Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Training Your Selves
    When the Buddha lists examples of suffering or stress in the first noble truth, one of them is not getting what you want: frustrated desire. He gives an example: You’re a being subject to aging, but you don’t want to age. That desire can’t be fulfilled simply through the desire. It’s not something to be gained just by wanting. You … 
  3. In Control
     … In other words, the breath becomes your path to the end of suffering, the body becomes part of your path to the end of suffering, your thoughts all become devoted to the end of suffering. You can make that choice and you don’t want anybody else to come and unmake it. You don’t want any random emotions or old habits to come … 
  4. As They’ve Come to Be
    The Buddha said we suffer from the craving that leads to becoming. So, that’s what we have to focus on: What is becoming? What is that craving? And how do we get out of that situation? He says it’s a special problem because the craving that leads to becoming includes craving for sensuality, craving for becoming—which makes sense—and then also … 
  5. Potentials for Good
     … Which means that when you see somebody suffering, or see somebody doing something that could lead to suffering, you don’t just say, “Well, that’s their past karma,” and leave it at that. The same when you look at yourself: You don’t say, “All I’ve got is the karma I see right now.” If we’re born as human beings, we … 
  6. To See What You’re Doing
     … So, what is your mind doing right now? Some of the actions you do can lead to suffering, and others can lead to the end of suffering. That was the basic message of his first talk: that it is possible, through your actions, to put an end to suffering. So you want to pay careful attention to your actions, having a strong sense that … 
  7. Refuge in the Dhamma
     … how to abandon them; how to take them apart; how to take apart the suffering that goes along with them. You notice when the Buddha talks about suffering or stress, he starts out with lots of examples that we can identify with in the narratives of our lives: illness, aging, death, being separated from those you love, having to stay with those you don … 
  8. Values of the Noble Ones
     … How do you “comprehend suffering”? What does that mean? Suffering is basically clinging. Clinging is kind of an addiction. We do something over and over again, and it’s causing suffering, but we feel compelled to keep on doing it: We’re feeding on things that we know are going to be bad for us, but we feel compelled to keep feeding. Part of … 
  9. Meaning & Becoming
     … This is why the Buddha says the best possibility is to get out, because otherwise as he says, the craving that leads to these processes of becoming is also the cause for suffering. For becoming to exist, there has to be a kind of clinging. And everywhere there’s clinging, there’s going to be suffering. You’re either clinging to the idea of … 
  10. Doing, Maintaining, Using
     … We see that the suffering that really matters in life is the suffering that we create unnecessarily through our greed, through our anger, through our delusion. Once we to stop creating that kind of suffering, there’s nothing that touches the mind at all. It experiences the world but with a sense of being disjoined. In other words, you’re not suffering from the … 
  11. Close to What You Know
     … What are you doing and what results are you getting? In particular, what are you doing that’s causing suffering? What can you do to put an end to suffering? Those are his basic building blocks. As for other issues that come up in the practice, they should all be related back to those building blocks. Like the whole question of self: We’re … 
  12. The Self-correcting Mind
     … He went out and actually found the path to the end of suffering. But he also found that the path was something that had to be done within the mind—because we suffer from our lack of skill in how we handle sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and all the thoughts of the mind. No one else can make us skillful. Other people … 
  13. Comfortable With the Truth
     … As the Buddha said, we suffer because of craving and ignorance. And one of the major issues in ignorance is not seeing where we’re causing ourselves suffering. When they talk about ignorance of the four noble truths, that’s precisely what they mean: We don’t see our own craving, we don’t see our own ignorance in action, and so we keep … 
  14. More Buddhist Engineering
     … The Buddha did say that we suffer from not wanting to die, but then he offered a path to the deathless. We suffer because we just want the desire not to die to do all the work. And, of course, if you stop there, there’s going to be suffering. But the Buddha discovered there’s a path you can practice, a path that … 
  15. Self-hatred
     … It comes down to seeing that you’re suffering and that your actions are causing the suffering. So you have to be willing to change your actions in order to stop suffering. But you can learn how to stop. Use the tools that the Buddha provides to figure out exactly what approach you have to take, where the possible problems might be and what … 
  16. Peace Requires Character
     … Sometimes we hear that the Buddha wanted to get rid of all forms of suffering, but actually he was looking at, “Where does suffering come from? Focus on the cause.” Stop setting fires that you then have to put out. Find a place where you’re setting a fire, stop doing it, and then you’re done. The suffering out there in the world … 
  17. Inner Discontent
     … As long as long as there’s still suffering in the mind, you can’t be content with what’s going on in the mind. You have to be very careful, very watchful, to figure out exactly what it is you’re doing that’s causing suffering. He has you look at your actions, he has you look at your words, he has you … 
  18. The Role of the Observer
     … This is how we understand suffering: We comprehend it by being inquisitive. The Buddha says we suffer because of our clinging. How are we clinging? These thoughts come into the mind, and a large part of you doesn’t like them, but another part does. Well, what is the part that does? What is the part that holds on to them, and why? When … 
  19. How & Why We Meditate
     … There’s an analysis of suffering and stress called dependent co-arising, which describes all the different factors that, based on ignorance, give rise to stress and suffering. Half of them, including the three types of fabrication, come prior to sensory contact. Even before you see something or hear something, the mind is already primed to create suffering out of it—if it’s … 
  20. Why We Train the Mind
     … There’s a passage where the Buddha says that conviction in the practice is conditioned by suffering. You see that things are really bad. He doesn’t say that all life is suffering. That’s a misrepresentation of what he had to say. But there is suffering in life. And most of the things that we really pin our hopes on tend to fall … 
  21. Even Animals Can Be Trained
     … What is it doing that’s causing suffering? In particular, what kind of cravings is it engaging in that lead to suffering? It’s the cravings that we’re going to have to attack. You can’t attack suffering straight on. You have to attack the problem at the cause. Otherwise, it’s like having a boat that’s full of water, and you … 
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