Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. Right View
     … right view, going through the four noble truths. Simply listening to this talk on right view, one of the Five Brethren had his first taste of the deathless—or, as they say in the text, he experienced “the arising of the Dhamma Eye.” So right view is important. As one analysis of the path says, three qualities circle around every factor of the path … 
  10. Right View & Right Resolve
     … So when you think about the Buddha’s teachings in the four noble truths, which are the principles of right view, the heedful response is right resolve. In other words, you don’t simply watch suffering or watch its cause. You realize that you have to make up your mind to fight the cause. That’s why we take on the path to begin … 
  11. Breathing Skillfully
     … The weight that comes when you lift it is stress in the four noble truths—in other words, the stress that comes from craving and is involved in clinging. That’s something that doesn’t have to be there. The mountain is going to be heavy on its own whether you think of picking it up or not. But you have the choice: Are … 
  12. An Auspicious Day
     … Some people stop there and say, “Here’s the Buddha telling us just to be in the present moment.” But the passage goes on and says, “Whatever duty you have to do, do it now, ardently.” In other words, you focus on the present moment because that’s where you do your duties with regard to the four noble truths. If you’re going … 
  13. The Power of Truth
     … The content of insight is not the three characteristics, it’s the four noble truths. The three characteristics are helpful within that context, but they don’t form the context themselves. Actually, the word three “characteristics” doesn’t even appear in the Pali Canon. They talk about anicca as a *sañña, *a perception, or as an anupassana, something you focus on as a practice … 
  14. Things Aren’t as They Should Be
     … Let those with ears show forth their conviction.” When he went to teach the five brethren, even before he said anything about the middle way or the four noble truths, he said, “The deathless has been attained, and if you follow what I teach you, you can attain it, too.” When Sariputta heard a very short synopsis of the Buddha’s teachings and gained … 
  15. Not-self, Not No Self
     … If you take a class in Buddhism, they’ll teach you about the four noble truths, about the teaching on not-self, and about karma and rebirth. And usually these concepts are explained beginning with, “There is no self. That’s the nature of reality.” But then the question is, “If there is no self, who’s doing the karma, who’s going to … 
  16. On Deserving to Be Happy
     … We’re looking not for the three characteristics, we’re looking for the four noble truths and their duties, trying to keep those in mind. So we try to learn: How do you maintain this state of ease in the mind? First, of course, how do you give rise to it? When it’s not there, how can you nurture it? You explore. We … 
  17. Dhamma in Line with the Dhamma
     … If you take a look at the four noble truths, the duties with regard to them are all there to put an end to your suffering. The Buddha doesn’t tell you you’re here to serve some purpose that somebody else has decided for you. This is one of the reasons we don’t go with the idea that we’re all one … 
  18. A Noble Path
     … that they’re radically different. The path is something you do; something you develop. The goal is something you realize, and then you’re at the end of all duties. The four noble truths: Each of the truths has a duty. The third truth, which is the realization of nibbana, is something you realize. But then from that point on, there’s nothing you … 
  19. Endurance & Restraint
     … He doesn’t mention the four noble truths. He starts with patient endurance—the ability to be with difficult things and not react in unskillful ways. You could say that most of the talk that he gave that afternoon was about endurance and restraint. The talk recommends restraint as an expression of your endurance—you endure harsh words, you endure pains, you endure all … 
  20. Right Learning
     … So whether it’s the doctrine of karma, the four noble truths, dependent co-arising, emptiness, it’s aimed at putting an end to suffering. Where does suffering happen? Right here in our own minds. So if a teaching applies to what we’re doing right here in our mind, fine. That’s the Dhamma at that point. If a particular teaching doesn’t … 
  21. The Dhamma Wheel
     … The fact that that’s the focal point of the sutta makes clear that the Buddha didn’t just teach the four noble truths. He taught the duty appropriate to each, and the fact that when you complete all the duties, that’s awakening. For example, with regard to suffering or stress, the first noble truth, the duty is to comprehend it. Comprehending, we … 
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