Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Inner Baggage… One of the basic ways we have of creating suffering for ourselves is this division we make between the physical and the mental, what they call nāma and rūpa. I once saw a cartoon of a meditator. First, she’s sitting there perfectly still, and then the word “think” appears across her forehead. In the next frame, there’s “think” in her shoulder, “think …
- A Mind Like Earth… But the work of putting an end to suffering really does have an end point. So keep that in mind: that you’re working toward something that does come to an end, that brings about an end to all suffering. If you’re not on this path, you’re just going to be wandering around in the wilderness, totally aimless: That’s endless. So …
- Useful Thinking… Why are we focusing on the present moment? Because the way we fabricate the present moment is causing suffering. We want to be able to see that clearly, see both where the suffering or the stress is—because sometimes it’s blatant and sometimes it’s more subtle—and to see the fabrication of what we’re doing. So that’s why we’re …
- Resources for Endurance… This is why, for instance, when we’re practicing here, we know that an important part of the practice is learning how to comprehend suffering. But then you look the path, and it’s not all suffering. You have right concentration, which provides a sense of ease, a sense of rapture. You learn how to develop these things so that you have strengths to …
- A Slave to Craving… We look at suffering or pain as an enemy. And we look at craving as our friend. When suffering comes, we push it away or we run away from it. But when craving comes, we tend to tag along. There’s a sutta where the Buddha says that everywhere we go, we go with craving as our companion. So we think that craving is …
- An Auspicious Day… You realize that you have certain duties—duties that are not forced on you by anyone, but you realize that if you find yourself creating unnecessary stress and suffering for yourself and you’d like to stop, there are certain things you’ve got to do. You’ve got to see where the stress is, you have to comprehend it; you have to see …
- Duties… And in meeting those needs, we have to depend on the suffering of others for our food, our clothing, our shelter, medicine. We have that chant every night to think about these things. And now society has come to a halt, come to a pause, we can begin to see clearly how dependent we are on the suffering of a lot of beings just …
- Dispassion Is Freedom… The duty with regard to the first truth, suffering, which is clinging to the aggregates: You have to comprehend that, and part of comprehension is getting past passion for them. The duty with regard to craving—the cause of suffering—is that you’ve got to abandon it. How do you abandon it? By developing dispassion. The third noble truth itself is dispassion. It …
- Metta… You want to be careful about your actions so that you don’t actively cause suffering or harm to others. This is why goodwill is coupled with those other brahmaviharas: compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Compassion is what goodwill feels on seeing people who are suffering, or who are doing actions that would cause suffering. Notice one of those phrases in the chant just …
- Two Roads to the Grand Canyon… The question always is, “Does that experience really put an end to suffering?” You have to look again and again and again to see what levels of suffering remain because we’re not here for status. We’re here to cure these really bad habits we have of creating stress and suffering for ourselves when we don’t really have to.
- Seriously Happy… Compassion is what goodwill feels when it sees people who actually are suffering. You want them to be able to escape from their suffering. Empathetic joy is what goodwill feels when it sees people who are already happy. Those three are expressed with, “May”: May all beings be happy. May they be released from suffering. May they not be deprived of the good fortune …
- Truth… He would look at his actions and ask himself, “Am I suffering?” When the answer was Yes, the next question was, “What am I doing that might be causing that suffering?” He had to look honestly at what he was doing and the results that he was getting. Then he had to ask himself, “Is there an alternative way of doing this? Is this …
- Start with Yourself… If you see someone suffering, you want to stop their suffering. If you see them doing the causes for suffering, you want to find a way to help them stop. Not by doing away with them but by helping them understand what the results of their actions will be. So we have these phrases that we chant night after night after night. “May all …
- Significance… comprehending suffering, abandoning its cause—the cause there, of course, would be an unskillful action; developing the path, which is a skillful action; and realizing the cessation of suffering. Everything you need to know lies under those duties. That’s the main framework you want to keep in mind. And as I said, staying with the breath, staying in the present moment, trying to …
- Lust… Without this work, you stay stuck in your old ways, suffering in the same old way over and over and over again. As the Buddha says, the amount of suffering remaining for someone who hasn’t seen the Dhamma is like all the water in the oceans of the earth, whereas the amount of suffering remaining for someone who has seen the Dhamma, has …
- Customs of the Noble Ones… When you see that there’s something in your mind is causing suffering, you want to find a way to let go of the cause and to develop the factors that help you overcome that suffering. You want to find a way to delight in these projects, because if it’s just plain old work and drudgery, you won’t last. You can force …
- Can All Beings Be Happy?… When you see beings are suffering, you want them to be released from their suffering—that’s basically applying goodwill in a way that turns it into compassion. And empathetic joy is goodwill applied to cases where you see people are already happy, “May they continue to be happy. May they continue to develop the causes for happiness.” You’re not resentful of their …
- Useful Vocabulary… In other words, the suffering will still be there. It may be very subtle, but it’s still there. And as long as there’s that potential for suffering, you can’t really trust your mind, because it might stick with a particularly large perception of an awareness that’s located nowhere. You’re stuck on the perception. But then after a while, you …
- Calm in the Storm… As I said, if you do these things in ignorance, they lead to suffering, but if you do them with knowledge, they can actually become part of the path to the end of suffering. So as you’re meditating on the breath, you begin to notice that you’re learning not only about the breath, but also about the mind as the mind talks …
- Lift Up Your Mind… What does that mean? It means that you respect the human ability to do good—and not only to do good, but through human action to put an end to suffering. That’s something we should find inspiring. If you look at the news these days, human behavior is not all that inspiring, but of course it depends on where you look. It’s …
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