Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Factors for Stream-entry
     … It was the Buddha’s own experience of awakening that formed the basis for the Dhamma he taught, and also the aim of the Dhamma he taught that put an end to suffering. The end of suffering comes only with the experience of awakening, total awakening. But there are stages along the way. Stream-entry is the first. People like to focus on, “What … 
  3. Inner Refuge
     … Because a lot of the pain that comes when we’ve suffered a loss is, “Why is this happening to me?” It helps take some of the sting away when you realize, “Well, this happens to everybody.” It’s not as if the universe is focused on making you suffer. It’s simply the way things are. And we’ve been living in denial … 
  4. Strong Through Commitment
    When the Buddha describes the steps that lead up to suffering, he starts with ignorance—a particular kind of ignorance: not looking at things in terms of the four noble truths. In other words, you may know about the truths, but if you actually don’t use them to frame your experience, you’re still ignorant. Then, based on that ignorance, he says, the … 
  5. Discernment
     … Craving is an unskillful cause because it leads to clinging, which is suffering; the noble eightfold path is a pattern of action that leads to the end of suffering. So there’s a distinction right there. Actually, discernment is all about distinctions. There’s another place where the Buddha defines discernment as seeing things as separate. You don’t just glom things together; you … 
  6. No Foolproofing
     … When the Buddha taught suffering, he taught four noble truths. There wasn’t just one truth. And the reason he chose four was because there are four duties you have to follow as a meditator. Any stress or suffering in the mind is something you want to comprehend until you can figure out what’s causing it. When you see the cause, then you … 
  7. Indecision
     … But we add a lot of unnecessary suffering on top of that—and that’s the suffering and stress that really weighs the mind down. Which is why the Buddha focused his teachings on solving this particular problem. He came from a wealthy family. He could have been a ruler and he could have ruled wisely. But he saw that that wasn’t going … 
  8. Endurance
     … Physical pain may be inherent in having a body, but the suffering that goes into the mind is not automatic. It comes from how you relate to the pain—and that’s good news, because you can relate in new ways. It’s the same with learning some endurance around the conditions of the pandemic. The human mind can make itself suffer over anything … 
  9. The Wisdom of Wising Up
     … There are times when problems do come from outside, but those aren’t the ones that cause the most suffering, and they’re not the ones you’re responsible for. You’re responsible for the areas where you can make choices. That’s what you want to look for. The Buddha once said that one of the signs of wisdom is recognizing your own … 
  10. Thinking About Your Fears
     … And there was no suffering there at all—at least none of the suffering that would come from the body. After a while, she returned to the body and found that everything had settled back down to normal. She didn’t die. The voice had been lying to her. But she learned a good lesson:. When you can’t stay with the body, there … 
  11. Accepting Yourself
     … The issue is that, even if we do have a healthy sense of ourselves, we’re still causing ourselves suffering. And that’s not okay. If you get tied up in the issue of who you are, your self-image, it really gets in the way of looking at your actions and looking at the results and having a dispassionate attitude towards them—dispassion … 
  12. Undomesticated Happiness
     … After all, we’re here to learn about suffering. We’re here to face it directly, and you can do that only when you’ve learned how to make your mind resilient. You need resilience also because you’re going to be learning about your own stupidity in causing yourself suffering. As the Buddha said, suffering lies in the things you cling to, the … 
  13. The Meaning of Insight
     … First, he teaches the problem, suffering. Then he teaches the cause of the problem, and then the means for solving the problem, in other words, the noble eightfold path. The result is that you arrive at the cessation of the problem, the cessation of suffering, the third noble truth. That’s the goal. When you see the goal, then you know that you really … 
  14. Ajaan Suwat 100 Years
     … After all, the basic cause of our suffering is ignorance, or—as Ajaan Suwat would translate the word *avijja—*our stupidity. It’s not just that we don’t know. There are also things we do know that we tend to be stupid about. So on the one hand it’s good to have some humility as you practice. There’s a lot you … 
  15. The Noble Search Makes Us Human
    As the Buddha noted, when we encounter suffering or pain in life, we respond by searching for a way out. And that search comes in two forms. One is what he calls the ignoble search: You look for happiness, you look for an escape from pain and suffering, in things that will age, grow ill, and die, or that will be affected by your … 
  16. Taking an Active Role
     … When you take that more proactive stance, you suffer less. This is one of the ways the Buddha says you develop both body and mind. When you’re undeveloped in body and undeveloped in mind, pain and pleasure overcome you. You get weighed down by them. But if you take a more proactive stance, realizing that the pain is not a given—it may … 
  17. Choosing a Teacher
     … But if you honestly want to put an end to suffering and you’re willing to do whatever is needed to put an end to suffering, that puts you on the right track. And when you’re on the right track, you’re in a much better position to find people who can help you along the way.
  18. Ripples Go Far
     … When you’re focused on your troubles, your suffering, your issues, you suffer a lot because the range is small and the pain is big. So of course it seems overwhelming. When you expand your range, you begin to realize that the pain is a lot smaller. This is one of the basic principles the Buddha uses in contemplating aging, illness, death, separation, and … 
  19. Practicing from Gratitude
     … As you protect the concentration, you begin to see what destroys it, what levels of stress or suffering you add to your life. Some people say they don’t have any suffering in life, but I don’t know anybody who doesn’t admit to having stress. Well, the stress that really weighs down the heart is the stress that you impose on yourself … 
  20. Rewriting the Mind’s Song
     … You don’t want to see them suffer for their past bad actions. Now, for some people that’s hard. Some people have done so much ill in the world that you’d like to see them suffer a little bit, squirm a little bit, before they find true happiness. But you have to ask yourself, “This attitude of mine: What kind of food … 
  21. Concentration Nurtured by Virtue
     … And you can regard those disturbances as the suffering in the four noble truths, if you want to analyze them. This is one of the teachings that Ajaan Suwat would give. You sit here trying to get the mind still. If there’s any disturbance in the stillness, you can say, “Okay, this is suffering.” When the Buddha talks about stress and suffering, it … 
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