Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Meaning Through Perfections
     … It had no meaning, just lots and lots of suffering interspaced with some respite, but then more suffering again. He began to think: What would be a meaningful life in this context? And he came to the conclusion that the only life with any meaning would be one that wants to get out. The way out was what he found in the third knowledge … 
  3. Dhamma Medicine for Free
     … If you do all these processes— bodily fabrication, verbal fabrication, and mental fabrication—with as much knowledge as possible, that cuts through a lot of the suffering that would ordinarily develop around the breath. We don’t think of there being much suffering around the breath, but if there’s a sense of dis-ease in the body, it begins to spread into the … 
  4. Beyond Imagination
     … We’re very creative—and unfortunately, it’s usually creativity that ends up in suffering. We’re creative in the ways we suffer, because every life we could create ends in aging, illness, and death, separation, over and over and over again. There’s that chant that we often recite: “I’m subject to aging, subject to illness, subject to death, subject to separation … 
  5. The Best News in the World
     … right resolve, right mindfulness, right effort, ultimately all eight factors of the noble eightfold path, finally developing right view, realizing that the issue that he was trying to solve was the problem of suffering, and that to get to the deathless, first you had to understand suffering, figure out its cause, develop a path of practice so that you can abandon the cause, and … 
  6. The Door of the Cage
     … The four noble truths are a variation, or a development, of the teaching on karma—what you do that leads to suffering, what you do that leads to the end of suffering. It’s all about action. So the Buddha’s not leaving you totally adrift. He’s not depriving you of your food. You feed off of right view, feed off of the … 
  7. Body & Food
     … So look at things that are close at hand—this body, the food it feeds on—and you see that they have implications that stretch far into the distance as you see exactly how much your existence as a human being creates this network of suffering around it. You see the suffering that goes into having to feed all the time, having to take … 
  8. The Dhamma Wheel
     … For example, with regard to suffering or stress, the first noble truth, the duty is to comprehend it. Comprehending, we learn from another sutta in the Canon, means comprehending to the point of having no more passion, aversion, and delusion around it. Ordinarily we wouldn’t think that we’d have any passion for suffering. But remember, the Buddha’s definition of suffering is … 
  9. Happy About Kamma
     … It may explain a lot of suffering, but it doesn’t justify the suffering. It just simply says that this is why it’s there, but the way kamma works also offers the way out. So even though we’ve done bad things in the past, we don’t have to suffer for them. Think of that image of the salt crystal: You put … 
  10. Clinging
    The Buddha identified suffering as the five clinging-aggregates. And the problem is not the aggregates. It’s the clinging. It comes in four forms: clinging to sensuality, to views, to habits and practices, and to doctrines of the self. But regardless of the form, you can feel it physically, as a tightening in the breath energy in the body. Now, the physical feeling … 
  11. Honesty
     … A lot of the practice is a question of skill in how to act in such a way that avoids suffering, and then finally cuts through the causes of suffering. That requires a lot of precision, a lot of dedication, all the qualities that you need in developing a skill. So when you come to the practice—say you’re going to focus on … 
  12. What You Don’t Like About Yourself
     … The Buddha, though, had a further use for meditation and that’s to figure out why it is that we create suffering. Even though we want very much not to create suffering, we keep doing it again and again. So the meditation is part of a path to the end of that suffering. And the two most important elements in the path are, on … 
  13. Gratification
     … So when aging, illness, separation, and death are sure to happen, what skills do you need so you don’t suffer from these things? We generally assume the suffering there is inevitable, that there’s nothing much you can do about it. But the Buddha’s great discovery was that even though these things happen, you don’t have to suffer from them. That … 
  14. Stillness & Clear Seeing
     … When we look at suffering, we don’t blame other people for it, we don’t blame things outside. We take responsibility for it. That’s a noble act right there. When we look at the causes of suffering, we see that the things that we crave, the things that we desire the most, are often the things that cause the most suffering. So … 
  15. Training in Right Resolve
     … So let the Dhamma stretch you, and let it challenge you in the areas where you think you’re most right, because, remember, if you were 100 percent right already, there’d be no suffering. Wherever there’s suffering, it’s a sign that your rightness is not right enough. So take the teachings of someone who was not suffering anymore, and practice them … 
  16. The Rewards of Cleanliness
     … Discernment is seeing the connection between the cause of suffering and the suffering itself. They do arise together; they pass away together. The cause of suffering is something that the mind does. Suffering is something that it feels. When you see the connection, you see that whatever the mind is doing is coming out of ignorance. You do your best to put all your … 
  17. Wisdom Through Doing
     … It is possible to put an end, a total end, to suffering. A lot of people just dismiss that as a possibility. But the Buddha’s purpose in teaching was to open it up again. When you look at what you’re doing and the results you’re getting, how do they measure up against the total end of suffering? What could you do … 
  18. It’s Up to You
     … Where does suffering comes from? It comes from within. Where does the cure come from? Well, it comes from within as well. So as we go through life, we have to keep looking inward, first for the source of strength that allows us to want to put an end to suffering. Then we look in to see what the problem is. Where are we … 
  19. Positive Capability
     … Why is the mind suffering? What is it doing to make itself suffer? How can it stop? This takes the four noble truths as questions. The Buddha points our attention in the right direction. We’re looking for the cause of suffering. We’re not going to be looking outside. We have to look inside. We have to look at our cravings, see why … 
  20. Heedful of What’s Precious
     … You want to develop the path so that you can comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, and realize the cessation of suffering. So be very protective of this path. Do your best to keep nurturing it. What this means is that when skillful mental qualities arise in the mind, you don’t just sit there watching them come and watching them go. You watch them … 
  21. Me, Me, Me
     … When he talks about suffering and the cause of suffering, he starts out with just those two principles: suffering and its cause. But as he traces them out, they get into dependent co-arising, which is very complex. Still, it’s complex for a purpose. He’s not just showing off how subtle he can be. He wants to show how he took his … 
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