Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. The Third Noble Truth
    The Third Noble Truth February 22, 2015 Of the four noble truths, the third—the cessation of suffering and stress—is the one we talk about the least, the reason being that it’s the result of the practice. Focus on the causes, and the results will take care of themselves. So most of our emphasis is on the path. But it’s good … 
  12. One Thing Clear Through
     … What are they motivated by if not goodwill? The desire for an end of suffering, the desire for happiness that doesn’t place any burdens on anyone else: What is this if not compassion? And look at his teaching career. Wherever there was anyone ready to learn the Dhamma, he would go there. In those days, that meant going on foot. He traveled all … 
  13. Doing the Right Thing
     … You look in the mind to see what you’re doing that’s creating suffering. You realize that it’s the craving and ignorance that you’re doing. We don’t think of these as actions, but they are. We tend to think of them as qualities that kind of hover around the mind like a cloud, but they’re choices that we make … 
  14. When Aging Closes In
     … Ajaan Suwat, after he’d had his car accident and was suffering some brain damage, could still tell when the brain was giving him wrong information and when it was not. That was the result of his training. One of Ajaan Fuang’s students was a middle-aged man who had to go in for a heart operation. When he came out, he realized … 
  15. The Taste vs. the Reality
     … Remind yourself that when suffering comes, it’s real. After all, it’s a noble truth, and it really is painful, it really does hurt. And as for the anguish of the mind that’s stuck in a particular situation, you’re outside of those situations right now, so don’t let yourself slip back in. This is why the Buddha says we should … 
  16. Be Heedful & Think
     … You’ve been allowing yourself to think in ways that lead to suffering, and you’ve been doing it for so long that you don’t really see the connection between what you’re doing and the suffering, because the suffering is so constant. But if you learn how to be careful, then when a desire comes into the mind, you can ask yourself … 
  17. Evaluation
     … But what you can change is how you respond to all that, and the extent to which you actually make yourself suffer from other people’s lack of skill. The big message of the four noble truths is that the suffering that weighs down the mind comes from your own actions. This is a message that some people find depressing—it means they have … 
  18. Circumspection
     … It does prefer not-suffering to suffering, so much so that it’s not going to side with a particular action unless it really does lead to the end of suffering. And it’ll want to check things from many angles to make sure that it’s judgments are accurate. It’s through this ability to look at things from many different perspectives that … 
  19. Safety
     … That’s what’s shaping things, and that’s what primes you to suffer. We do these activities in ignorance. And because it’s in ignorance, we don’t know what we’re doing. That’s why we suffer. But if you could learn how to do these things with knowledge, then no matter how bad the contact is at the senses—and that … 
  20. Determined Goodwill
     … It’s just that if you harbor ill will for anybody, you’re going to do unskillful things and then suffer the consequences. So for your own protection, you have to think thoughts of goodwill in all situations. That’s the first aspect of a good determination: using discernment in choosing your motivation, your means, and the goal you’re aiming at. You want … 
  21. The Middle Way
     … The main point of the four noble truths is that the cause of suffering is inside, and the suffering itself is something you’re doing. Clinging-aggregates are not just things sitting around. The compound means the act of clinging to the aggregates, and it’s related to craving, which is the origination, and which also comes from the mind. Both the craving and … 
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