Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 48
  2. Ignorance & Deception
    The Buddha had said several times that all he taught was suffering and the end of suffering. You have to keep that in mind as you’re practicing his teaching: Everything is aimed at those two topics. To put an end to suffering, you have to understand where it comes from. The two main causes are craving and ignorance. The ignorance here is not … 
  3. The Wisdom of Ardency
     … The wise people are the ones who realize they’ve got unskillful qualities in their minds, that those qualities are causing suffering, and that they’ve got to do something about it. The best use of the Dhamma is not to talk about it, but to use it to get rid of that suffering. It’s in figuring out what you’ve got to … 
  4. Filling in the Buddha’s Outline
     … The other is the four noble truths, going into the unskillful behavior in the mind that’s causing suffering and then seeing what kind of skillful behavior we can develop in its place so that we can bring suffering to an end. That’s basically the big framework for the problem. Now, the framework tells you a lot. The Buddha is saying that suffering … 
  5. Planting a Tree
     … He was just a person who was suffering and was tired of suffering and decided to see what the possibility of action was: “How far can your actions take you?” So when you think about the Buddha, remember that the message of his life all comes down to actions: what you’re doing. All of us have actions we’ve done in the past … 
  6. The Bureaucracy of the Defilements
     … But if you give them their way, you’re the one who’s going to suffer. They’re not going to suffer. They’re creating your kamma and it’s all going to affect you. It’s because you, as the boss, delegated things and you tend to get distracted—you’re not even there in the head office all of the time—that … 
  7. Circular Practice
     … people who actually have the right values, people who see the value of training the mind, the value of digging down into the mind and seeing why it’s still causing itself suffering. Even though everything we do is aimed at happiness, we still suffer. And if we don’t keep the question of suffering foremost in mind—and particularly the suffering the mind … 
  8. Concentration that Bears Great Fruit
     … As the Buddha said, the craving that leads to becoming is the cause of suffering, so if you want to put an end to suffering, you have to know this process well. And here is our place to observe it, right as the mind gets centered here in this very clear and conscious state of becoming. This is why such an important part of … 
  9. Pro-self, Pro-help
     … When the Buddha talks about suffering and the possibility of ending suffering in right view, the wise response is to resolve not to do anything that’ll cause suffering. In other words, you realize that your actions make a difference. And you have to be careful, because some of the ways you can act can cause a lot of suffering both for yourself and … 
  10. The Buddha Aimed High
     … We suffer from these things because of our craving, and only when we deal with our craving will we get anywhere. So that’s the focus of the teachings. It’s the kernel of the four noble truths. You solve the problem of suffering not by solving suffering, but by solving the cause. You’ve got to abandon the cause. We want to abandon … 
  11. The Wrong Uses of Right
     … But if you’re holding on to your rightness and it’s causing you to suffer, you say, “Okay, something’s wrong here.” That’s not what right actions, right views or right whatever are right for. They’re right for the purpose of abandoning the cause of suffering. But if you’re using them to create causes of suffering, something’s wrong. Ajaan … 
  12. Everything You Need
     … Approach the present moment looking for where is the suffering? In other words, where is the clinging right now and where is the craving that’s causing the suffering? That’s what appropriate attention means. You look at the present moment and you apply the four noble truths to every present moment that comes. What can you develop right now that will be in … 
  13. To Sustain Your Practice
     … The fourth thing to look for is for someone who’s wise and discerning, and particularly who really discerns why we suffer and how we can put an end to that suffering. Now, obviously, these characteristics are found best in someone who’s gained the first taste of awakening. Their conviction in the Buddha has been confirmed. Their discernment into the problem of suffering … 
  14. Dispassion
     … And you realize that all of this clinging and holding on is suffering. So you feel dispassion for the objects you’ve been clinging to, and for the clinging itself. Similarly with the second noble truth—the origination of suffering, which is any one of three types of craving: for sensuality, for becoming, and for non-becoming. You try to develop dispassion for these … 
  15. Right Livelihood
     … When you reflect on these things, you also reflect on the fact that they come to you through a fair amount of suffering. Sometimes a lot of suffering—on the part of the people who provide the food, sometimes for the animals whose meat is used. Even if you’re vegetarian, there’s just a lot of suffering for the farmers, a lot of … 
  16. Skillful Desire
    When the Buddha describes suffering and stress, he starts with some things that we’re all used to, we’re all very familiar with: aging, illness, death, separation, not getting what you want. His explanation of the last point is interesting. He says that, as people who are born in this world, we don’t want aging, we don’t want illness, we don … 
  17. Two Guardian Meditations
     … When he taught people about the path to the end of suffering, he didn’t first say, “Only those who deserve not to suffer can listen to this.” Everybody has karma in their background that could cause them to suffer. The whole point of the teaching is that not everything you experience is shaped by past karma. There’s your independent present karma right … 
  18. What’s Worth Doing?
     … Is it worth causing suffering for yourself? And the answer is that in some cases it is—if the suffering is the suffering involved with the path. After all, everything that’s fabricated involves some stress. And every state of becoming, where you take on an identity in a particular world of experience, is going to involve some stress and suffering, too. Now, you … 
  19. Lessons for New Monks
     … You start thinking about how all your suffering is based on the fact that there’s this person here or that situation here—and things are not perfect. The Buddha keeps reminding you: What is right view? Suffering comes from your craving. It doesn’t come from conditions outside. If you want to put an end to that suffering—the clinging to the aggregates … 
  20. Feeding Off the Future
    The reason we’re meditating, training the mind, is because the suffering that stabs at the mind is the suffering we create for ourselves by the attitude we bring to things. Now this doesn’t mean that the world outside is all perfectly okay and that the only problem is that our minds are poorly trained. The world outside can be pretty miserable. People … 
  21. Questioning & Acceptance
     … If you say that the prime reason why we suffer is because we can’t accept things for what they are, you’re saying that we suffer because we’re neurotic. But the Buddha’s analysis of suffering was not that we’re neurotic. He saw it more as coming from the fact that we’re not paying careful enough attention to what we … 
  22. Load next page...