Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Fear & Uncertainty
     … Now her husband is dead, her children are gone, and she’s suffering. Why? We don’t understand. This is why we fear.” It was because their tradition didn’t give them something to rely on, that they could really depend on. They communicated with spirits, but the spirits basically told them where the good hunting might be. Little things like that. But the … 
  3. Merit: Actively Happy
    For years, it was believed that Buddhism was pessimistic, that the Buddha talked about nothing but suffering, suffering, suffering. Fortunately, people now realize that actually he was talking about happiness. But still, the common view of the Buddha’s take on happiness is still pretty pessimistic: Causes and conditions are outside of our control, and we simply have to learn how to accept things … 
  4. What Focus? What Breath?
     … But the stress that’s really important, the suffering that’s really important, is the suffering that comes from craving, and that’s an activity. In fact, there’s a sutta where the Buddha talks about craving as a path of practice, an unskillful path of practice, but a path of practice that most of us live by. Until you can begin to see … 
  5. The Power of Truth
     … You have to remember that you’re holding on for the purpose of getting past suffering. That’s what the four noble truths all keep pointing to, simply laying things out: There’s suffering and there is its cause. There’s a cessation of suffering and there is a path to its cessation. The cessation is obviously where you want to go. In that … 
  6. The Fourth Noble Truth
     … When the Buddha sets out the four noble truths, pay attention to how he talks about the relationship between the first and the second, i.e., suffering and its cause. For the cause, he uses the word samudaya, which means something that arises together. It’s what you look for when stress or suffering comes. You want to look at what arises together in … 
  7. Delighting the Mind
     … See them in those impersonal terms, so that you can get out of the narratives of “me, me, me, and my problems.” Remember that even though the Buddha said the causes of suffering are in the mind, he doesn’t have you say, “Well, what’s wrong with me that I’m causing suffering?” It’s simply: “What events in the mind, what actions … 
  8. Learning by Doing
     … It’s what’s going on in the mind prior to sensory contact that determines whether you’re going to suffer from it or not. It’s because of what’s going on in the mind that you can suffer from really negative things, and even from really positive things that come into the senses. But when you get more sensitive to what’s … 
  9. A Refuge Bigger than the World
     … But you have to have that attitude—“It’s already broken.” That way you can live with it and not suffer from it. The world is like that. Everybody who’s born is going to have to suffer aging, illness, and death. These things have already happened, and they’re going to keep on happening. Never mind how much they try to work at … 
  10. The Humane Quality of the Path
     … You realize that you’ve got habits that cause suffering and you don’t want to continue suffering. So how do you deal with them? On the one hand, you have to develop the right attitude, realizing that this is where we all come from. Everybody starts out with a mix of good habits and bad habits, or as the Buddha prefers to say … 
  11. Sensitivity & Strength
     … Where is there stress and suffering? What is it that arises together with the stress and suffering? What is it that passes away and causes stress and suffering to pass away? And what qualities of mind can we develop so that we can understand this better, so that we can put an end to suffering for good? You learn to look at your experience … 
  12. The Reality of Your Thoughts
     … And the best way to judge thinking is to ask, “Where does it lead? What kind of thinking is helpful, what kind of thinking is harmful? What kind of thinking creates more suffering and stress, and what kind of thinking relieves suffering and stress—totally.” When you pose those questions and look at your thoughts and emotions as processes—fabrications, creations—that right there … 
  13. Adjusting the Flame
     … So remind yourself that what you’re looking for—in terms of understanding the suffering you’re causing yourself and understanding what the suffering is—is all happening right here. Just that it’s on a very subtle level. So there’s plenty to see here, plenty to observe. But all too often our powers of observation are too coarse, not refined enough. It … 
  14. A Good Foundation
     … Remember that we don’t suffer simply from our random likes and dislikes. We suffer from our ideas about what we have to do in order to function. Again, it’s good to have a good solid basis for the breath, so that these realizations don’t become disorienting. I was talking to a vipassanā teacher one time, and he asked me “What do … 
  15. Freedom from Beliefs
     … It’s good to step back from your beliefs and say, “Okay, what am I here for?” How about the issue of, “Why am I causing suffering, how can I put an end to that? Why am I causing stress, how I can put an end to that?” How about just looking at this one issue? After all, this is the issue that really … 
  16. Change Your Perceptions
     … Ask the questions of the four noble truths: “Where is the suffering right now? What am I doing that’s causing the suffering, and how can I stop? How can I abandon that cause?” When you ask those questions, you bring appropriate attention to the breath, because the breath is one of the forms of fabrication that is influenced by ignorance, but it can … 
  17. Being a Buddhist
     … You’re really going to adopt the Buddha’s point of view, the Buddha’s analysis of how we suffer, why we suffer, and how we can stop. That puts you in a different world and makes you a different person. It gives you more capabilities than you would have had otherwise. There are so many teachings out there that say you can’t … 
  18. Skills for Awakening
     … The people searching are searching either to get away from suffering or to get toward something that they can use to assuage their suffering. As the Buddha said, all our searches begin from suffering. From pain. We get mystified by pain. You can imagine being a little child with no knowledge of language, so that nobody can explain things to you. You encounter pain … 
  19. A Radiant Practice
     … In other words, the suffering that weighs down the mind is the suffering that we create for ourselves. The happiness that most uplifts the mind is the goodness we do. That’s merit. You’re looking for happiness in a way that causes no suffering to anyone at all. It’s something you create from within, so its effects go within. And as with … 
  20. Levels of the Breath
     … The understanding began to arise that if I really wanted to comprehend why I was suffering from those old past narratives, I should try to see how I was causing suffering for myself right now in the present moment. The breath was a good way to explore that. Getting absorbed in the breath is a very important way of getting out of those narratives … 
  21. Truths Noble in the Heart
     … What is suffering, after all? What is stress – or however you want to translate dukkha? And what is the mind doing that’s giving rise to more stress and more suffering over and over again? Many people will want to look into this problem at some point in their lives. But again, it’s when you take this issue as the primary issue in … 
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