Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Dhamma Survivalism
    One of the ironies of Buddhism coming to the West is that sometimes you hear the Buddha described as extolling interconnectedness and celebrating the Oneness of all being, even though, as he actually pointed out, the extent to which we’re interconnected is very unstable and, because it’s unstable, it’s a cause for suffering. As for Oneness, he said there are levels … 
  3. Heedful of Death
     … The reason that people suffer as they get sick, and suffer as they die, is that the mind will latch on to something that, in many cases, is pretty random. It has to do with their past kamma, things that suddenly pop up at that moment. And because the mind is weak and feels threatened, it’ll just latch on because it’s not … 
  4. Concentration & Insight
     … The big drawback is the stress and suffering caused by these thoughts. The Buddha’s use of the word dukkha covers both suffering and stress, because there is stress even in the states of concentration, and that is what you’ll have to focus on to get past the concentration. But first you want to focus on the grosser forms of suffering. This is … 
  5. What’s Important
     … After all, the Buddha discovered that we suffer because of things inside the mind, and in the course of suffering, we tend to create burdens for other people. One of our wishes for goodwill is, “May I look after myself with ease. May all beings look after themselves with ease.” In other words, “May they not be burdens. May I not be a burden … 
  6. Endurance
     … If you carry around stories about what this person did, what that person did, and how much you’ve been suffering since who knows when, and you’re gathering all the suffering together and putting it in the bag as you go down the field, then endurance is going to be hard. Goodwill is going to be hard. But if you don’t carry … 
  7. Peace vs. Clinging
     … Just as the Buddha has many meanings for sukha, he also has many meanings for its opposite, *dukkha: *stress, suffering, pain, dis-ease. He starts out by illustrating different types of dukkha that we’re all familiar with, and then he gets to the essence. We’re familiar with birth, aging, illness, and death, being separated from things we like, having to live with … 
  8. Introduction to the Breath
     … We have our ability to act, we have our ability to train our actions so that we don’t keep causing suffering for ourselves. We all want happiness, yet one of the big paradoxes in life is that we interfere with our own ability to maintain a sense of well-being. We actively create suffering for ourselves, stress for ourselves when we don’t … 
  9. Four Steps for the Heart & Mind
     … So what would gladden your heart? You could think about the Buddha, the fact that there was such a person in this world who really put his life on the line to find a way to put an end to suffering. And not only his own suffering: If there was anyone else who wanted to follow his path, he’d be happy to teach … 
  10. The Stakes Are High
     … But he was able to gain awakening so that he didn’t have to suffer from those past actions. The suffering he had was minimal. People were still upset that he’d basically gotten away with murder. Sometimes, when he was on his alms round, they would throw things at him. One time he came back from his alms round with a big gash … 
  11. Think Like a Thief
     … He saw connections that nobody else has ever pointed out to him, connections between craving, ignorance, and stress and suffering. All those connections of dependent co-arising are things he observed because he thought like a thief, didn’t expect the truth to be handed to him on a platter. The thing is the truth is there, to be seen at all times, if … 
  12. Straightening Out the World
     … As Ajaan Lee once said, there are two types of suffering in the world: the suffering that’s natural, that simply comes with part of having a body; and then the suffering that’s not natural, that comes from our defilements. What is a defilement? It’s something that clouds the mind. It’s like a cloud that comes in front of the Sun … 
  13. Outside the Box
     … You’re here because you’re suffering. You want to put end to suffering, so you’re inquisitive. If you’re not inquisitive and you simply say, “Okay, I’ll apply these perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not self to whatever comes up,” how do you know that you’re not indoctrinating yourself? You’ve inclined the mind to see things in that way … 
  14. The Intelligent Heart
     … The fathers, the sisters, the brothers, the sons and daughters who you’ve loved very strongly, but that relationship didn’t save you from having to come back and suffer again and again and be separated from them again and again. So we’re trying to develop a mature heart, an intelligent heart, one that realizes that suffering has its causes, and the causes … 
  15. Strength for Your Goodness
     … There are a lot of people in the world who are suffering, and if you behave in a skillful way, you can help to alleviate that suffering, both for yourself and for others. Sometimes you feel inspired by stories of the great teachers of the past. Again, you think about the Buddha’s example, the example of all the noble disciples: men and women … 
  16. The Stages of Meditation
     … And you get a quicker and quicker at sensing which is which, which ones lead to happiness and which ones will lead to suffering. You can start undercutting the ones that lead to suffering, step by step by step. You gain more control of the mind and see exactly where it’s getting in the way of the happiness you’re trying to find … 
  17. Bases for Success
     … Right view in seeing that the training of the mind is going to make the difference between suffering and not suffering. Right resolve: You decide you want to find happiness in a way that doesn’t involve sensuality, doesn’t involve ill will, doesn’t involve any harmfulness. You’ve got it right here with the concentration. Right speech in this case would be … 
  18. Normalcy
     … It’s normally been creating suffering, but you can see a deeper state of normalcy, a state of true well-being that’s very, very subtle, which comes when you’re not creating suffering anymore. So you’ve got to see the normal habits of the mind that have been creating suffering before you can undo them, let go of them. Only then can … 
  19. Feeding While You Work
     … These two modes of the mind are very much related to the issue of suffering. In the four noble truths, there’s a cause and there’s an effect. There’s either craving and the suffering that comes from craving, or else there’s the factors of the path and the freedom from suffering that comes from developing the factors of the path. You … 
  20. Awaken to Your Potentials
     … As the Buddha said, there is a potential for a path to the end of suffering even in those aggregates that are inconstant, stressful, not self. You can put them together in such a way that they deliver you to places beyond them. That’s what awakening is all about. The path to awakening is like a ladder that you build up to the … 
  21. Disenchantment & Dispassion
     … This is how we continue creating suffering for ourselves. Our whole experience of the six sense-spheres, five khandhas: When you get into the details of these things, you see how much you’re doing to create them. The experience of the khandhas is shaped by fabrication, sankhara. You’re aware of the six senses because you direct your attention there. Sometimes you direct … 
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