Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. To the Far Shore
     … That’s because the truths are not just truths about suffering. They’re categories in which you can sort out all your thoughts, sort out all your experiences. One category is stress, suffering. Another category is the cause of suffering, which the Buddha identified as craving. The suffering, he said, is clinging that comes from the craving. Then there’s the cessation of suffering … 
  3. The Duties of Compassion
     … If you’re simply nice to people, they’ll feel your niceness for a little while, but if you actually teach them how to be skillful—how to understand suffering, how to work with suffering in such a way that they can get beyond the suffering—you can get them released for life. That’s why, when the Buddha taught the four noble truths … 
  4. Disenchantment
     … This is where the Buddha’s teaching that we suffer because of our clinging goes so much against the grain, because the Pali word for clinging, upadana, also means to feed, to take sustenance. The very thing that defines us also makes us suffer. This explains why the way away from suffering will have to involve disenchantment and dispassion. The Pali word for disenchantment … 
  5. The Dhamma Wheel Shakes Up the World
     … First there’s the truth of suffering—which is not that life is suffering. I’ve said it many times in the past, but I keep hearing people say that life is suffering, so I have to keep repeating the fact that the Buddha never said that life is suffering. He said that there is suffering and he identifies it as the five clinging … 
  6. Timeless Practice
     … We usually translate it as suffering to emphasize the fact that compared to nibbana, everything you experience in the six senses is suffering. But the Buddha talks about two types of suffering: the suffering of the three characteristics and the suffering of the four noble truths. The suffering of the three characteristics is simply the fact that things are fabricated, and there’s stress … 
  7. Universal Truths
     … In particular, it’s ignorance of how you’re causing yourself suffering. In a broader sense, it’s ignorance of four noble truths: ignorance of where there’s suffering right now and of what you’re doing to cause the suffering; ignorance of what you could be doing to put an end to the suffering and of what the end of suffering would be … 
  8. A Meritorious Heart
     … It’s a rare person who suffers and then, reflecting on that suffering, develops the conviction that’s needed to get on the path. So you see that there is suffering out there, and you hope that people will develop the conviction that will allow them to get beyond their suffering, but you don’t want to wish suffering on people. Then as you … 
  9. Thoughts with Fangs
     … Because the practice after all is the practice in learning how to overcome suffering. Your suffering is a totally private matter in the sense that only you can experience your own suffering. Nobody else can look into your mind and measure how much you’re suffering. And you can’t look into other people’s minds to see how much they’re suffering. So … 
  10. One Thing Only
     … suffering and the end of suffering.” The fake part is the “one thing and one thing only.” He did say, “All I teach is suffering and the end of suffering,” but people tend to focus on the “one thing only.” I’ve read some teachers interpret this, saying that there’s a subtle teaching here: that suffering and the end of suffering are the … 
  11. Limitations
     … When you realize that your true happiness doesn’t have to depend on causing anybody any suffering, then it is possible to have unlimited goodwill, wishing all beings happiness. If you see anyone who’s suffering, you wish them to be free from suffering. If you see people already happy, you wish that they can continue being happy, which of course means wishing that … 
  12. Dependent Co-arising Right Now
    According to the Buddha’s analysis of suffering, we suffer because of three kinds of craving: craving for sensuality, craving for becoming, and craving for non-becoming. In every case, the Buddha says, these kinds of craving lead to more becoming. The question is, how do we get around them? How do we get rid of them? After all, the path to the end … 
  13. Asalha Puja
     … What’s noble about the truths? It’s not that suffering is noble or craving is noble. What’s noble lies in the approach you take to the suffering and to the cause of suffering, seeing that the suffering is not something you’re simply subjected to. It’s something you’re actively doing. You’re clinging to the five aggregates: That’s the … 
  14. Analyzing Suffering
    The Buddha once said that all he taught was suffering and the end of suffering. He analyzed suffering so that we can put an end to it, so it’s good to look at his analysis. After all, this is why we’re quieting the mind, so that we can actually look at suffering, comprehend it, in the terms that he pointed out—because … 
  15. What Am I Becoming?
     … Views can cause you suffering or they can be part of the path, as when you hold on to the right views, understanding suffering correctly. What kind of suffering is causing your problems? What kind of pain is causing your problems? What kind of pain is not really the problem? As the Buddha pointed out, there are things in the world you have to … 
  16. Accepting the Way Out
     … It doesn’t say you shouldn’t suffer, or that if you are suffering it’s all your own fault. But it does say that you have the choice as to whether you’re going to suffer from outside circumstances. The Buddha doesn’t say you have to accept the way things are outside, or that you’re not allowed to change things, but … 
  17. Against the Grain
     … The mind has lots of ways of making excuses, saying there’s no suffering there; or if there is suffering, it doesn’t really matter or it’s unavoidable: lots of ways of covering up all the suffering that goes into our need to feed. Think of hunting and gathering cultures. Almost all of them will have the belief that the animal that the … 
  18. Emptiness
     … how suffering is being created right now—you can watch it happening. You don’t have to ask who’s creating the suffering, or who’s experiencing the suffering: Just look at that the phenomenon of suffering, and see what causes it. This way you can cut through an awful lot of the baggage the mind carries around, because without this ability to cut … 
  19. See Yourself as Active Verbs
     … These activities prior to contact determine whether you’re going to suffer from the contact or not. Even the suffering itself, the Buddha says, is an activity. He equates suffering with clinging. Clinging is the act of feeding on things. We’re not only on the receiving end of suffering. We tend to think of ourselves as receiving suffering from outside, that we feel … 
  20. The Graduated Discourse
     … There’s the suffering of the fact that things are inconstant, stressful, and not self, that they’re products of fabrication. And then there’s the suffering of the four noble truths, the suffering that’s based on craving. The main message of the four noble truths is if you focus on this second kind of suffering—the suffering that your mind is creating … 
  21. A Healthy Attitude Toward Happiness
     … When the Buddha was teaching, as in that passage we chanted just now on how to put an end to suffering, there was no question about how this teaching was only for people who don’t deserve to suffer. The path to the end of suffering is for everybody, for all kinds of suffering, “deserved” or not. The question never comes up in his … 
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