Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. The Balance of Power
     … Some of them make their money off genuine suffering of other people. And some of them actually find that war is to their best interest. If you try to imagine a world order in which everybody could live together peacefully, it seems sensible, why can’t we live together peacefully? Why can’t people not cause harm to one another? But there are interests … 
  3. Practical Wisdom
     … This keeps the cycle going around and around in directions that tend to lead to suffering. The greater the defilement, then the greater the suffering—because when your mind is clouded, it’s hard to make the right decision about what to do. Often the decisions go underground. That’s the main thing that we’re deluded about. So you want to learn how … 
  4. Choosing Your Allies
     … So even though the Buddha talks a lot about suffering, it’s not because he’s focusing on nothing but suffering. He wants you to realize that there is suffering in the world and you have to admit that. If you try to deny it, then the mind is lying to itself. And part of it knows that it’s lying to itself, which … 
  5. Lessons of Distraction
     … As the Buddha said, the craving that leads to becoming is the cause of suffering. So you want to look for the craving that goes into distraction, because that right there is the craving that causes suffering. The best way to watch it is, one, to create a really good state of becoming, which is what concentration is: something you develop, you bring into … 
  6. Mistakes
     … When he taught the end of suffering, he didn’t ask you first, “Are you suffering because you deserve to or not?” Whether the suffering is “deserved” or not, this is the way out. After all, he himself came from mistakes. He realized that getting down on yourself, being really remorseful about the mistake, is not going to undo it, and it can often … 
  7. Protective Meditations
     … As we know, if we develop the right attitude toward the present moment, sometimes it can help us to not suffer from past karma. So you want to focus on what you can do right now, here with your mind, to protect yourself from the biggest danger, which is that you might act on unskillful intentions. The list of guardian meditations is four: recollection … 
  8. Reading & Meditating
     … Suddenly he realized he’d been doing everything he could to get rid of the pain, whereas the Buddha taught that pain, suffering, was something to be comprehended. So he changed his approach. He tried to comprehend exactly what was the suffering. He said he was able to attain something he’d never attained before in his meditation that night. The important point here … 
  9. The Uses of Concentration
     … We spend so much of our life suffering from the intentions of other people—or focusing on how much we suffer from the intentions of other people—that we neglect to look at our own intentions to see how much suffering they cause. A part of the mind resists this, a very strong part of the mind. We like to think that our intentions … 
  10. Understanding Aggregates
    In the Buddha’s first sermon, he defines suffering—or stress, the word dukkha—as the five clinging-aggregates. He states that our duty with regard to those five clinging-aggregates is to comprehend them. Elsewhere, he says that comprehension means getting rid of all passion, aversion, and delusion around them. In his second sermon, he shows how to do that. He talks about … 
  11. Teaching Old Dogs New Selves
     … Especially when you hear the teachings of the four noble truths, that it is possible to put an end to suffering, to find a genuine happiness, and that the cause for suffering comes from inside. It’s one of the reasons why the Buddha taught not- self to the five brethren after he taught them the four noble truths. It’s from the perspective … 
  12. Generosity of Spirit
     … We talk to ourselves in ways that magnify our sufferings, magnify the mistreatment that has been done to us. We hold in mind perceptions that are harmful. We focus on feelings inside that sap our strength, sap our energy. Even with people who meditate and learn how to fabricate skillfully while they’re sitting with their eyes closed or doing walking meditation, sometimes their … 
  13. The Big Picture
     … Even if it doesn’t cure the illness, you can be ill but not suffer, you can grow old and not suffer, you can die and not suffer, because you’ve trained the mind. Now, is this something we get from our educational system? No. They have other designs on us. But for the sake of your own true happiness, this is what you … 
  14. The Power of the Mind
     … The Buddha suggests that the best thing to focus on is this question of why we create suffering for ourselves even though we don’t want the suffering. That question is what spurs us to try to develop the path that will take us through our intentions to something beyond. So which aspects of the path need work? This is where each of us … 
  15. The Conditions for Goodwill
     … And, of course, it meets upwith situations where there are people who are suffering and there’s nothing you can do about it; or times when you’re suffering and there seems to be nothing you can do about it. That’s when you’ve got to develop equanimity. So these are things you have to work on. It helps when you’re working … 
  16. Right Resolve & Right Concentration
     … They’re not responsible for the suffering that can come about through giving into them. In fact, they go running away when the suffering comes. So you have to learn how to look at these things as your enemies, as traitorous friends. And learn how to look at concentration as your true friend, look at the breath as your true friend. You’ve got … 
  17. Cooking the Present Moment
     … Then there’s your discernment, your ability to see what it is in a pain, as it comes up, that’s actually causing suffering. The Buddha talks about different kinds of pain. There’s the pain of fabrication. There’s the pain of the fact that things change. There’s the pain of simply unpleasant sensations. And it turns out that unpleasant sensation isn … 
  18. Metta & Merit
     … You can spread goodwill to all beings everywhere, or you can focus it on particular people you know are suffering or are going through a difficult period. They don’t have to know, and you do it both for them and for you. There are stories in the Canon of the Buddha spreading goodwill to people and its changing them. There was a Mallan … 
  19. Right Fear
     … Fear of causing suffering, fear of acting in an unskillful way: This is an important fear, one that you should respect. It’s when fear gets tied up in greed, aversion, or delusion: That’s when it becomes unskillful, because we start fearing the wrong things. For example, when you’re observing the precepts: There come times when you know that people are going … 
  20. Mind Reading
     … We live in the world, yes, where there is suffering, but we live in a world where a Buddha has gained awakening and left his teachings behind on how to put an end to suffering, and the teachings are still alive. Use that thought to give yourself a sense of confidence, a sense of uplifting joy: calm joy, but joy nevertheless. Joy over the … 
  21. 1. The Entertaining Breath
     … understanding cause and effect, how the mind creates the conditions for suffering, and how it can create the conditions that lead to the end of suffering. After all, the Buddha, when he boiled down the big message of his awakening, it was an understanding of cause and effect. Some causes give their effects over time; some of them give their effects immediately. If you … 
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