Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 52
  2. Basic Breath, Basic Insight
     … Unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way.” We all create suffering for ourselves in different ways based on different assumptions, different ideas of what happiness would be and how we can go about finding it. Meditation gives you a good opportunity to look at exactly where you’re making your mistakes. The only reason we would create suffering is because we’re … 
  3. Potentials for Energy
     … You want to find an end to suffering. You want to at least alleviate a lot of your suffering. And if you believe that the Buddha was awakened, and that he proved that human beings can do this, that gives focus to your desire—and a lot of energy right there. Ven. Ananda would recommend that you augment your conviction with conceit and craving … 
  4. Purity
     … His teachings on suffering focus on not the suffering that comes from the body, the suffering that comes from what other people do, but the suffering that you’re creating for yourself right here, right now. If you can learn to stop that, he says, then the other suffering doesn’t matter, doesn’t reach into you, doesn’t touch you. So we have … 
  5. Choiceful Awareness
     … But the question always should be, where is this taking you? Right now, the thoughts that direct you to the breath are taking you where you want to go if you want to put an end to suffering. If you don’t want to put an end to suffering, you can go do something else. We’re here because we see that this is … 
  6. Heeding the Deva Messengers
     … In other words, you have no way of knowing what in the past caused your suffering right now, and because they tell you that there’s nothing you can do about it, there’s no way you can protect yourself from suffering right now. But the Buddha’s teaching was very different. We do have influences coming in from the past, but they’re … 
  7. The Making Of
     … But you realize that they had to find people with no legs, people who had really suffered, to do that. In the same way, not all thought worlds are innocent. Even with the innocent-seeming ones, you have to watch out because they get you addicted to your inner films. Then you get some other films that would actually involve some suffering for yourself … 
  8. What Are You Doing?
    Ajaan Fuang once received a letter from a Dhamma practitioner in Singapore who talked about his practice of Dhamma in daily life, how whatever he was doing at work, at home, even watching TV, he just tried to notice how everything was impermanent, suffering, not-self. And Ajaan Fuang told me to write back to him and say that the problem is not with … 
  9. A Meditator’s Environment
     … He said, “It’s full of koans, like, ‘What is the end of suffering?’ There’s no answer to that,” he said. I always thought the purpose of asking that question was to get the right answer—so that you could look at your own cravings, your own desires and passions, to see which ones are skillful, which are the cause of suffering, which … 
  10. The Not-Self Discourse
     … It deprives you of places to cling, and it does that because, when you see things in terms of the four noble truths, you see that the clinging is suffering, and that you cling because of your craving. When you can undo the craving, then there’s release from clinging and suffering. And that release is unassailable. So it’s in the light of … 
  11. Cutting Through the Hype
     … The problem is what you’re doing, what you’re doing that’s creating suffering, and what you could possibly do that would put an end to suffering. It’s the doing that makes all the difference. He never says that we’re intrinsically good; he doesn’t say we’re intrinsically bad. When he was asked even if we have a self, he … 
  12. Look at Yourself
     … The cause of suffering is craving. Whose craving? Yours. The cause of suffering is ignorance. Whose ignorance? Your ignorance. So you have to remember—not only while you’re sitting here and meditating, but also as you go through the day—that you want to watch the state of your heart. Sometimes it’ll come out in your actions. It can’t help but … 
  13. To Escape the Prison of Time
     … That’s where we’ll find what makes a difference between a course of action that leads to suffering and a course of action that leads away from suffering. Finally, from the third knowledge, there’s the principle that if we focus on the problem of suffering and its cause, and if we learn the path of action that can put an end to … 
  14. Kindfulness
     … suffering or stress, and the end of suffering or stress. To get to the end involves understanding the principle of action: what you’re doing, where it’s skillful, where it’s not, what you can learn from where it’s skillful and where it’s not. That way, you can ultimately reach the dimension where suffering ends, or as the Buddha says, you … 
  15. May I Look After Myself with Ease
     … In other words, the practice helps sharpen your discernment as to when the mind is actually creating suffering for itself. We complain that the world is making us suffer, but we’re the ones who pick up on the things from the world and bring them into our inner home and weigh ourselves down. Yet if you don’t go out there picking up … 
  16. The Core of Experience
     … In fact, the clinging will be suffering. But you can turn them into a path, which switches their role as part of the first noble truth, about suffering, to part of the fourth: the path to the end of suffering. Like you’re doing right now: You’ve got your body sitting here, which is form. You’re holding onto the perception of the … 
  17. Friends Inside & Out
     … Without that training, the mind can just go blissfully on, thinking that it’s good and yet complaining about all the suffering—and not being willing to see where there’s the connection between what the mind is doing itself and the suffering that it’s undergoing. It’s when you finally realize that the problem isn’t outside, the problem is inside: That … 
  18. A Producer Mentality
     … right view about what’s going to cause suffering, what’s not going to cause suffering, what’s going to take you away from suffering, and then the resolve to do what needs to be done to get into right concentration. But then there are steps between right resolve and the actual concentration. One of the steps is in right resolve itself: being resolved … 
  19. A Path of Skills
     … Then we apply that same meditative sensitivity to the problem of suffering. Why is there suffering in the mind? Well, observe it as it’s trying to do something good and you’ll see that even with its best intentions, there are still things that need to be improved. You get more sensitive to how a state of concentration is put together and you … 
  20. Keeping Your Values Alive
    The Buddha once said there are two factors that are primary in gaining awakening, putting an end to suffering. The primary external factor is having admirable friends, people who are good examples, because you learn not only what they have to say, but also you look at their actions and try to emulate them. You can pick up a lot that way, too. Their … 
  21. Vitakka & Vicara
     … This is where the Buddha gets into what he calls the fabrications of exertion, which, in some cases, have to be used to overcome the causes of suffering. As he notes, some of the causes of suffering in the mind require nothing more than that you look at them and see that they’re really not worth going for. As a result, they simply … 
  22. Load next page...