Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Analysis of Qualities
     … You begin to see it so clearly that you can understand how the mind creates unnecessary suffering for itself—because that’s the original question we’re trying answer as we follow the four noble truths: Why is there suffering? Because of craving. Where is the craving? The craving is in the mind. So the questions of appropriate attention come back to the questions … 
  3. What Makes Concentration Right
     … Right view tells you that if you’re going to find an end to suffering, you have to look at what the mind is doing. We tend to think that we’re suffering from things outside, and there is that level of suffering. But the reason we’re suffering from things outside, both good and bad, comes from the fact that the mind is … 
  4. Fighting Spirit
     … That’s the difference between the suffering in the three characteristics and suffering in the four noble truths. In the three characteristics, the simple fact that things change leads to stress. As long as you’re experiencing a body and experiencing the human world around that body, there’s going to be change, and there’s going to be stress coming from that. But … 
  5. Think of the Consequences
     … After all, the teachings of the Buddha are about putting an end to suffering and stress. When you realize that suffering and stress come from your actions, then you want to resolve to act in a way that doesn’t cause any suffering, doesn’t cause any stress. That’s how right view and right resolve are connected. Right resolve gives focus to right … 
  6. Sensitive to the Mind
     … The mind is suffering, the mind has stress, and you can’t just sit there and watch it be stressed out, you can’t sit and watch it suffering. After all, as the Buddha said, there are four noble truths. There’s not just the truth of suffering, And he didn’t say, Life is suffering, he said, Suffering is in the clinging. The … 
  7. Getting Yourself
     … The issue is that we’re suffering, and the suffering is coming from our own actions. We’ve got to learn how to train ourselves in how to think, how to speak, how to act in such a way that we’re not causing suffering. We have to be more circumspect. We have to be more alert to what we’re doing. I was … 
  8. The Second Noble Truth
     … Inevitably, they’re going to end, and there’s always going to be suffering involved as they tear away. This was another theme in that author’s writings: that we have to put up with the suffering because otherwise we wouldn’t be involved with life’s great adventure. But as the Buddha said, suffering in a pointless universe is not really worth it … 
  9. Training Your Desires
     … That way, if you’re going to look for the cause of suffering, you have to look inside. That’s another message from the four noble truths. Again, it’s a message that we may not like to hear. We like to blame our suffering on other people. But think about it. If your suffering comes from other people, what are you going to … 
  10. Serenity
     … Nobody benefits from seeing those people suffer. Often, if they suffer, they come back and get more vengeful. So it’s not going to help the world in any way at all to wish for their suffering, to wish them ill will. The same with compassion: There are plenty of people out there suffering and there are also people who are creating the causes … 
  11. A Home for the Mind
     … The more you pay attention to what’s going on, the more you pay attention to this principle of cause and effect, then the more you begin to discern suffering and its cause. The chant we had just now, about discerning suffering, sounds a little strange. You might think, “Of course we discern suffering. I can tell when I’m suffering.” Well, it’s … 
  12. The World Does Not Endure
     … The Buddha’s basically saying the things that you hold on to most dearly are suffering, and the reason you hold on is because of craving. That’s the cause for suffering. You can’t blame your suffering on situations outside. As he points out, if the mind is trained, you can be with any situation outside and not suffer. If it’s not … 
  13. Pain & Patience
     … He’d find that he was suffering from something and so he’d ask himself, “What am I doing that’s causing that suffering? And why do I do it? Why don’t I give it up?” So looking for what you’re doing that’s adding an unnecessary burden: That’s what makes patience easier—and makes it productive. If you don’t … 
  14. What You’re Choosing to Do Right Now
     … You have the power to use that for good or for not so good—for your happiness or for your suffering. Years back, a woman basically dragged one of her friends here to meditate. At the end of the hour, the friend said she’d never suffered so much in her life, sitting out under the trees—this was at the outdoor classroom—sitting … 
  15. An Exercise in Freedom
     … Right view starts right in with the issue of suffering. There is stress, there is suffering, there is pain. He’s not saying life is suffering. He’s just saying simply that there is suffering. We can’t deny that. And from the very beginning we’ve never liked it. So it’s not that he has to convince us of a lot of … 
  16. How to Think about Death
     … And it really hurts to watch them make themselves suffer in this way. But if you can learn how to get your mind under control, you’re giving a real gift, not only to yourself—in that you’re not suffering—but also to the people around you, who don’t have to watch you make yourself suffer. So think about that list of … 
  17. Clearing a Space
     … Is it an issue of suffering? An issue of craving? Those are usually where the issues lie. There’s very rarely an issue of the cessation of suffering or the path leading to the cessation of suffering. So when it’s suffering, what’s the proper approach? The proper approach is to analyze it. How do you analyze it? Not in terms of psychoanalysis … 
  18. The Complexity of Pain
     … But you can bank on your ability to think in new ways in the present moment, so that even though the past karma may still be producing results, you’re not going to suffer from it. It’s good that in English we have these two words separately. Pain is one word; suffering is another word. In Pali they’re the same word: *dukkha … 
  19. The World of Conviction
     … And, as the Buddha said, this process of becoming entails suffering, because that desire, when you cling to it, is going to be uncertain. The clinging, too, is uncertain. It’s going to be unstable. So anything built around that, anything that gathers around that, will have to be unstable as well. This is why clinging lies at the essence of suffering. But it … 
  20. Chew Your Food Well
     … From that point, right view moves on to an understanding about suffering: why we suffer, how we suffer, what we can do to put an end to suffering. That kind of view is a useful tool because its very nature is not to be taken as an end in and of itself. It’s a means to put an end to suffering. It’s … 
  21. Antidotes for Clinging
     … The Buddha goes down a long list of all the pains and sufferings tied up with this pursuit of our dreams of sensuality. So as you look at the pursuit of sensuality in its entirety, you realize how much pain and suffering it involves. You don’t have to look too far. This contemplation we have of the requisites every day, thinking about food … 
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