Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Solidly Established… You want to think, act, and speak in ways that actually bring about happiness rather than bringing about pain and suffering. Yet you look at the way people behave throughout the world, and there’s a lot of pain and suffering being produced. Fortunately, we’re not doomed to suffer forever. We have this ability, which is to learn. We can see that we …
- The Value of Effort… When there’s stress or suffering, you don’t want to run away from it or push it away. You want to comprehend it. That requires watching it, understanding it, so you can see where it comes from, and what you’re doing in particular that’s contributing to it. There are, after all, two kinds of stress and suffering. There’s the stress …
- A Path for a Noble Desire… The truth of suffering is something he says you should comprehend, to see that it does lie in the clinging. The cause of suffering is not things outside, it’s your own craving. The cessation of suffering is the end of that craving. And you can realize that cessation by developing the path. So, this is the basic framework for the Buddha’s teachings …
- One Point, Two Points, Many Points… We were talking earlier this morning about name and form and how they play a role in the arising of suffering. Well, they also play a role in the path leading to the end of suffering. You’ve got form, which is the form of the body, the four great elements, and the breath is the most prominent element. You’ve got perception: whatever …
- Cosmic Scale, Human Scale… We’re all lucky we’re here right now, so take advantage of it, because there’s a lot of suffering out there. As the Buddha said, the amount of suffering left to beings who haven’t gained the Dhamma eye is like all the dirt in the Earth. The amount of suffering left to those who have gained the Dhamma eye is just …
- Antidotes for Narcissism… And it’s not just that you are suffering. In order to maintain an identity that has a body and feelings and so forth, you need to feed. That’s the other great contemplation. “What is one? All beings subsist on food.” Everybody’s feeding on everybody else, physically, emotionally. This causes suffering both for the feeder and the fed upon. We tend to …
- The Ennobling Path… We’re here to deal precisely with the issue of suffering, stress, this discomfort in the present moment that you’re going to find if you look very carefully. If you don’t look carefully, you go off and build other things, and you end up creating more suffering, more stress, which gets pushed into the back of your mind because you’re more …
- No Who or Where… The four noble truths are not expressed in terms of, “Who’s suffering?” or where the suffering is. It’s just, “This is suffering, and this is its cause”: events. There’s also a path away from suffering. And each of these truths has a duty. The duty with regard to suffering or stress is to comprehend it; with regard to the cause, it …
- Refuge… Try to remember the example of the Buddha, remember his teachings, and keep asking yourself, “How do those apply to what I’m doing right now? How do they help me overcome suffering right now?” Because that’s what the teachings are all designed for: to help you find ways of untangling all the knots of suffering you create for yourself. They point to …
- Give Before You Get… When he talked about the four noble truths— which are basically truths focused on the fact that you’re suffering and there’s a way out—even before mentioning the four noble truths, he’d prepare people’s minds with what he called the graduated discourse. And the graduated discourse started with giving: how wonderful it is to give, what good mind states you …
- Right View… And think of all the suffering that’s gone into the meal that’s coming your way—the suffering of farmers, the suffering of the people working in the store, the suffering of the people driving the trucks—all the way to the point where it’s gotten to you. And here you are, living off the suffering of others. This is one good …
- A Skillful Heart… And then he thought of all the beings who were suffering. As he said, they were burning with the fires of greed, aversion, and delusion. He knew the way out, he could teach them the way out, so that’s what he decided to do. You look at the four noble truths: The whole idea of focusing a teaching on the problem of suffering …
- Eyes in the Back of Your Head… You realize that the suffering is not the pain; the suffering is what you do around the pain. So again, you need this all-around awareness to see what’s going on all around. Like that analogy of taking a camera in to see the animals of the savannah. You focus at the watering hole, but you don’t just sit there taking pictures …
- Focus on Your Skill… the problem of suffering and stress. After all, the problem of suffering comes from what? It comes from your actions. So you want to focus on your actions. This was the insight he gained on the night of his awakening. In his first knowledge, he saw that he had been reborn many, many times. And the question was: Is there a pattern behind that …
- Ask the Right Questions… What are you doing that doesn’t have to be done? What can you do it in a different way, so that you don’t have to suffer? These are the issues that he has you take seriously. And when you take these issues seriously, you find that your life does become more auspicious. You’re causing less suffering for yourself, less suffering for …
- The Limits of Interconnectedness… This is because eventually we want to deal with the problem that lies in this part of our awareness, which is our pain, our suffering. Nobody else can feel our suffering. No matter how much politicians may claim that they can feel our suffering, they don’t. They can imagine it, but that’s all. Suffering is something very personal, very individual. And the …
- Balancing Effort & Patience… Which experiences are suffering? Which experiences are the cause of suffering? Usually we have these things all mixed up. Which things you do are the path? Which things you do are the cause of suffering? They’re not just passive experiences, because experience involves intention. There’s a sutta where the Buddha says even in just your basic experience of form, feeling, perception, and …
- In the Land of Wrong View… He taught the end of suffering, and before he taught people how to put an end to suffering, he never asked them, “This suffering that you’re experiencing right now: Is it something you deserved? Do you deserve to continue suffering? If you do deserve it, then I’m not going to teach you. It’s only if you deserve to be happy that …
- Noble Ardency… In the Canon, they talk about ardency as the proper response when you realize that if you don’t develop skillful qualities of mind there’s going to be suffering down the line. If you allow unskillful qualities to stay, there’s going to be suffering down the line. So you do your best to be as skillful as possible. Mindfulness is what keeps …
- Strong & Heedful… It doesn’t go around creating unnecessary suffering for itself. And when it stops doing that, that’s the end of your problems. Because it’s the suffering the mind creates for itself: That’s the big issue in life. That’s what causes you really to suffer. As for other things that seem to make you suffer, those come from outside and have …
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