Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. The Noble Eightfold Path to the Deathless
     … Then there’s transcendent right view, which is the four noble truths. That, too, is an explanation of action. Actions of craving lead to the result, which is suffering. Actions of the noble eightfold path lead to the result, which is the end of suffering. You have to understand that. In the beginning, you don’t really know it. You haven’t even had … 
  3. A Healthy Ego
     … On the one hand, in terms of the shoulds, the passage we chanted from the Dhammacakka just now, which was the actual wheel of the Dhamma, talked about the four noble truths and the three levels of knowledge for each truth. In the time of the Buddha, a wheel was like a table nowadays, where you have different sets of variables that you run … 
  4. A Poker Mind
     … And then there are the four noble truths, which apply their duties to what you’re doing right now. For instance, your main duty right now is to develop concentration because that’s part of the path. So in the beginning, we take the first three frames of reference—body, feeling, mind—and we try to bring them together. They may not fit quite … 
  5. Clearing a Space
     … So, your first line of defense is to try to figure out how the four noble truths apply to this issue? These are the Buddha’s basic terms of analysis for just about everything that comes into the mind. These are the terms of appropriate attention. When an issue comes up, try to figure out where it lies on that field. Is it an … 
  6. Scribe Knowledge, Warrior Knowledge
     … We learn about the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path and all the many lists that the Buddha taught. But when he boiled down the basic teachings, the ones he said were really important, he focused on the wings to awakening, which are lists of qualities of the mind that are going to be needed as you take on your battle with … 
  7. A Path Under the Trees
     … So as you protect your concentration, it becomes a way to develop more and more discernment in line with the four noble truths. In that way, you’re getting closer and closer to the state of the mind that the Buddha had on that night of his awakening. You’re sitting alone out under the trees, focused on your body as a whole, alert … 
  8. Desires Have Their Reasons
     … actions are going to make a difference. That’s also an important part of the discernment. Actions have their consequences. And you have your choice as to what to do. The four noble truths give even more guidance. They point out the kind of desires that are not worth following: desires for sensuality, desires for becoming; desires for non-becoming. For instance, with becoming … 
  9. Protection
     … What I had taught, the four noble truths, is like the leaves in my hand.” And here is someone who knows the truth 100%. Yet even then, he knows when to hold it back, because those other leaves would not be helpful in putting an end to suffering. So, you may know the truth, your opinions may be true, but how true are they … 
  10. Desire Is Part of the Path
     … You can see the same pattern in the four noble truths. The path to the end of suffering, the Buddha says, is the karma that leads to an end of karma. There are things you have to do in order to stop doing. You have to have a desire to act. You see this in right resolve. You set your mind on doing things … 
  11. Long-Term Welfare
     … Look at the four noble truths. They start with the fact that there is suffering in life, and it lies in clinging. Sometimes the truths seem to be about nothing but suffering, but the third noble truth is the end of suffering. The fourth noble truth is the path to the end of the suffering. Part of that path, right concentration, includes pleasure and … 
  12. Friends Inside & Out
     … Appropriate attention basically means seeing things in terms of the four noble truths: where there’s stress, what’s causing the stress, seeing the possibility of having dispassion for that cause, and then following a strategy for how to develop that dispassion. That strategy is the path. This means looking at yourself in a new way. If you have a very strong sense of … 
  13. The Karma of Ideas
     … It was the passage where we went through the four noble truths and then the duties appropriate to each of them. Suffering is to be comprehended, its cause is to be abandoned, its cessation is to be realized, and the path to that cessation is to be developed. These are the Buddha’s “shoulds.” They’re another set of ideas that you can carry … 
  14. You Can’t Relax Your Way to Awakening
     … Remember, the four noble truths are set out as cause and effect: unskillful causes, bad effect; skillful causes, good effect. But those skillful causes don’t create the deathless. What they do is to develop dispassion. As you get the mind to settle down, you begin to see, “Oh, this is how I’ve been creating suffering. This is stupid!” and you let go … 
  15. Respect for Heedfulness
     … And they’d like to separate the two: “Can’t we just have the philosophy without the religion?” But if you look at the nature of the Buddha’s philosophy, his teachings on the Four Noble Truths, the whole attitude of respect is built into the teaching itself. When you realize that the big issue here is the possibility of a great deal of … 
  16. Gifts of Noble Wealth
     … As with the four noble truths: They’re not just casual truths, four nice things that are useful to know about suffering among all the other things you can know. The Buddha’s basically saying that these are the most important issues that you need to focus on: the questions of what you’re doing to cause suffering and what you can do to … 
  17. The Ennobling Path
     … That’s the aspect of the four noble truths where the Buddha talks very openly about pleasure, rapture, a sense of fullness in the body, allowed to spread and permeate throughout the body, the way the cool water of a spring can fill an entire lake. Or lotuses growing immersed in the lake are thoroughly saturated in the water of the lake. It’s … 
  18. The Dead Snake Around Your Neck
     … That’s what the four noble truths are all about. It’s not that life is suffering. It’s that we create suffering in our clinging. The source of the suffering is not outside. It’s what we do as we approach experience, as we create our experience out of the raw materials that come from our past kamma and then cling to it … 
  19. Blessings
     … The same with the four noble truths: Each of them has a duty, too. You try to comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, and realize its cessation by developing the path. So those are our duties right now. We’re focusing on the breath, we’re trying to develop right mindfulness, right effort and right concentration—all of that based on right view. These are … 
  20. The Challenge of Faith
     … It’s not just knowing the definitions of the four noble truths or of the five aggregates or of any of the other terms the Buddha uses. It means knowing how to put them to use skillfully, being strategic in figuring out what’s skillful and what’s unskillful and how to talk yourself into doing the skillful thing that you might not want … 
  21. Why We Train the Mind
     … For example, with the four noble truths, you want to comprehend suffering, which means watching it to develop a sense of dispassion for whatever is causing it. When you see what’s causing it, then you let the cause go. You develop the factors of the path and ultimately you want to realize the end of suffering. So there are different duties and different … 
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