Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. Nothing Wrong with Right & Wrong
     … The Buddha was wise enough to be able to extrapolate from his experience as to what things were true across the board for everybody, realizing there are also other cases where the way you put together your suffering is going to differ in some of the details from the way other people put together their suffering, in which cases you need to know what … 
  15. The Power of the Will
     … The ajaans say, “Try to have that kind of tenacity.” Show yourself that you mean business because after all, it is your heart, and your heart is the one who’s been having to suffer all along. It doesn’t suffer in general terms; it suffers from specifics. There are general patterns, and that’s what the Dhamma’s for: to teach us the … 
  16. How to Think about Death
     … crying, suffering. An old person, a sick person, a dead person. Sometimes they add to the list someone who’s in prison and in chains. These are the warnings all around us, and as human beings we can see them and can think about them. We can learn how to take advantage of them so that we don’t have to suffer when unfortunate … 
  17. Taking a Stance
     … We want to understand or comprehend what it is to suffer, so that we can identify the cause. When we see the cause, that’s what we let go. We do this by developing the path, and eventually get to the point where we can realize the cessation of suffering. Those are the duties the Buddha sets out. And notice they’re duties in … 
  18. A Memorial to Your Life
     … Only then can you comprehend suffering, let go of the cause, fully develop the path, so that you can realize the cessation of suffering. All this comes under that quality of asking questions, and then looking, paying full attention, asking questions again. This interplay back and forth between intentness and circumspection, commitment and reflection—this is what will take you far. It’s how … 
  19. The Desire for Things to Be Different
    Sometimes you hear that the craving that causes suffering is the desire for things to be different. That’s partially true, partially false. After all, the desire to get better concentration, the desire to get rid of your defilements, to abandon unskillful qualities, develop skillful ones: Those desires are all part of the path. There may be some pain that goes along with that … 
  20. A Slave to Craving
     … It depends on the suffering of other beings. This is what those reflections on the requisite are for. The food we eat, the clothing we wear, the shelter we live in, the medicine we use: We gain it through suffering, sometimes our own suffering, and a lot of times the suffering of other beings. Even if you’re vegetarian, think of all the farmers … 
  21. An Equanimity You Can Feed On
     … The reason they need to be backed up by equanimity is because often when you see people who are suffering, or other times when you are suffering and you can’t do anything about it, you can’t let yourself get worked up. Or there are cases where you see that people are happy, but you realize it’s not going to last. You … 
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