Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Rivers of Craving
     … what he was doing that was causing suffering. There is this tendency of the mind to follow its cravings, which is what causes suffering. As long as the mind is weak, it gives in to whatever impulse comes in if it hasn’t been trained. So part of the training is to strengthen the mind, so that even when the body is tired, even … 
  3. Wearing the Breath
     … After all, where is the source of suffering? The Buddha calls it the origination of suffering. When he uses the word origination, one, it means we have to look for the cause and, two, we usually have to look for the cause in the mind. So, we’re trying to understand our own minds. If you can understand your own mind, then you don … 
  4. Magha Puja: Showing Respect with the Practice
     … to practice the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma—in other words, to practice training the mind so that it develops dispassion for the things that lead to suffering and can find true happiness. After all, that’s why the Buddha taught. He spent all those years looking for the Dhamma, not only for his own sake, but also so that other people could … 
  5. As Days & Nights Fly Past, Fly Past
     … To what extent do you see that you’re creating suffering that you don’t have to? That’s the big question. When the Buddha set out the four noble truths he wasn’t simply setting out four interesting facts about an interesting topic—suffering and stress. He was pointing out the fact that this is the big issue in life—the suffering and … 
  6. Facing Pain Straight On
     … How does the mind create pain? How does it create suffering? Then you’ll find that the insights that arise are very productive in giving rise to a happiness that lies beyond the four noble truths, totally unconditioned. Because that’s the earnest question in life: Why do we create suffering when we want happiness? And how can we find a happiness that we … 
  7. Good Fundamentals
     … The more experienced the people are in terms of generosity, virtue, conviction, and discernment—particularly discernment into how to put an end to suffering—the more you benefit. What it comes down to is the Buddha’s realization that the Big Problem in life is the suffering we cause, and yet we don’t have to. Why do we cause that suffering? It’s … 
  8. Metta Isn’t Love
     … That way, your goodwill doesn’t have to create suffering. After all, if we don’t have equanimity to back up our goodwill, we’re going to suffer. We want beings to be happy, and look what they do: all kinds of things that are the opposite of the causes for happiness. Then there are those who are already happy, and look at what … 
  9. All About Change
     … When the Buddha talks about the origination of suffering, he doesn’t mean things outside causing you to suffer. Society may be in a mess right now, people can be abusive, threatening, totally crazy, but that’s not the source of the suffering. The source of the suffering, the Buddha says, is inside the mind itself. That’s what he means by origination. It … 
  10. Four Determinations
     … This is probably why that Zen master said that “The Great Way is not difficult for those with no preferences.” He wasn’t saying that you don’t prefer the end of suffering to suffering. You do prefer the end of suffering. It’s simply that you look at what’s required to put an end to suffering and see that some things will … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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