Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Action & the End of Action
    The Buddha’s teachings are basically instructions on how to train the mind to put an end to suffering and to find true happiness. It’s interesting that in that précis right there, a lot of the terms are undefined: In the Pali Canon mind is not defined; suffering is not defined; happiness is not defined. In fact, the Pali words for those things … 
  3. Wise About Mistakes
     … He didn’t say he would teach the end of suffering only for people who didn’t deserve to suffer. We’ve all done things that would lead to suffering and have led to suffering. He wants to show us the way out regardless of our past. This is one of the reasons why Buddhism is not so much concerned with justice. It’s … 
  4. Directing Yourself Rightly
     … At the same time, though, you don’t let yourself rest content with the state of your mind until it’s reached the point where it really isn’t suffering any more. As long as there’s still suffering or there’s still stress, there’s still work to be done, so you don’t rest content. Try to gather up the strengths you … 
  5. The Regularity of the Dhamma
     … When you look at things in an inappropriate way, you frame issues in an inappropriate way, which means that your fabrications are going to lead to suffering. All the other elements of name and form and consciousness will tend toward suffering and stress as well. But you can change that way of attending to things. You can look at things in terms of the … 
  6. The Flow of Time
     … The nature of suffering is always the same. The cause of suffering is always the same. The path to the end of suffering is always the same. And what it means to put a cessation to suffering: That’s always the same. These truths are timeless. They allow us to step back from the flow of time. And to see: What are you doing … 
  7. Karma as an Island
     … You can bring an expectation of suffering into the present; or you can bring an expectation that there is a way out of suffering. It’s your choice, so remember that you have that choice. And learn to develop it, so that you’re looking for the right things in the present moment that will maximize your ability to put an end to suffering … 
  8. The Karma of Meditation
     … That’s what the Buddha calls the duty with regard to suffering: to comprehend it. Primarily he’s focusing on the suffering of stress in the mind. But to comprehend that, you have to consider how the mind conceives of, say, pain in the body. How does it conceive unpleasant emotions in a way that makes it suffer even more? For most of us … 
  9. Delight in the Dhamma
    You may have noticed a phrase in the sutta we chanted just now—“The cause of suffering is craving accompanied by passion and delight”—which makes it sound as if all delight is bad, which sounds pretty discouraging. Does the Buddha want us to have a totally equanimous blank emotional state? The answer is, “No.” He actually recommends six kinds of delight on the … 
  10. Gratitude to Things
     … Which means that our lives depend on suffering, not only our own, but also that of other beings. This contemplation spurs you even further to try to find a way out. What is the escape from this burdensome process? How can we find a happiness that doesn’t depend on other people’s suffering, other beings’ suffering? So when you think of the goodness … 
  11. The Steadiness of Your Gaze
     … It’s got to figure out why it’s causing suffering, exactly where it’s causing suffering. The Buddha emphasized the issue of karma and intention, so we look to see: What intentions are there in the mind that make us suffer? Why don’t we see them? Why do we feel that those choices are so necessary that we even forget they’re … 
  12. To Depend on Yourself
     … Once you have right view about actions and right view about suffering, then the natural resolve is going to be, “Let’s put an end to that suffering. Let’s learn how to be more skillful.” But right resolve itself is what basically shapes right view. After all, the Buddha was speaking about ways of putting an end to suffering, and two of the … 
  13. The Buddha’s Compassion
     … Then the Buddha concluded by saying, “It’s only stress that I teach and the ending of stress.” Or if you translate dukkha as “suffering”: “It’s only suffering that I teach and the ending of suffering.” Some people take that to say, “Well, in that case, all the teachings we have about devas and nagas and other levels of being are probably not … 
  14. Goodwill as Restraint
     … And thinking that someone deserves to suffer is not a right view of any kind at all. The whole purpose of the teaching is that although people are suffering, they don’t have to suffer. In other words, the Buddha’s saying they don’t deserve to suffer. Even though they’ve done bad in the past, that doesn’t mean that they deserve … 
  15. Intelligent Equanimity
     … You can have compassion for them and they still don’t get released from their suffering. You can have appreciation for their happiness, but they abuse it. They abuse their power, they abuse their wealth. You begin to realize that there’s only so much you can do, not only for other people but also for yourself. That’s where the reflection on karma … 
  16. Knowledge over Fear
     … And although we live in a world where there is aging, illness, and death, and there are people doing unskillful things, still you can prepare yourself so that you can deal with those things and not have to suffer. You can age but not suffer from aging. You can grow ill not suffer from the illness. You can even die and not suffer from … 
  17. Seclusion
     … Ajaan Fuang once said that you need the equanimity of jhana so that the attitudes of goodwill, compassion, and appreciation don’t cause you suffering. You look around and you can see that there are lots of people you feel goodwill for but they’re not happy; people you feel compassion for and you can’t help them out of their suffering. There seem … 
  18. Large-hearted Equanimity
     … You want the good feeling of exercising your compassion, so it requires that there be somebody else there who’s suffering? It’s better to find happiness in something that doesn’t require anybody to suffer at all, so that when you do offer help, it’s not coming from a neurotic place or out of a desire to have more influence over the … 
  19. Questioning Everything
     … Because it’s in seeing the causal connections that you begin to realize, “Okay, my craving, my clinging right now are causing this suffering. If I stop the craving and clinging, the suffering stops.” That was the lesson he wanted each of us to learn and to observe for ourselves. That’s the real gift of the Dhamma: not so much teaching the Dhamma … 
  20. Something Good to Cling to
     … How is all this causing unnecessary stress and suffering? That’s the focal point of the Buddha’s teachings right there. His message for us is that the reason we suffer is not so much from other people, it’s from what we do. Other people may be really bad, but if the mind is well-trained, it doesn’t have to suffer from … 
  21. An Environment for Practice
     … suffering and the end of suffering. And where is it happening? Right here, right now, in the movements of your mind, in the processes in the mind. So you have to learn to look at what you’re thinking about, not in terms of the content, but how you’re doing the thinking: “What are the motivations? What are the qualities that create suffering … 
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