Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. A Questioning Attitude
     … That’s what gaining insight in the four noble truths is all about—catching yourself creating stress and suffering where you didn’t even realize it was happening. Mindfulness gets you to the point where you can see these things more clearly. Concentration gets the mind still so that very subtle things become apparent. But they’re simply the foundation. Discernment, a questioning attitude … 
  16. Intelligence of the Heart
     … Given the understanding that the Buddha provides through the four noble truths, the wise thing is to act on those truths and to develop good qualities. The act of making a resolution is not just a passing whim in the mind. You want to make it stick. You want to make it consistent. Each time the potential comes up to do something unskillful, you … 
  17. Mindfulness as Refuge
     … And what do you keep in mind? The Buddha sets out the duties that we have in the four noble truths: to comprehend suffering, to abandon its cause, to realize the cessation of suffering, and to develop the path. So: four duties to keep in mind, four categories to keep in mind as you’re looking at your experience. This relates to another teaching … 
  18. Truth Without Air Quotes
     … But when we come to the Buddhist teachings, he talks about the four noble truth as being undeceptive and not other than what they are. He’s basically saying that they’re objective truths. He didn’t have much use for the idea of truth with air quotes. You might ask, “How does he know they’re objective?” Look at his analysis in dependent … 
  19. The Breath All the Way
     … And so the question is, What’s causing that? What is the mind doing that’s creating that rise and fall in the level of stress? This is where you begin to get into the four noble truths. As the Buddha said, each truth has a duty. The duty with regard to stress is to comprehend it, which means watching it carefully so you … 
  20. Maybe the Buddha Knew Something
     … After all, everything the Buddha’s saying in the four noble truths is very counterintuitive. We’re suffering not because of things happening outside, and we’re not simply on the receiving end of suffering. We’re actually doing it. We’re doing things that we hope will lead to happiness but they’re leading to suffering, stress, disturbance. Often, we don’t even … 
  21. The Skills of Truth & Calm
    The Buddha’s most basic teaching is the four noble truths. It’s a teaching about action: cause and effect in your actions. To understand it, you have to get very sensitive to what you’re actually doing. This is why we watch the mind right now. It’s hard to observe a past action or a future action, so you have to observe … 
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