Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. Skills of the Dhamma Wheel
     … Stress or suffering, he said, is something that you have to comprehend. To comprehend means to know it so thoroughly that you develop dispassion for it. We usually don’t think that we’re passionate for stress and suffering, but we really are. The things we generally are passionate about carry a lot of stress with them, but we just choose to ignore that … 
  7. Like a River Full of Water
     … You think of how the suffering of others doesn’t benefit you in any way, so why would you wish suffering on others? If you see other people suffering, the automatic development of goodwill is that it turns into compassion. If there’s something can do to help those people, you try to help them. If you see that people are already happy, goodwill … 
  8. Ready for the Truth
     … All too often, when we think about suffering, we think that we’re suffering because of this situation outside or that person outside. The Buddha wants you to see that it’s not those outside things making you suffer. You’re using those outside things to make yourself suffer, through your clinging, through your craving. He wants to point your attention here. You’re … 
  9. Clinging-Aggregates in Context
     … Does that mean that there’s nobody there to be unbound? Is it a total wipe out? When the Buddha was asked that kind of question, he kept saying that all he taught was suffering and the end of suffering—the point being that there are questions he didn’t answer, that were not worth answering. But the question about what do you do … 
  10. Over the Pass
    When the Buddha set out the four noble truths, he made it very clear that the purpose of the path was to attack the problem of suffering at its cause. In other words, you don’t attack the suffering, you attack the craving. And the attack has two forms: One is developing, and the other is abandoning, restraining. It’s interesting that in the … 
  11. A Blameless Happiness
     … The problem is that many of the things we do in our search for happiness actually cause suffering. This is the big problem in life. This was the problem that the Buddha wanted to solve. It took him a while to figure out how to solve it. There was a period when he actually thought the best way to find true well-being was … 
  12. Self-Bypassing
     … We suffer because of our actions, but we can find the end of suffering by understanding our actions—the actions that lead to suffering, and then the actions of the path to the end of suffering. That understanding is what opens the way. The Buddha’s autobiography shows the lessons he learned about action in the course of his awakening, and he tells his … 
  13. Develop Your Inner Observer
     … But in the meantime, work on developing this skill, because it helps you sort out a lot of things in the mind—in terms of comprehending suffering, abandoning its cause, developing the path so that you can realize the cessation of suffering. All the duties of the noble truths are contained right here. Or they should be contained right here. I mean, you can … 
  14. The Walls of Ignorance
     … This is why he focuses the Four Noble Truths on the suffering that comes from craving and ignorance. There’s a natural stress in the fact that things change, but our real problem is that we create extra suffering through our craving and ignorance. As long as we have the habit of putting up walls in the mind, we’re in a position where … 
  15. The Path Requires Effort
    One of the basic principles of the practice is that it’s through effort that you overcome suffering and stress. We don’t like to hear that. We prefer that all you do is just let go, let go, relax, and that’s the end of it. But it doesn’t work that way. The path, as the Buddha describes it, as one of … 
  16. Victory over Death
     … For instance, to comprehend suffering: What are you doing that is the suffering? That’s interesting. It’s not just that you’re doing something that causes suffering. You’re doing the suffering. You’re doing clinging: passion and desire for the different aggregates. As you create your sensual fantasies, as you create your views about the world, your sense of what should and … 
  17. The Noble Truth about Craving
     … Our desires create suffering, because craving creates these states of becoming. We have a desire, but it turns out that the desire has implications an consequences. And we’re ignorant of them. Now, the Buddha doesn’t condemn all desire. As he said, “All dhammas are rooted in desire,” and that term, “all dhammas,” includes the path, includes both skillful and unskillful dhammas. But … 
  18. Healing Awareness
     … We focus on it, it becomes the location of our interest, and so we create suffering. The Buddha didn’t say that everything is suffering. I don’t know how many times you see this again and again and again. People keep writing about it: “All is suffering.” No, it’s not. There’s a lot that’s not. But we’re the ones … 
  19. The Dhamma Mirror
     … All those things are inconstant, but what does that tell us about us and what we’re doing? The four noble truths, on the other hand, point out the fact that the reason we’re suffering is because of something we’re doing. We’re not suffering because things outside are permanent or impermanent. If they were the cause, even arahants would suffer. It … 
  20. Present-Moment Intelligence
     … If you were doing a good job, you wouldn’t be suffering, so you’re doing something here that’s adding unnecessary suffering in the mind. Learn how to notice that, learn how to drop whatever it is that’s causing it, and the mind will go to deeper and deeper stages of concentration. That’s what emptiness meant in the very beginning of … 
  21. The Flood of Views
     … There are a lot of views that will sweep us down the river, to more and more becoming, which means more and more suffering. We need to focus on the views that will get us across: such as the view that skillful actions need to be developed, that unskillful actions need to be abandoned. Suffering and stress should be comprehended, their cause should be … 
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