Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Noble Right Concentration
     … The second truth, craving, is the cause for suffering, and it’s coming from the mind. The fourth noble truth, the path, is not the cause for the cessation of suffering, but it takes you there. And it, too, comes from the mind. When the Buddha laid out dependent co-arising, it was all about causes and effects immediately present to awareness. This is … 
  3. Turning Points
     … It centers on the question of why we suffer, and how we can put an end to suffering. That’s a very humane question. It’s not a question imposed on us from the outside or some higher force. It’s a question that springs up basically every time we choose to act: What can we do to find some pleasure? It’s interesting … 
  4. Immediate Knowledge
    All the things we need how to put an end to suffering are very close things, things we can experience immediately. On the one hand, there’s the pleasure and pain we experience. On the other, there’s the question of what the mind is doing. What is your mind doing right now? Is there any connection between the two, between what you’re … 
  5. Freedom Through Painful Practice
     … We think suffering is our enemy and craving is our friend. He said if you can learn to look at the pains of life, look at the sufferings of life, and gain discernment, you can free yourself from them. In that way, they’re your friends. As for your cravings, you have to learn how to dissociate yourself from them and be very leery … 
  6. How to Use the Teaching on Kamma
     … We’re using this principle to see that as long as we’re engaged in this process of wandering on, there’s going to be suffering. You make other people suffer; you make yourself suffer. Over and over and over again. So why not get out? The Buddha is offering this possibility. It is possible to get out. He shows the way, as we … 
  7. Honesty
     … The big problem in our lives is the ignorance that leads to suffering, and a lot of that ignorance is willed. It’s not simply a matter of not knowing; it’s not wanting to know. This is why the Buddha put ignorance and craving together as the causes of suffering. There are certain things we don’t like to admit to ourselves. We … 
  8. Your Higher Power
     … When the Buddha talks about the causes of suffering—craving and the fact that suffering itself is a clinging—he’s basically talking about addictions. And his way of dealing with addictions is to break them down. Where’s the feeling? Where’s the perception?—in other words, where is the image in your mind? How does the body feel? What chatter is going … 
  9. Respect
     … for putting an end to suffering, for looking exactly where suffering comes from in our own actions, and for training ourselves so that we can stop doing those things that cause suffering. So what does it mean to have an attitude of respect? It means, for one thing, that we pay full attention to what we’re doing, that we use care. Respect is … 
  10. Meditation Prep
     … But in the midst of doing difficult things, you don’t just suffer through them. You’ve got to figure out, “How can I get through this without suffering?” That’s where you start learning how to be ingenious. But the important thing is that you remind yourself, okay, you can stand this; whatever’s coming up, you’re not going to get blown … 
  11. Discerning Actions
     … You have to see that you’re suffering, and you have to see that it may be dependent on your actions. Or maybe you don’t focus so much on the suffering but simply on the fact that the happiness you have doesn’t satisfy. There must be something better. That’s the beginning of discernment. The Buddha recommends that you then go and … 
  12. Your Ancestral Territory
     … What did the Dhamma teach that other people have been able to use to get past suffering? My sufferings, even though they may be modern American sufferings, are at the basis no different from the sufferings and the defilements of people in that time. They were able to find their way out. Why can’t I?” And you approach every problem with the brahma … 
  13. The Strength of Heedfulness
     … When he gained knowledge, the question was what to do with it, how to use it, how best to use it, particularly, for the sake of putting an end to suffering. That’s a sign of his heedfulness: realizing that we live in a world where our actions do make a difference between whether we’re going to suffer or not. It was conviction … 
  14. Feeding on Ardency
     … When you comprehend suffering, it’s not simply watching suffering. You try to understand it to the point of dispassion for it. That requires a lot of understanding. Think about the Buddha’s five-step program for inducing dispassion. It requires a lot of effort. You have to watch things as they’re originated to figure out what their cause is. It takes a … 
  15. Delight in Striving
     … We’re not here just accepting, accepting, accepting things, because a lot of things are pretty unacceptable—particularly with the problem of suffering. If the Buddha had us just accept suffering, he himself would have gone back to the palace and never would have become a Buddha. If he had accepted aging, illness, and death, he wouldn’t have found the deathless. These are … 
  16. The Rewards of Right View
     … If you were suffering, it was because you deserved to suffer: That’s how they interpreted the teachings. But that’s not what the Buddha meant by those teachings at all. His vision of karma and rebirth was much larger than that. On the one hand, it’s because we do choose our actions—and our actions are under our control—that all the … 
  17. Delight in Stillness
     … As Ajaan Suwat commented one time, that’s the suffering the Buddha’s talking about. You don’t have to look elsewhere, anywhere far away for the suffering of the four noble truths. Right there, where the mind is disturbing itself, that’s suffering. You want to figure out why: What’s the craving that’s getting in the way? What are you clinging … 
  18. Patience
     … When the Buddha talks about suffering in the four noble truths, it’s the suffering we place on ourselves unnecessarily. Like that old question Ajaan Suwat would ask about the mountain. “Is the mountain heavy? Well, yes, it’s heavy in and of itself, but as long as you don’t pick it up, it’s not going to be heavy for you.” That … 
  19. Not-self in Context
     … It fits under the fact that he saw in the first noble truth that suffering is clinging, and there are four kinds of clinging. The deepest and most tenacious is clinging to your ideas of self. If you put an end to clinging, though, there’s no suffering. You do that by putting an end to craving. This means you also have to get … 
  20. Mindful & Discerning 24/7
     … A thought of laziness may be clever, but it’s basically stupid because, after all, it’s making you suffer. If you saw things in the right way, the wise way, you wouldn’t be suffering. Think of the arahants. It’s not that when they gain awakening, they have no more kamma from the past. They still have past kamma that they have … 
  21. Overcoming Complacency
     … And so the question is, now that you’ve got these khandhas, what are you creating out of them? Are you creating more suffering or are you creating the path to the end of suffering? And your sense of self: To which direction is it leading you? Because you notice that, when the Buddha teaches, he doesn’t have you drop your sense of … 
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