Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Honest & Observant
     … After all, the causes of suffering are coming from within the mind. They’re basically activities we’re doing again and again and again without realizing that they’re causing suffering. So you have to learn how to observe that. As for the honesty, a lot of the things we do that cause suffering are things we like doing. Unless you’re honest, you … 
  3. Addictive Thinking
     … So remind yourself that this is part of the path to the end of suffering. And if you haven’t developed that resolve yet, this is where the Buddha has you develop a sense of conviction in the importance of training the mind, in the importance of your actions. Those two things are connected because your actions come out of your mind. The decisions … 
  4. Strength of Mind
     … They’ve caused a lot of unnecessary stress, unnecessary suffering. Why go with them? You’ve got something better here. Now, this is an acquired taste. Sometimes a sense of ease comes with the breathing. It doesn’t seem like all that much. We stick with it. Give it a chance to grow. As you get more and more used to these moments of … 
  5. Head & Heart
     … How do you skillfully sidestep them? How do you skillfully defeat them? Part of it lies in recognizing which thought patterns in the mind are unskillful, which ones really are your enemies, in the sense that they work toward your long-term suffering, your long-term harm. The problem is that they speak with your voice. It sounds like you in your brain, saying … 
  6. Reclaim Your Breath
    One of the little-known corners of dependent co-arising is an explanation of how, through the power of ignorance, the way you’re breathing can be a cause for suffering. This is one of the reasons why we focus on the breath: to bring knowledge to the process so that at the very least, even though we might not be at the total … 
  7. Long-Term Welfare
     … They start with the fact that there is suffering in life, and it lies in clinging. Sometimes the truths seem to be about nothing but suffering, but the third noble truth is the end of suffering. The fourth noble truth is the path to the end of the suffering. Part of that path, right concentration, includes pleasure and rapture: the pleasure and rapture that … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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