Search results for: "The Four Noble Truths"

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  2. The Mirror Inside
     … That’s what’s disturbing your concentration, so that’s what you want to look at. “What am I doing that’s weighing the mind down, and how can I stop?” That’s the whole message of the four noble truths, which is why the Buddha started his discussions on the Dhamma with the image of the mirror. You’re reflecting to see that … 
  3. A Sense of Yourself
     … That’s the message of the four noble truths. So you examine yourself in terms of these four qualities. See to what extent you really are an admirable friend to yourself. And then the Buddha adds two more qualities to look for. One is your learning in terms of the Dhamma. This is an aspect that’s sometimes downplayed in the forest tradition. You … 
  4. Common Sense
     … That’s how he arrived at the four noble truths, and that’s how he arrived at true awakening: simply noticing that thoughts and feelings have an effect on the mind, and that some thoughts and some feelings have a better effect than others. That’s the whole principle of the path. You try to develop thoughts and feelings that lead to an end … 
  5. A Healthy Attitude Toward Happiness
     … That’s the good news of the four noble truths, the Buddha’s teachings on suffering. Years back, I was at a commemoration for Ajaan Lee. Every year they would have a large Dhamma talk at the end. They’d either invite a senior monk from Bangkok or they’d invite one of the great ajaans from the forest to give the closing talk … 
  6. Strength Training
     … After all, as the Buddha said, the four noble truths have four duties. The first one is to comprehend suffering. Then you let go of the cause of suffering, to realize the cessation of suffering, but to do that, you’ve got to develop the path. That takes work. So if you’re in this for the long haul, this means, one, that you … 
  7. Relationships
     … There’s a reason he taught the four noble truths, saying that this is the best use of your powers of concentration: to learn to focus in on the issue of suffering that you create through your own craving and how you can put an end to it. This teaching is based on a wish for well-being: the desire not to create suffering … 
  8. Comprehending Pain
     … He talks about the four noble truths and how each of the noble truths has three types of knowledge related to it. The Dhamma wheel lists all twelve permutations of the four truths times the three levels of knowledge In the case of the first noble truth, the truth of stress, the first level of knowledge is simply that this is what stress is … 
  9. Mastery
     … Directed thought and evaluation, the categories of the four noble truths: These all involve thinking, analyzing, understanding. You may think you’d like to go to a state of pure peace and stillness, that you don’t want to be bothered with thinking at all, but if you don’t learn how to analyze things in this way, there are a lot of actions … 
  10. Accepting the Way Out
     … his teaching on this/that conditionality, the four noble truths, dependent co-arising. They can seem awfully technical and awfully far away. But they do have a compassionate purpose. And it’s important that you learn how to translate the abstractions into the immediacy of what you’re doing, so that you can see, “Oh yeah, there is a fabrication going on.” The breath … 
  11. Clinging-Aggregates in Context
    When the Buddha talks about the five clinging-aggregates, it’s always in the context of the four noble truths. In fact, it’s his definition of the first noble truth, the truth of suffering, or stress: Clinging to the five aggregates is stress. It’s important to keep that context in mind because sometimes you hear the five clinging-aggregates defined as the … 
  12. The Lightning Bolt
     … In other words, you try to look at it in terms of four noble truths and the duties of the four noble truths. Then you look at your own life and say, “Okay, what in my life needs to be changed? Which potentials in the mind should I develop and which potentials in the mind should I let go so that I can develop … 
  13. Worldly Narratives
     … The leaves in his hand are what he taught about the four noble truths. The reason he taught those truths was because they were useful for putting an end to suffering. So, as he said, he wasn’t the sort of person who would teach things just because other people believed them. He taught rebirth because it’s a really useful truth, in the … 
  14. Victory over Death
     … Your duties, of course, have to do with the duties of the four noble truths. We’re here to comprehend suffering, to abandon its cause, to realize its cessation of suffering by developing the path. The Buddha doesn’t impose those duties on us, but he does tell us, from his perspective as an expert, that these are the actions that will lead to … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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