Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 82
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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