Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 59
  2. Good Friends Inside
     … If we didn’t have the Buddha as our friend in the holy life, where would we be? We wouldn’t know anything about the possibility of putting an end to suffering. Our sense of our potential as human beings would be a lot more limited than it is. It’s only when you open up your mind to the idea that it is … 
  3. Nuts & Bolts
     … The first noble truth is not just that there is suffering. Suffering is the things we cling to. We think we’re getting something good out of them and yet we’re suffering. So our ignorance is not just innocently not knowing. We’re lying to ourselves. We’re ignoring all the suffering we’re creating. One of the reasons we get the mind … 
  4. Empathetic Joy Is Ennobling
     … Compassion is for when you see someone else suffering and you want to see that suffering end. You’re not going to take advantage of their weakness, you’re not going to add to their suffering. You may actually be in a position of power above them, but you’re not going to abuse your power. And as for empathetic joy, of the brahmaviharas … 
  5. Relationships
     … to learn to focus in on the issue of suffering that you create through your own craving and how you can put an end to it. This teaching is based on a wish for well-being: the desire not to create suffering. So that’s your basic attitude. Built on that, there’s compassion for people who are suffering. Sympathetic joy for people who … 
  6. An Admirable Friend — In Memory of Luang Loong
     … But the suffering is optional. There is pain in illness, there is pain in aging, there is pain in death, but the suffering is optional. That’s our contribution, which means that, because it is our contribution, once we’ve trained the mind, we don’t have to contribute that suffering anymore. So this is an important activity we’re engaged in here. Tonight … 
  7. Control
     … There is so much in life where we add unnecessary pain, unnecessary suffering on top of the stuff that’s already there. And it turns out that the unnecessary pain, the unnecessary suffering or stress, is what really has a big effect on the mind. We tend to latch on to these things. When we latch on to them, we trap ourselves. This is … 
  8. Getting Back on Your Feet
     … All too often when someone else is suffering, we instinctively take on some of their suffering energy. But it’s not helping them at all. We’re not taking anything away from them, in the sense that we’re not relieving them of their suffering energy. We’re just adding more suffering to the situation. So if you can learn how to breathe in … 
  9. Generating Good Energy
     … Compassion for when you see people who are suffering or who are doing things that are going to lead to suffering down the line—in other words, they’re creating bad karma. You’ve got to have compassion for them, to do what you can to alleviate their current suffering, and if you can find some skillful way to get them to stop doing … 
  10. Suffering Is a Feeding Addiction
    The way the Buddha describes our sufferings, they’re like a feeding addiction. We feed on pleasures, whether physical pleasures or emotional pleasures. We cling to these things. And clinging itself is a kind of feeding. So to treat the problem of suffering, we have to treat it the way we’d treat any other addiction. One, we have to realize that it’s … 
  11. Together but Separate
     … We can see the suffering they bring to the mind, because pain’s going to be there, and it’s going to go away, and it’s going to come back. It’s the nature of the body. There are going to be pains in the body. But the fact that we’re making ourselves suffer around it, that’s not necessary. Unfortunately, we … 
  12. Bless Yourself
     … Part of discernment is alertness on steroids—you’re very clear about what your actions are, you see where you’re causing yourself unnecessary suffering, and you can see how you can stop. Again, this is where ardency comes in. You remember what the Buddha said about how true happiness comes from letting go of anything that causes suffering, so you draw on your … 
  13. Persistence
     … Ask yourself, “This mind state that’s coming up, where does it fall in the four noble truths? Is it an instance of suffering or is it an instance of the cause of suffering?” Suffering has to be comprehended to see that it’s in the clinging to the aggregates. And what is clinging? The Buddha defines it as passion and desire for the … 
  14. See Your Thoughts as Strange
     … They become a becoming, a whole world in which you take on an identity, and these states of becoming are what cause us to suffer. They require feeding, and the feeding entails suffering. In fact, the Buddha’s word for clinging, which he identifies with suffering, can also mean to feed. You take on this identity where you have to feed, which means you … 
  15. Always Willing to Learn
     … In fact, we have to if we want to put an end to suffering. What we’re doing is causing suffering, even though we don’t want to. The whole purpose of the practice is to catch ourselves doing things that we think will lead to happiness, but instead lead to suffering. So we have to be willing to change our habits—be willing … 
  16. Good for What Purpose?
     … This may be one of the reasons why he focuses on the issue of suffering, stress, pain, because those are the facts that make you sometimes wonder: This view that you have of things, is it really good enough? Or is it actually part of the problem? When you can start asking questions like that, you can pull yourself out of your old habits … 
  17. New Eyes
     … The mind is engaged in the process of creating suffering and stress—and if that weren’t an interesting process, what is interesting in life? We all want happiness, we all want ease, we talk about bliss and rapture, and everybody wants to go there. And yet we keep creating stress and suffering for ourselves—one of the big ironies of life. And it … 
  18. Dhammacentric
     … For example, comprehending suffering: Comprehension is defined as putting an end to passion, aversion, and delusion. Abandoning the origination of suffering requires dispassion for craving. And the cessation of suffering is dispassion itself. So with those first three, you’re aiming at dispassion. You reserve your passion for the path, because you’ve got to do it well. That’s where the ardency comes … 
  19. Adjusting the Flame
     … You want to be able to discern suffering, as the chant said just now. It sounds strange. We all know that there’s suffering, but the problem is that we don’t really discern it: what it is, where it’s coming from, in all its gradations from stress up to big suffering. You have to put the mind in the right state so … 
  20. To Stay the Course
     … After all, when the Buddha analyzes suffering, he doesn’t talk about just any old suffering. He focuses on the suffering that the mind creates for itself when it’s clinging. And where does that come from? It comes from the mind’s own actions. It comes from its cravings. That’s the suffering that’s weighing the mind down. Without that suffering, outside … 
  21. Load next page...