Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Informing the Whole Committee… Because it is this way, bit by bit by bit, we get more skillful in this whole issue of trying to find a way out of suffering. We catch ourselves in different ways of creating suffering, and learn to convert the various tendencies of the mind to this one goal so that when there is a state of oneness in the mind, it’s …
- A Strong Sense of Self… So if you have conviction in his awakening, you have conviction in the power of your own actions to make a difference in leading to happiness or to suffering. So why act in ways that lead to suffering? You’re convinced in your power to make a difference by the way you think, by the way you speak, and by the way you act …
- Don’t Just Fatten Your Mind… True happiness comes from having skills—being able to maneuver through the difficulties of life without suffering from them—and you don’t learn those skills simply by indulging in pleasures. In fact, the more you indulge in most pleasures, the weaker you become. When you get hooked on certain pleasures, you get really irritated when you can’t have them. Those are the …
- Samvega… And as long as we do, as long as we have a thirst for them, we’re going to keep suffering aging, illness, and death and the suffering that goes along with them. When we begin to realize that we’re the ones causing the trouble and if we don’t put our act together, nobody else is going to do it for us …
- Cherish Your Friends… The first truth — the suffering that comes with clinging — is something you want to try to comprehend. The cause of suffering, the craving that causes you to cling, is something you want to let go. Then there’s the path, which you develop. To develop it, you’ve got to tend to it, you’ve got to cherish it, you’ve got to hold …
- The Mind’s Song… As a result, the meditation doesn’t get a chance to penetrate deeply, to show itself as anything more than simple stress reduction or momentary relief from all the suffering you’re carrying around. But when you can maintain the position of the observer, it becomes a lifestyle, a way of living in which you’re not bringing in all those other things to …
- Don’t Be Burdensome… A holy path is one that makes you suffer.” Now, I don’t know if I’d agree with that, but there is a dignity that comes from the ability to step back from your likes and see what actually is going to lead to happiness—and what’s actually going to lead to suffering down the line, even if it involves some pleasure …
- The Path Is and Isn’t the Goal… out of suffering, out of all the wandering around. So your sense of the value of the ticket: That’s the way in which the path is the goal. You want to give yourself to it totally, commit yourself to it totally. If the mind is going to do any thinking and evaluating, have it think about and evaluate the breath. This is an …
- Happy to Be Here… Compassion is related to goodwill in the sense that there are times when you actually see someone suffering, and instead of deciding to take advantage of the situation because they’re in a position of weakness, you say, No. May they be released from their suffering. So if you find that your thinking is running off, learn how to direct your thinking in another …
- Learning by Doing… It means, “group.” As the Buddha said, when we cling to these groups in the wrong way, they cause suffering. But when we create them in the right way, they form part of the path. In getting to know them as part of the path, you get to really get to know them for what they are. Otherwise, they’re just names in a …
- Tranquility & Insight Through Jhāna… Oftentimes we’re lying to ourselves about these things and yet we suffer for them. Do you want to keep on lying? Do you want to keep on suffering for your lies? That’s the basic question. That’s how dispassion can be developed, and it’s through dispassion that we have our escape. That’s vipassanā—that’s insight: digging around in fabrications …
- Where Perceptions Can Take You… If your happiness depends on their suffering, they’re not going to stand for it. And remember, even in line with the principle of kamma, the Buddha never said that anyone deserved to suffer. If they could develop the proper skills, they could learn how not to suffer from past bad actions. The act of developing those skills makes the world a better place …
- Perfecting the Mind in an Imperfect World… You’ve got to watch out for these unskillful states because they really can lead you astray, they really can cause a lot of suffering. You can’t just be very blasé about them and say, “Well, I have to be content with everything so I have to be content with the fact that my mind is a mess.” That’s not what the …
- Breath Energies… Actually, the breath energies are things that we’re using all the time, but we’re ignorant of them and so we tend to create suffering out of them. You see something you fear, something that you like, something that you’ve experienced as a danger in the past, and it immediately goes into the breath. There’s the perception, and the perception triggers …
- Generosity & Gratitude… People tend to get very defensive when you bring it to their attention that their happiness depends on other people’s suffering, and they do everything they can to justify it. They say, “Those people don’t matter,” or, “They’re not really suffering,” or, “That’s just got to be the way it is.” Well, it doesn’t. You have the choice to …
- Life in the Context of the Practice… After all, each of them is a form of becoming, and every form of becoming involves suffering. If you want to be defined by your culture, that means you want to be defined by your suffering. And you can ask yourself, do you really want that? How about creating a larger context? That larger context is made up of the values of the Dhamma …
- The Armored Car… It’s because it’s so complex that beings are still entangled in suffering.” Or when he said that admirable friendship is half of the holy life, and the Buddha said, “No, it’s the whole of the holy life.” Not that admirable friendship will do everything for you, but if you have an admirable friend like the Buddha, that’s when you know …
- An Enduring Cheerfulness… He said that even though Ishi had suffered many hardships, faced many challenges, there wasn’t the slightest trace of self-pity or bitterness in his character. Instead there was what the anthropologist called an enduring cheerfulness. When you have that cheerfulness, you never let the difficulties get you down—and you find that you can bear with them. All too often, when we …
- Appropriate Attention… Because what you’re doing makes the difference between whether you’re creating the cause of suffering or putting together the path to its end, you’ve got to be responsible for that. There are choices you make. They don’t just happen on its own. It’s not the case that you naturally just watch things, and everything goes into the path. Sometimes …
- Protecting Your Space… Why is it that everyone wants happiness, but people are doing so many things that create suffering? In particular, why are you doing things that create suffering? That’s the question you always want to keep foremost, and that’s usually a question that most people don’t ask. You require some space around your mind, so that you can keep that question uppermost …
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