Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Fire Escapes… But the end of the universe, in terms of the suffering of the universes of all your becomings, he says, can be found in here. You don’t have to go out there. So, stay in here. Get to know this space really fully. The end of suffering is to be found in this fathom-long body. That doesn’t mean that it’s …
- Insights… After all, even the Buddha, on the night of his awakening, didn’t come to the conclusion that his first two insights were absolutely true until he had achieved the third insight, in which he actually saw suffering dropping away from the mind and no suffering coming to take its place. He realized he’d reached something that, in his words, could not be …
- If These Walls Could Talk… The whole purpose of the four noble truths is to help you put an end to suffering. If you want to put an end to suffering, then he says this is what you’ve got to do: You’ve got to comprehend suffering, abandon the cause, develop the path, so that you can realize the cessation of suffering. Those are all compassionate duties. And …
- The Challenge… There’s a lot of suffering in that process, both in your own search for the food and suffering for other beings who have to be food, or work to produce food, clothing, shelter, or medicine. On top of that, there’s the suffering of the mind. Even when you get food today, there’s always the question: Where is tomorrow’s food going …
- Who Are You Trying to Please?… I’m suffering, and I need to get rid of my own suffering, and it’s not for anybody else.” As he would often say, we’re not anybody’s servants. Nobody paid us to be ordained. Nobody’s paying us to practice. We’re here because our suffering is pushing us into the practice, and we want to put an end to it …
- Secluded from Sensuality… There is the possibility that you can totally end suffering. Without that possibility, you can say, “I’ll just go for whatever pleasures I like.” Some people like sensuality; other people like a quiet state of mind. Sounds like it’s just a matter of personal preference. But when the total end of suffering is an option, you want to reorder your values, spending …
- True Happiness Starts with Giving… We think that suffering is our enemy and cravings are our friends. But, actually craving is the enemy because it’s what’s causing the suffering. As a part of the strategy of the practice, we learn how to become friends with suffering. In other words, we get familiar with it. We don’t try to push it away. We don’t try to …
- The Gradual Path of Skill… That’s the desire never to come back and have to suffer ever again. The desire not to suffer, which we all have, is what forms the foundation of how we can practice. The Buddha simply takes it to a level of skill, a level of all-around discernment that goes way beyond what the rest of the world would have accepted. The Buddha …
- Meaning & Purpose… Then he points out that this process, which in so many ways can lead to suffering, can be turned to make a path to the end of suffering. That’s a large part of his genius. We suffer because we’re attached to form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. But we can use those things to create the path, and we hold on as …
- A Pure Happiness… That’s what turns these things into suffering. If you don’t cling, they don’t cause you to suffer. There’s nothing in them inherently that makes you have to suffer. This is an important insight, because if you think of suffering as an enormous monolithic block you’ve got to chip through, if you think of your defilements as huge monolithic blocks …
- Reflecting on Karma… So we reflect on karma to give a sense of confidence that there is a way out of all this suffering. There’s a passage where the Buddha said that suffering gives rise to conviction. If you reflect on the fact that you’re suffering and you don’t want to stay there, you’ve got to get out. And there’s the Buddha …
- Catch It in the Act… The mind is constantly creating suffering through its unskillful ideas, its unskillful notions. You’ve got to stop it to whatever extent you can. You have to catch in the act. It’s like seeing a dog using your front lawn as a bathroom. If you throw a rock at it after it’s done its business, it’s going to keep coming back …
- The Buddha Defines Wisdom… It gives you a foundation so that you’re not feeling threatened by whatever stress or suffering there is in the mind. You find that at least one part of the mind is not stressed out. It’s not suffering, so you focus your attention there. Take that as your foundation. And then from that foundation, you can watch the suffering, watch the stress …
- It’s All about Action… You see suffering as a kind of action, you see the causes of suffering as kinds of action, and you see the things you could do to do differently to put an end to that suffering as kinds of action. Everything talked about in the Dhamma relates to actions. When people talk about interconnectedness: We’re connected through our actions. We’re not connected …
- Things Aren’t as They Should Be… They have no freedom to choose whether or not to do these things. “When you teach that,” the Buddha said, “you leave people unprotected and bewildered.” Now, “bewildered” is the term he uses for our ordinary reaction to suffering. Suffering comes in ways that we don’t understand. If you think that everything that you’re going to experience in terms of suffering or …
- Things As They Function… Which kinds of actions are worth doing, which ones are not worth doing, which kinds of actions lead to suffering, which kinds of actions lead away? By applying that framework, he found that he could learn an awful lot about how things function and how he could steer their functioning in the direction of the end of suffering. So this is why we meditate …
- Mountains Moving In… In fact, the two extremes that he said the middle way avoids were criticized because they created suffering. The search for happiness among sensual pleasures creates suffering. Self-torment creates suffering. The only path to true happiness is the middle way: the noble eightfold path. That was one of his first teachings. You look at the qualities you develop as part of that path …
- The Pain of Conviction… There’s a passage where the Buddha’s discussing the causes that lead to suffering, and then beyond suffering, the next step is conviction, conviction that there’s a way out. It doesn’t end the suffering, but it actually puts a different cast on it. Because conviction itself has both a pleasant and an unpleasant side. The pleasant side, of course, is that …
- Purifying Gold… It was his willingness to stick with that one question that kept him going all the way to the end of suffering. So when you get your mind to settle down, when it does get quiet, remind yourself that you’re not here just to get quiet. You’re here to solve the problem of suffering. Take your lump of gold and make it …
- Something New… Why are we suffering? We’re suffering because of things we’re doing, but we don’t have to keep on doing the things we’re doing. We can change. We can bring something new into the world. In fact, with every moment, we have that possibility. You can bring something new into the world, something unexpected. So why not make it unexpectedly good …
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