Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. Thoughts, Wanted and Unwanted
     … The reflection on stress and the cause of stress—the teachings of the four noble truths—comes in really handy here. There are types of thinking we like to think but they’re causing a lot of stress in our lives. They’re making it difficult for us to get along with other people, making it difficult for other people to get along with … 
  3. One Point, Two Points, Many Points
     … What we’re doing is to take the basic causes of suffering and to bring as much awareness to them as possible — specifically awareness in the form of the four noble truths: Where is there stress, what are you doing that’s causing stress, and what can you change to make the stress go away? You start with blatant levels of stress related to … 
  4. Practicing on Your Own
     … The second was the teachings on the four noble truths: how suffering is caused and where you look for the cause so that you can put an end to the suffering, and what you do to put an end to the suffering. These principles don’t change from time to time. You want to hold to these things, because not only does the culture … 
  5. The Five Hindrances
     … In other words, we don’t look at them in terms of the four noble truths. We don’t see what suffering they’re causing. We just ride with them. The way to starve them is to develop appropriate attention. Look at these mind states simply as that—as mind states, part of a chain of cause and effect. See where these chains of … 
  6. Persistence: Lift Your Heart
     … We’re given two sets of views that are categorical—one, that skillful actions should be developed and unskillful ones should be abandoned; and two, the four noble truths together with their duties. If we have conviction in the Buddha's awakening, we believe these really are categorical. The problem is that they’re not truths that just sit there. They have duties associated … 
  7. Establishing Priorities
     … That’s why one of the duties with regard to the four noble truths is to develop the path, the way out of suffering. This is what we’re doing here right now. So wisdom is largely a matter of priorities. As you’re sitting in meditation, as you go through life, your top priority should be to stay here with the breath so … 
  8. To Delight in the Path
     … This is one of the reasons why, when the Buddha introduced the four noble truths to laypeople, he would start out with these two topics: taking joy in being generous, taking joy in being virtuous. Or if he was discussing the basis for the acts of merit, acts of goodness, he described three: generosity, virtue, and the development of goodwill. Learn how to take … 
  9. Happiness is a Skill
     … When he defines right view, he defines it as knowledge in terms of the four noble truths. So there is some knowledge involved there, but a lot of things you have to take on as working hypotheses—for instance, that the suffering really is in the act of clinging. The word for clinging can also mean feeding. In the catechism that the Buddha gives … 
  10. Admit Your Stupidity
     … It asks those questions and it asks the questions that are related to the duties of the four noble truths as well. “How do you comprehend your suffering? How do you abandon what you’re doing to cause suffering? What qualities of mind do you develop so you can realize the end of suffering?” You take those questions and apply them in all areas … 
  11. The Uses of Equanimity
     … They’re a means to knowledge, the knowledge we develop around the four noble truths: looking for the stress, trying to comprehend it to the point where you can see what’s causing it, what activities you’re engaged in that are contributing to the stress, and learning how to stop those activities, to drop them. That’s where you let go. Essentially, equanimity … 
  12. Birth Is Suffering
     … It’s the same with the four noble truths, analyzing where there’s suffering and what’s causing it. This is the type of analysis that you apply to all your views. Where is the suffering in the clinging to the view? What’s causing it? What craving lies behind the view? Can you learn to wean yourself off that craving? You do that … 
  13. Balanced Meditation
     … As for other issues that come in from the course of the day, the four noble truths are a good way of approaching issues that come in, that are standing in the way of your meditation. If the mind is fastening on something, ask yourself, okay, exactly where is the suffering here? That’s a point of view we usually don’t take. We … 
  14. Help Others, Help Your Mind
     … They include the principle that skillful actions should be developed, and unskillful actions should be abandoned, and then the four noble truths, which are basically the application of that first principle to the problem of suffering. The discernment comes in seeing what’s skillful and what’s not, in your own mind. When you follow certain patterns of thinking, where do they lead? The … 
  15. To Discern Suffering
     … When the Buddha’s talking in terms of the four noble truths, he’s talking about the added-on pain, the added-on suffering: in other words, the suffering caused by the mind. The pain of the body is something that’s going to be there. Even the pleasures of the body contain their element of pain. There’s a passage in the Canon … 
  16. The Wheel of Dhamma
     … The wheel of Dhamma in the title refers to the passage that goes through each of the four noble truths and the three levels of knowledge for each of the truths. The first of the noble truths is dukkha, which means pain, suffering, and stress. The second truth is the cause of suffering and stress. The third is the cessation of suffering and stress … 
  17. Significance
     … And then from that, you can draw out the four noble truths and their duties: comprehending suffering, abandoning its cause—the cause there, of course, would be an unskillful action; developing the path, which is a skillful action; and realizing the cessation of suffering. Everything you need to know lies under those duties. That’s the main framework you want to keep in mind … 
  18. Lust
     … But if you haven’t reached that point, the four noble truths still have their duties. You still have to do these things. You still have to learn how to delight in letting go and delight in developing. So there’s work to be done, but it’s good work. Without this work, you stay stuck in your old ways, suffering in the same … 
  19. The Buddha’s Universal Solvent
     … When you get down to the four noble truths—and that’s the third knowledge of the Buddha’s awakening—“beings” and “worlds” disappear. These truths are expressed just in terms of suffering and the acts of the mind that lead to suffering—in other words, the things that you experience directly inside that nobody else can experience. Each of us has to experience … 
  20. A Handful of Leaves
     … What did he teach? He taught the four noble truths: dukkha, which can be translated as stress or suffering; its cause; its cessation; and the path to its cessation. The reason why he focused only on this handful of leaves, he said, was because if he talked about the leaves in the forest—all the other things he had learned—it wouldn’t help … 
  21. The Buddha’s Buffet
     … If you see that you don’t want to keep on going like that, he points you to understanding the four noble truths. Understand how you’re suffering, what suffering is. It’s a pretty radical definition: clinging to the five aggregates. He starts out by giving some examples. Aging, illness, death, separation from what you love, having to be with what you don … 
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