Search results for: "Suffering"
- Page 57
- The Languages of the Mind… Here the tool is exploring the present moment, exploring your experience of the present moment, so that you can understand where the suffering is, where the cause of suffering is, what you can do to bring about the end of suffering, and what the end of suffering is actually like. That last one is the real purpose—and only when you can focus all …
- The Buddha’s Currency… You really see that the suffering that weighs the mind down most is the suffering that comes from within. The world may go up and down, the economies of the world go up and down, but if your mind doesn’t have to go up and down with them, then you’re not going to have to suffer. So the real difference lies in …
- How to Be Self-Centered… We suffer not because of what other people do, and the path to the end of suffering doesn’t lie in straightening other people out. We suffer from what we’re doing, and the path lies in straightening out ourselves. So that’s where our focus has to be. That’s where we have to be centered. This means we shouldn’t try not …
- Shaping Your Breath, Shaping Your Life… So we’re training ourselves in ways of learning how not to suffer, how not to pile more suffering on top of what we’ve already got. As the Buddha said, all too often a physical pain comes and we get worked up about it. Well, the first pain was an arrow, and then you get worked up and that’s more arrows that …
- A Sense of Space Inside… After all, the whole point of the teaching is that the suffering that really weighs us down is the suffering created by the mind itself. There may be things happening outside that we don’t like—and some of them can be really bad—but the question of whether that exterior influence is going to have an influence on the mind has a lot …
- Dhamma Is a Quality of the Heart… in other words, your awareness right here.” Whether you’re Christian or Buddhist doesn’t have to get involved, because the things that are happening in your awareness right now are the things that cause suffering, regardless of your background. But you can also develop qualities right here in your awareness that will put an end to suffering. And the process of developing the …
- Ingenuity… You find you can sit for longer periods of time—and you can push the envelope on that issue of suffering, pain in the body. The Buddha doesn’t say just give in to every pain that’s there. Sometimes the best way to learn about suffering is to push the envelope, see how far you can get rid of the suffering in the …
- Trading Up… With right view, we see that the big issue in life is suffering,\ and particularly the suffering that comes from craving. That’s what we have to focus on. Which means we have to give up a lot of other opinions about a lot of other issues. We have to give up a lot of the ideas about who we are. We take that …
- Help Others, Help Yourself… After all, as the Buddha said, the true source for suffering is inside. And the suffering we feel, of course, is inside. Sometimes you just can’t get into somebody else, to what’s going on inside them, either because they’ve put up a wall or because they’re getting to that stage in life where they’re just not able to register …
- A Promise to Yourself… The Buddha himself doesn’t force you—but you might say that your suffering forces you. You realize that you’re suffering, and you’ve got to do something about it. If you just sit back and accept it, nothing’s going to happen. You’re certainly not on the path. The Buddha teaches a path where you do something about the problem of …
- Seeing Distinctions… When you see that you have an alternative to that way of relating to things, and there’s less suffering involved, then you let go. No problem. And it really is a genuine letting go, an important letting go—because when you see clearly that this is the way you’ve been creating suffering for yourself, you don’t want to go back to …
- Solving Real Problems… He would have to train the mind so that even with the death of the body, the mind wouldn’t suffer. That right there requires that we have choice in the present moment. And this is what this/that conditionality is all about. Some of the things you experience from the present moment do come from the past, but some come from your present …
- The Context for No Context… This allows you to begin seeing how they fit into the causal pattern that either leads to suffering or leads away from suffering. In other words, we take our experience and take it outside of its ordinary context, our narratives about who we are and how we interact with other people, or our views about the world as a whole. One of the interesting …
- Worlds… Why would anyone who’s not obviously suffering want to ordain? Ven. Ratthapala says he considered that “All worlds are swept away; they don’t endure.” That’s his way of expressing the principle of inconstancy and impermanence. “They offer no shelter; there’s no one in charge.” No one can protect you from the suffering of those worlds. That’s the principle of …
- The Meaning of the Body… It’s also a good object for insight practice, developing insight into the whole issue of which actions are skillful, which ones are not; which mental qualities lead to suffering, which mental qualities lead to the end of suffering; which assumptions pile on suffering, which assumptions are part of the path. The word “sañña” has as one of its meanings “assumptions,” the way you …
- A Separate Self… We suffer because of our ignorance. Our ignorance has nothing to do with how we define ourself. It has to do with our understanding of how craving and ignorance and particularly the craving and ignorance in our own minds leads to suffering. You don’t go looking outside for craving and ignorance. You have to look inside. You have to take responsibility for what …
- Equanimity Isn’t Apathy… Each of the four noble truths has its own specific duty, is based on the preference not to suffer. You definitely do want to work toward the end of suffering. You do prefer that. That’s a legitimate preference. The question is, what’s required to get there? When you’ve learned the requirements, you do whatever is needed to be done—even when …
- The Quest for Inner Happiness… We want true happiness, a happiness that doesn’t cause any suffering, any harm to anybody else—which, of course, is a happiness that has to be found inside. With external happiness—depending on food, clothing, shelter, and medicine—there’s only so much to go around. And even when we try to keep our needs minimal, it still places a burden on other …
- Beyond Duality… There’s a passage where the Buddha goes through the different factors of dependent co-arising, and pairs each one up with suffering or stress. For example, mental fabrication: You contemplate mental fabrication paired up with stress to see the connection between them, to see how the process of fabrication does lead to more stress, and then to see what you can do to …
- Imagine… He was trying to figure out the problem of suffering, tracking down the cause to see if there was some way of attacking the cause so that he could bring suffering to an end. And just the way the questions were framed got him into the four noble truths. Think about how his whole quest was driven by his imagination. He imagined the possibility …
- Load next page...
