Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Goodwill as Right View
     … What are they but an expression of goodwill? Taking everybody’s suffering as the big issue and showing how we can all put an end to our suffering: Goodwill is what the Buddha depended on to teach, to go out of his way to establish the Dhamma and Vinaya. Ordinarily, a teaching Buddha has only one duty, which is to teach his contemporaries how … 
  3. Right View Tells You What to Do
     … It points out the actions you do that lead to suffering, and the actions you can do to put an end to suffering. And its purpose is to take you to something beyond right view. There’s a passage where Anathapindika goes out in the morning. It’s too early to go see the Buddha, so he decides to stop by and see some … 
  4. Focus on Your Intention
     … In the same way, when we claim these aggregates and turn them into our sense of ourselves, or things belonging to us, we’re going to weigh ourselves down, to suffer. The way out of this dilemma is to change our intentions. We take those same potentials and we can turn them into a path, a path to the end of suffering. This is … 
  5. True Honesty
     … your unskillful actions, the ones that cause suffering. This is why the Buddha’s teachings focus on the four noble truths, because they’re right there in our actions: what we do that causes suffering, what we could do to stop suffering. Recently I’ve been reading some Dhamma talks where the teacher seems to think that the great part of honesty is to … 
  6. Freedom Undefined
     … Then, when you notice that what you’re doing is causing suffering to yourself or other people, you have the tools to change those habits. If the classic tools don’t work, you can use your own ingenuity to extrapolate on them. When you find that that captures your imagination, then the difficulties don’t really impress themselves on your mind. The whole purpose … 
  7. Investing Your Happiness
     … People often complain about how the four noble truths focus on suffering, but if you look at them carefully you see that the most important of them is the fourth truth, the path to the end of suffering. It’s the first one the Buddha taught. It’s the one truth that contains all four noble truths right there in Right View. At its … 
  8. Goodwill for Free
     … This being is suffering a lot and I don’t have to keep contributing to his further suffering. Goodwill in this case is a free gift. He didn’t owe goodwill, didn’t owe compassion to the first being, but he gave it. This is something we should keep in mind as well. It’s possible to go through life and think of all … 
  9. The Rivers of Karma
     … You learn how to take that ability to focus and ignore, and use it deliberately for the purpose of keeping the mind from suffering. This is a skill we learn as we meditate. At the same time, we learn how not to be overcome by pleasure. First there are sensual pleasures, which we tend to go running to as our main escape from pain … 
  10. Recollection of Hell
     … We want happiness, but we take whatever potentials we’ve got, and we turn them into suffering, we turn them into stress. We turn them into misery, all because of our ignorance. And then we gobble them down. Only when we learn how to look directly at this process of fabrication and do it with knowledge, understanding where there’s stress, what’s causing … 
  11. Determination
     … There are certain kinds of craving that lead to suffering. There are certain desires, in the factor of right effort in the path, that lead to the end of suffering. So the Buddha’s basically giving us guidance in how to sort through our desires. That guidance comes first in the path as right view. And when he talks about determination, discernment comes first … 
  12. To Understand the Path
     … If you look at the Buddha’s teachings and compare the third noble truth with the fourth—in other words, the cessation of suffering with the path to that cessation—you’ll notice that he doesn’t say much about cessation, doesn’t describe it in any great detail. In fact, two of the passages where he gives the most detail about it in … 
  13. The Mind in Good Shape
     … So who’s suffering? You’re the one who’s suffering from it. And again, where does it get you? Nowhere. If you’re sleepy, do what you can to wake yourself up. Sometimes this means breathing more heavily, changing the place where you’re focused. If you tend to focus on the stomach, it can make you sleepy. So if you’re feeling … 
  14. Appropriate Attention
     … This is what brought him to the present moment, to focus on what was happening in his mind right then and there—in particular, how his actions led to suffering and how other actions might lead to the end of suffering. That’s how he framed his approach to the present moment, by looking in terms of cause and result, skillful and unskillful. That … 
  15. Imagine
     … to see how you put things together, how you can put things together in a way that creates suffering, or how you can get more skillful at putting things together in a way that creates less and less suffering until finally you reach a point where the whole thing gets taken apart and there’s no suffering left. But to get to that last … 
  16. A Much Better Place
     … As soon as you go stretching out to identify with something outside, you’re opening yourself up for all kinds of suffering. As the Buddha said, there are different kinds of people: those who can see the danger coming before it comes; and then there are those who have to be slapped in the face with a danger before they realize, “Yes, this is … 
  17. The Wisdom of Ardency
     … You start out with right view, realizing that the causes of suffering lie inside. They come from what you do. So the wise thing to do with that teaching is to try to develop skillful qualities inside so that you’re not creating suffering. In this way, the simple fact of wanting to be ardent is wise in and of itself. Then, as you … 
  18. How to Be an Admirable Friend
     … With the words, we’re offering friendship, realizing that if our happiness depends on other people’s suffering, it’s not going to last. Either we’re not going to feel good about it, or else we’re going to go into denial about the fact that our happiness is causing suffering – neither of which is a healthy attitude. So we wish well to … 
  19. It’s What You Give
     … This is what you bring to sensory contact, and what you bring is going to make the difference between whether it’s going to be a cause for suffering or part of the path to the end of suffering. So this principle of the mind comes first goes from the simple act of giving a gift—putting some food in a monk’s bowl … 
  20. The Brahmaviharas Are Not Enough
     … If your happiness requires that they suffer, they’re not going to stand for your happiness. It’s not going to last. So as we meditate, goodwill is one of the underlying motivations. We want to find a happiness of high quality, a happiness that doesn’t conflict with anyone else’s happiness. That’s a special motivation. That’s something that really should … 
  21. The Spider on the Web
     … That’s where the cause of suffering lies. That’s where the clinging lies—the suffering itself: That’s what you really want to comprehend.
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