Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 77
  2. The Mind Isn’t Hot
     … If you make that distinction, the mind doesn’t have to suffer with these things. In fact, he went into very deep concentration. The problem is that we go out and lay claim to things. Then when they start getting unpleasant, they start seeping into the mind. The mind suffers. So today the weather is hot. Tomorrow they’re promising even hotter weather. And … 
  3. Faith in the Buddha
     … What the Buddha said about suffering is in many ways counterintuitive. Suffering is clinging. And the word for clinging in Pali, upadana, can also mean taking sustenance, i.e., feeding. And for most of us, we get so much pleasure in life feeding emotionally and physically that the idea that this would be what suffering is goes against the grain. We can’t imagine … 
  4. The Will to Awaken
     … And then when you look at what qualities need to be developed in order to put an end to suffering, you find that they’re also qualities required to improve your discernment. You need to develop more mindfulness, more alertness, more concentration. And part of that quest for the end of suffering involves goodwill—goodwill for yourself, goodwill for the people around you—because … 
  5. Isolating the Aggregates
     … This is why, when you’ve been practicing concentration and you’re beginning to look at the issue of suffering, you begin to see more clearly how clinging to these five aggregates is what brings suffering about. You’re clinging to any one of these five activities or any combination of them—because they are activities. We call them aggregates, which makes them sound … 
  6. Events as Events
     … Wherever there’s a sense of stress or suffering, you try to comprehend it to see what it is that you’re clinging to. When you see what you’re clinging to, you figure out what’s causing you to cling, and that’s craving. You comprehend the clinging and try to abandon the craving so that you can realize the end of suffering … 
  7. Non-Reactive Judgment
     … There are causes of suffering that respond to simply looking at them with equanimity, but there are others that respond only when you fabricate a fabrication. And to master both of those approaches, you’ve got to develop good powers of concentration. Think about the Buddha’s teachings on equanimity. There’s ordinary equanimity, which is what we start out with. That’s the … 
  8. Single-minded Determination
     … Not only is a lot of effort wasted in creating that happiness, but sometimes in order to maintain it you also start doing things that go against the precepts, that go against the principles of morality, concentration, and discernment, so that your conditioned happiness causes suffering not only in passing away but also in leading to all kinds of bad things down the road … 
  9. The Fabrication of Pain
     … You have to be always coming from a state of well-being, always coming from a place where you feel, “This pain does not have to make me suffer.” Then you let the energy flow. The way you picture the energy to yourself will depend on the different kind of pains. Sometimes the energy has to come from the spot where you focus. Sometimes … 
  10. Exploring What You’ve Got
     … Look at the Buddha’s analysis of suffering, dependent co-arising. We’re all starting out of ignorance. From ignorance we create ideas about things: This should be that way, that should be this way—and so on up through the cycle. The important point that’s going to make a big difference, though, is when you get to the factor called “name and … 
  11. A Tale of Two Kings
     … But the Buddha points out that it is possible through our actions to put an end to suffering. That changes the equation. It’s no longer a matter of personal preference. The question is: Here this opportunity is there. Are you not going to take advantage of it? Otherwise, you’ll just keep coming back to the same old suffering, having to accept the … 
  12. Goodwill as Wealth
     … Ask yourself if there’s anybody out there for whom you have ill-will, someone you’d like to see suffer. And then ask yourself, “Well, what would you gain from that? What would the world gain from that?” Part of the mind might say, “Well, if they suffer maybe they’ll come to their senses.” But people very rarely change for the better … 
  13. The Path Has a Goal
     … I was reading a while back about a teacher who said he wouldn’t want to live in a world without suffering because he wouldn’t then be able to exercise his compassion — which is a very selfish wish: You want there to be people who are suffering so that you can enjoy being compassionate to them? Your sense of wellbeing needs to feed … 
  14. Not-self, Not No Self
     … There are a lot of things that we lay claim to that are actually causing us suffering. They’re not total suffering. There’s some pleasure there, which is why we lay claim to them, but sometimes the pleasure is simply the pleasure of habit. The things you’ve laid claim to in the past, you just keep laying claim to them now. The … 
  15. The Prison Break
     … We’re suffering. Otherwise, why would we search for happiness? Why would we need it? As he said, we’re born into suffering. If you survive birth, you don’t just lie there happily. You cry. You squirm around. And for the rest of your life there’s a lot of squirming. There’s a basic sense of discontent we all have. What the … 
  16. Everything’s Right There
    We focus on the breath because when the mind is focused on the breath, everything you need to know to put an end to suffering is right here. You’re at the right spot. It’s simply a matter of getting used to it, realizing the potentials all around you right here, both in the body and in the mind. In the body, you … 
  17. Radiating Goodness
     … He says, the way out of suffering comes from conviction. There’s a description of what’s called transcendent dependent co-arising. It’s the list of the factors in the mind that leads you to release. They begin with ignorance leading to suffering, and from suffering they go to conviction. There is stress, dis-ease in life. But the way out is to … 
  18. What You Bring to the Moment
     … Dependent co-arising—the Buddha’s map of how and why we suffer—states that contact comes after a lot of other conditions. Intention comes before contact. The act of attention comes before contact. We’re predisposed to look at certain things and to ignore others. So of course our perceptions are going to be skewed. One of the things I noticed when I … 
  19. Many Desires, Many Selves
    As we practice, we try to focus our desires on one thing—the ending of suffering—but the nature of the mind is that it desires tend to head off in lots of different directions, like the man who jumped on a horse and rode off in four directions all at once. Our desires to pull us here, pull us there, and we try … 
  20. The Arrows of Emotion
     … You have to learn how to watch the mind so that you can finally figure out: “Why am I doing this? It’s painful, it’s piling more and more suffering on top,” until you can finally see: “Oh, this is why.” This is one of the reasons why, when the Buddha was going to teach Rahula breath meditation, he didn’t start out … 
  21. The Thinking Cure
     … What are the values that lie behind them? What’s your understanding of suffering and the end of suffering that lies behind how you do things? Make sure to straighten out your thoughts. Once you straighten out your thoughts, realizing how suffering comes about and how you can put an end to it, you’ve got everything you need to put an end to … 
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