: people with a cart, and they decide to leave the main road … 
  13. A Sense of Duty
     … In terms of the four noble truths, suffering should be comprehended—in other words, you should see that suffering is in the clinging to the aggregates. That takes a lot of effort to comprehend because we tend to see suffering in other places. But this, the Buddha said, is where the real suffering is. So you want to comprehend that. How do you cling … 
  14. Return of Wisdom for Dummies
    When the Buddha introduced his teachings to people, he very rarely started out with big principles like the four noble truths or the three characteristics. He started out instead with an action that his listeners were familiar with: He’d start out with the act of generosity. And he had an etiquette around that. It wasn’t to get people to be generous. Often … 
  15. The Story behind Impatience
     … What I have brought out to teach is like the leaves in my hand.” And he focused on the four noble truths as being the leaves in his hand. There are other passages where he boiled down the basic insight he gained in his Awakening even further: It’s a simple principle of causality. When you think of all the amazing things he could … 
  16. Cheerfully Ardent
     … After all, you want to understand the four noble truths. You want to comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, and you have to figure out what’s the link between the two. How do you do that? Through trial and error, and then trial and error again. Eventually you get to trial and success. Take it for granted that you’ll miss the mark the … 
  17. Work & Play
     … I am responsible for that.” After all, that’s one of the lessons of the four noble truths: that the suffering that weighs down the mind is not just the pain in the body. It’s not the things that come at you. It’s how you handle those things, based on your own ignorance, your own attachment, your own clinging and craving—something … 
  18. Turning Points
     … That led him finally to his third knowledge, which was looking at his intentions in the present moment, to see which intentions caused stress and suffering: “Can you see them in action right now? Can you see their effects right now? How about if you stop them?” This is where he arrived at the four noble truths. He realized not only what the truths … 
  19. Hedgehog Knowledge
     … How can you make it still? Once it’s still, how can you keep it there? And as you keep it there, you ask, “Is there still something gross in here? Where’s the more refined sensation in this?” That’s the beginning of the four noble truths right there. You’ll begin to look for where stress is. At this point it’s … 
  20. Broaden Your Range of Choices
     … When the Buddha would start out his teachings, well before he’d talk about the four noble truths, the very first thing he talked about was generosity. He had a strong etiquette around that. He wouldn’t talk about generosity in hopes of making people generous. The reason why generosity has gotten such a bad name in a lot of American Buddhist circles is … 
  21. Inconstancy
     … You still have those four duties with regard to the four noble truths. The path is to be developed. Suffering is to be comprehended. The causes of suffering are to be abandoned, so that the cessation of suffering can be realized. So for the time being, you use the principle of inconstancy to figure out what are the causes for the path, and how … 
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