Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Habits of Perception
     … the imperative to comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize its cessation, and develop the path leading to its cessation. These imperatives, unlike those of the world, are liberating, which is why you want to take them on. The first one is to comprehend suffering so that you can begin to see what you’re doing to give rise to the suffering. This is what … 
  3. Life’s First Question
     … the principle of cause and effect, but here focusing specifically on suffering and lack of suffering, which are still very immediate sorts of things. In fact, your awareness of suffering predates your awareness of even who you are, any concept of world or self or soul. As you came out of your mother’s womb, there was a lot of suffering right there. Nobody … 
  4. Over-informed
     … Which doctrine? The doctrine of putting an end to suffering and stress. His criticism of other paths was that they didn’t lead to the end of suffering, whereas the noble eightfold path did lead to the end of suffering. It led to awakening. It led to knowledge. Then he plunged right in to teach the path. He didn’t tell them they could … 
  5. Choosing Freedom
     … We focus on the important issue in life, which is that we’re causing unnecessary suffering to ourselves. Even around pleasures, we can create suffering. You want to learn the skills that, no matter what happens—good, bad, indifferent—you don’t have to suffer from it. You know where to focus your attention. You know what to do. If you want to put … 
  6. The Same but Different, but the Same
     … If it weren’t for that stress and suffering, we wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t need to practice. So that’s what we have in common to begin with. But the individual sufferings we have and the different tactics we have for creating suffering—we don’t think of them as tactics for creating suffering but that’s what they are; we … 
  7. The Power of the Mind
     … One of the basic principles of the four noble truths, that power of the mind, is that we have the power to make ourselves suffer or we have the power to get out of that suffering. Things may be good or bad outside, but the suffering we feel, the suffering that weighs the mind down, is the suffering that comes from within. So try … 
  8. To Comprehend Suffering
    That phrase in the chant just now—“those who don’t discern suffering”— sounds very strange. After all, we see suffering all around us. Someone would have to be very anesthetized not to see it. But even though we see it and feel it, we don’t really know it. In other words, we don’t understand it. It hounds our lives. And we … 
  9. Suffering Comes from Those You Love
     … If you deny that there’s any loss, then it’s as if you deny your own suffering. If you deny your own suffering, then you deny the suffering of others. And if you were to live in a world where you were denying the fact of suffering, you’d be a sociopath. So it’s good that we stop to take time to … 
  10. The Problem of Suffering
    The Buddha once said that all he taught was suffering and the end of suffering, or stress and the end of stress. A problem and its solution, that’s all. All the teachings in the Canon, all 84,000 sections of the Dhamma, focus on this one problem and its solution. You don’t have to do the problem. The problem is already there … 
  11. An Inside Job
     … that if you don’t master the skills, you’re going to suffer. If you do master the skills, you can avoid that suffering. And if you don’t work on those skills, do you really love yourself? Do you love the people around you? If you consciously do something you know is going to give you a little bit of pleasure right now … 
  12. Things Don’t Have to Be This Way
    The Buddha’s teachings focus on the main problem in life, which is that there’s suffering. And he says that there’s something we can do about it. We don’t have to just sit there and wallow in the suffering, or accept it, or pretend that it’s okay. The mind has the power to put an end to suffering. That’s … 
  13. Ending Suffering
     … This is what underlies the practice for trying to put an end to suffering. If we didn’t feel goodwill for ourselves, why would we care whether there was suffering or not? It wouldn’t be the issue that it is. But it’s a big issue in life. From the very beginning, we come out of our mothers’ wombs crying, and there’s … 
  14. A Victory that Matters
     … That’s your experience of suffering. We each suffer; however, we can’t feel another person’s suffering. We can sometimes sense that they’re suffering, although we can’t actually feel their pain. We only can feel ours. It’s the subjective experience. The Buddha points out that the suffering that really weighs down on the mind is not the suffering that comes … 
  15. Karma for Freedom
     … After all, the Buddha’s teachings are about how to free you from suffering. His teachings on karma are designed to free you from suffering. They explain how and why it can be done. If you had to suffer from the past, then Buddha wouldn’t be able to help you. It’s because you don’t have to suffer, and the fact that … 
  16. Duties
     … So the Buddha offers you these as tools for analyzing what’s going on when you’re suffering. Learning how to look at your suffering in these ways helps you to step back and depersonalize it, de-romanticize it. These tools, these categories, give you a handle for understanding these things. So it’s a good task trying to comprehend your suffering in those … 
  17. Mindful Judgment
     … And it starts with understanding what suffering is—as in the chant just now. It says we don’t discern suffering, which sounds kind of strange. After all, everybody knows that there’s suffering. It’s one of the most basic facts of being aware. Being a conscious agent, we’re bound to come into pain, suffering, mental suffering, physical pain. These things just … 
  18. Contentment
     … No matter how many conceptual edifices you build up, if suffering is still there, you haven’t solved the problem—because the Buddha said that there is the possibility of no more suffering. When he says he teaches suffering and the end of suffering, do you really believe in him? Some people say there’s a wisdom in learning how to accept the fact … 
  19. Factors for Stream Entry
     … Appropiate attention means basically looking at things in terms of the four noble truths, seeing how whatever teaching you’ve learned from the Dhamma applies to the problem of suffering in your life: Where are you suffering? And what are you doing to cause that suffering? Notice that’s the question: What are you doing? We don’t blame the suffering on things outside … 
  20. Suffering Starts Before Life
    That old belief that “life is suffering is the first noble truth” keeps coming back from the dead, even though people keep pointing out the fact that the Buddha never said that. If life is suffering, then what’s the cure going to be? Dying? Actually, the Buddha’s definition of suffering was more specific and much more helpful: Suffering is the five clinging … 
  21. Admirable Friendship
     … As for the cessation of suffering, we don’t really notice it at all because we’re all too busy going out creating new suffering all the time. So we have to change our ways. It’s because something in us is honest enough to see that we’re suffering and is willing to admit, “Yes, I’m at least part of the cause … 
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