Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Mature Happiness… One of the qualities of long-term happiness is that it not create suffering for other people. Because if it creates suffering for other people—after all they love themselves and they won’t be willing to give up their happiness so that you can have yours—it means they’ll probably try to destroy your happiness if it depends on harming them. So …
- The Door of the Cage (2)… The self as a governing principle means you reflect on the fact that you started out on this practice because you wanted to put an end to suffering, the implication being that if you gave up on the practice, you’d be giving up on the idea that there could be an end of suffering. Is that an idea you’d like to give …
- Determination… And their basic message is that if you want, you can put an end to suffering. If you want to suffer, you can continue to suffer. Which do you want? How are you going to look at your thoughts? How are you going to look at your attitudes? You have to look at them in terms of where they come from and where they …
- The Anatomy of the Present… When he explains in dependent co-arising how suffering arises, the list of factors leading up to suffering is quite long. And halfway down the list is your experience of contact at the senses: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas. Sensory contact is where we tend to locate the present moment, but the Buddha is saying that this aspect of the present …
- Expanded Possibilities… It’s not just suffering, suffering, suffering, suffering. Four separate truths, and there is that truth of the end of suffering. And the path, even though it takes a lot of work, is worth every bit of it. So as we face a world that’s been changed by this virus, in which a lot of our economic possibilities are going to be restricted …
- The Best Work Around… There is a way out of all the sufferings that the mind suffers from, and all the stress and distress and despair and delusion and depression. All these other negative things in the mind: There is a way out of the them, and it’s one of the best things you can do in life. When you have that kind of attitude, the difficulties …
- Encouragement… You can reason about it and you can argue about it, but it doesn’t really accomplish the purpose of the Buddha’s teachings, which is to get the mind beyond suffering. And in the course of gaining release from suffering, you gain release from a lot of problems. A lot of other issues get settled as well. So we’re working on a …
- The Wisdom of Equanimity… Compassion is what goodwill feels when you see that people are suffering, or doing things that will lead to suffering. You want to help, if you can, overcome the suffering, or to help them stop doing the things that are going to lead to suffering. Empathetic joy is what goodwill feels when you see that people are happy or are doing things that would …
- Instruct, Urge, Rouse, & Encourage Yourself… You should try to comprehend suffering, you should try to abandon its cause, you should try to realize the cessation of suffering by doing what you really should do, which is to develop the path. That’s where you want to urge, rouse, and encourage yourself. Now again, the Buddha sets out those shoulds not to impose them on you. He simply says that …
- Alighting on the Dhamma… But in this case, it doesn’t matter—the suffering is not a person that you’re cheating. You want to get to know it really well, really intimately, so that you can figure out, “Okay, what is this? And what am I doing around it?” It’s not that your awareness of the suffering is one thing and the suffering is just coming …
- The Reasonable Path… That was when he realized that logic was not the key to end of suffering. Ultimately he found the middle way, a balanced path, a reasonable path. It takes virtue, concentration, and discernment, and puts them in a reasonable context. The Jains often complained to the Buddha that his precepts were sloppier than theirs. But again they took the idea of harmlessness to totally …
- Mindfulness over Time… Do they lead to suffering or away from suffering? If they’re leading to suffering, what can you do to stop? Where is the cause, where’s the nutriment? Watch things over time. When you understand mindfulness in the right way, that helps you do that, because if you were 100% in the present moment, you wouldn’t even have language. You wouldn’t …
- Becoming… And the reason the Buddha focuses on these and not on other issues is because the nature of action is important for understanding why we suffer and how we can stop suffering. There’s the kamma that leads to suffering; there’s the kamma that leads to its end. So we’re here trying to understand what action is all about, what action does …
- Look at Yourself… When you start looking at the suffering in the body and the mind, you’ll see that some things are your duty, that you really do have to look after, and there are other kinds of suffering that you have to let go. The suffering or stress that’s involved in the fact that things simply change: That’s part of nature, something you …
- Free Sources of Energy… If you do it in ignorance, there’s going to be suffering. If you bring some knowledge to it—in other words, you start thinking in terms of the four noble truths—you see that you’re suffering not because of the chores outside or the fact that you’re tired. You’re suffering because of craving and clinging. That puts a different cast …
- Questioning Your Conviction… So conviction basically means conviction in the power of human action, at the very least, to make a difference between whether you’re going to suffer and whether you’re not going to suffer, and ideally, conviction in the power of human action—your human action—to lead to the end of suffering. As the Buddha encouraged you, if he could do it, others …
- Determined to Make a Difference… Once the mind settles down, then you focus it on the question: “What am I doing that’s causing unnecessary stress and suffering, and how can I stop?” That’s the essence of discernment: “What am I doing that’s causing this?” You’re looking toward your own actions as the cause of suffering. You’re not simply watching things arise and pass away …
- The Buddha Didn’t Play Gotcha… Your understanding of why there’s suffering in the world is skewed, or your understanding of why you’re suffering is skewed. You spend all your time just focusing on your breath and not wanting to do anything for anyone else anywhere, not wanting to be bothered by the world. You have to realize that it’s not the world that’s bothering you …
- Things as They Function… Remember, we’re here to understand why the mind is causing suffering and how it can stop. That’s the knowledge you want to gain. So focus on the Buddha’s strategy. Follow his strategy. Learn how to think strategically yourself. That’ll be the discernment that opens things up to release—release from this habit of creating suffering again and again and again …
- Cheerfully Ardent… The same with the path and the cessation of suffering: You don’t do the cessation of suffering. You do the path: virtue, concentration, discernment. The release that comes—that’s going to be the result. You don’t do release, but to get the path to be the middle path you have to try, make mistakes, and be willing to have a cheerful …
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