Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Balanced Concentration
     … This is why the mind causes suffering: We haven’t figured it out yet. To figure it out means, one, watching, and two, asking the right questions. The Buddha once said that normal reaction to suffering is bewilderment, because it comes in so many different ways. Sometimes there’s a physical pain and there’s not much question about the fact that it’s … 
  3. When This Is, That Is
     … suffering and stress, and the end of suffering and stress. Underlying those two focal points is the principle of causality that enables you to reach that end of suffering and stress yourself. That’s why the Buddha focused his teaching right here. So pay attention right here. If you pay attention to what you’re doing, the things you want to see will eventually … 
  4. Dharma Medicine
     … This is the Buddha’s analysis of suffering. When you suffer, there is going to be clinging to one of these five things. So it’s useful to look at whatever the suffering is in these terms, whether it’s an uncomfortable experience in the body, or an uncomfortable state of mind, or both of them together. Try to take it apart into its … 
  5. A Heart Wider than the World
     … You start out with discernment, the discernment that sees that it is possible, if you’re going to solve the problem of suffering, to solve it from within. That’s work that you can do in any circumstances. After all, it is your craving, and your clinging. The clinging is the suffering; the craving is the cause of suffering. You can’t pin the … 
  6. The Seven Factors for Awakening
     … Keep remembering that the issue is the fact that there is stress and suffering in life, and not only that there’s stress and suffering, but also that the stress and suffering is caused. It comes from craving, which is really placing a burden on the mind. That’s what you’ve got to focus on. Then there’s a way to put an … 
  7. Cause & Effect
     … But it’s because it’s complex that we have free will, that there is a practice, that we can explain suffering, and also explain an end to it: There are patterns to discover, patterns we can then manipulate and shape into a path to the end of suffering. The practice is not simply a matter of simply following instructions. There’s a lot … 
  8. After-work Meditation
     … The more soothed the body feels, the less it wants to hang on to the things that make it suffer. It’s funny, it’s because we suffer and indulge in our suffering and complain about it that we make ourselves suffer even more. If there’s a sense of well-being that you can breathe into the body, you can start asking yourself … 
  9. Doubt vs. Discernment
     … You do both of those things by looking into the mind and asking yourself, “What’s skillful in here? What’s unskillful in here? What qualities in the mind, when I act on them, lead to stress and suffering? What qualities lead away from stress and suffering?” Immediately after that, you act on what you see, to put it to the test. That’s … 
  10. Right Next to Ignorance
    The Buddha traces the causes of suffering back to ignorance. The formal definition is ignorance of the four noble truths. But you can hear the four noble truths, learn about them, memorize them, and still be ignorant. The definition could be translated in another way: We don’t see things in terms of the four noble truths. That’s getting closer. In other words … 
  11. A Pleasure Not to Be Feared
     … The focus seems to be on suffering, but notice that the truths don’t just stick with suffering. They’re also about how to find an end to it. And the end of suffering is true happiness. So those four noble truths are not all about suffering. Look in the fourth truth, which is the path to the end of suffering. You find right … 
  12. The World Is Aflame
     … Sometimes you hear people saying that the Buddha wanted us to get rid of all kinds of suffering, wherever the suffering is found, and they use that as an excuse for not meditating and getting involved in all kinds of social programs instead, saying that their programs are Buddhist. But the Buddha was very particular. He focused on the suffering that comes from the … 
  13. When it’s Hard to Settle Down
     … The fact of kamma doesn’t mean that people suffer because they deserve to suffer. That’s not the right understanding of kamma at all. Kamma means basically that people have lots of actions in their personal history, good and bad. It’s like having a field filled with seeds. Some of the seeds have been buried there for a long time and they … 
  14. A Soiled, Oily Rag
     … We’re trying to comprehend what suffering is so that we can stop looking to it for happiness, so that we can start looking someplace else. To comprehend suffering includes comprehending what causes it. Because suffering includes clinging that comes from a combination of clinging and craving, you’ve got to look at why you want to continue to crave these things. As Ajaan … 
  15. The Beginnings of Wisdom
     … The four noble truths tell us that the end of suffering is possible. Long-term happiness is possible. We cultivate the desire for that long-term happiness as we practice the path. We let go of any desires that get in the way, that would lead to suffering, and in letting go of those desires we have to use the three perceptions to develop … 
  16. Shaping the Present
     … What’s causing it? This, after all, is how the Buddha learned how to solve the problem of suffering—the unnecessary stress and suffering we add onto our experience. He looked at what he was doing. “What am I doing?” and “What are the results I’m getting?” Those were the questions he asked; And then, “Are the results good? If they’re not … 
  17. Angry
     … As a result, we suffer. The problem with anger is that it blames that sense of suffering on somebody else. You’re already making yourself suffer and then on top of that, someone does something you don’t like. You feel the suffering inside, you attribute it to what they’re doing, and that just compounds things. So you’ve got to turn around … 
  18. Proactive with Pain
     … One of the Buddha’s great gifts was teaching us the skills that we’re going to need to face these things, so that we don’t have to suffer. We suffer from these things, he said, because we cling; we’re trying to feed on things that age, grow ill, and die. Because they slip through our fingers, we cling all the more … 
  19. A Private Matter
     … After all, the suffering you’re causing yourself is a private affair, something nobody else can see. Even when we live together day in and day out, each of us is making a lot of decisions that nobody else here will know. We may see some of the outside effects, but the actual experience of suffering — your suffering, your pain: You’re the only … 
  20. Chronic Pain
     … As the Buddha said, he taught suffering and the end of suffering, and he offered the end of suffering as something you would want. It’s okay to want to put an end to suffering, but you have to do it wisely. You have to attack the problem at the cause. We’d like to get rid of the pain that we have in … 
  21. A Wealthy Memory
    The Buddha’s analysis of the causes of suffering makes the point that the question of whether we’re going to suffer or not depends primarily on what we bring into the present moment. In other words, you don’t necessarily suffer because there are painful feelings in the present. Sometimes you can suffer from pleasant feelings in the present, and vice versa: There … 
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