Search results for: "Suffering"
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- The Dignity of Restraint… But now you train the mind in the direction of having enough, of being free, and you realize that the sense of hunger that you used to cultivate is really a major source of suffering. You’re much better off without it. It’s important that we realize the role that restraint plays in overcoming the problem of suffering and finding true wellbeing for …
- Feeding Off of Others… That’s why the Buddha said, “Suffering is in the feeding.” His word for clinging, the definition of suffering, upādāna, also means to take sustenance, i.e., to feed. And when we’re feeding off of somebody else, are we really feeding off of them, or are we feeding off of our ideas of them? When you desire somebody, the Buddha says, in effect …
- Conviction & Focus… trying to get a handle on this problem of why the mind keeps doing things that are going to cause itself suffering. From there, you can work out the other strengths. A sense of shame: You think of the noble ones who’ve gone before us, and you’d be ashamed to let your mind wander away, complaining about this, nostalging about that, regretting …
- Protect Your Inner Center… In other words, you see that the activity of training the mind is something really essential, because the mind, if it’s not trained, can create all kinds of suffering for itself. And the suffering doesn’t stop there. It goes out and spreads around and creates suffering for other people, too. So you really should devote a lot of time and energy to …
- Feeding on Open Wounds… What’s happening when you’re being born? On the one hand, you’re not only causing yourself a lot of suffering, but you’re also causing suffering to others—those who are inconvenienced by your presence on Earth. And you’re constantly feeding. If you can’t get your food in good ways, you’re going to start getting it in bad ways …
- Worth… Because at that point, what you’re really going to need is a well-trained mind, so that you don’t cause yourself suffering, you don’t cause suffering for the people around you. So you can develop a refuge inside—i.e., the qualities of the mind you can really depend on when you need them. So have a sense of how important …
- Unraveling the Present… Learning how to train it, learning how to bring it to release, free it from its habits of creating unnecessary suffering, requires that we keep things as simple as possible. The more abstract we get, or the more we deal in abstractions, then the further away we get from the actual nitty-gritty of the practice, the things that really will make a difference …
- What We’re Here to See… You want happiness but you keep on doing things that cause suffering. Where’s the disconnect? Where’s the ignorance? Where’s the lack of skill? Well, it’s right here. It’s not in the deva levels, it’s not in the lower levels, it’s right here. So learn to take the attitude that the mind may be a problem, but its …
- Patterns to Happiness… If there’s the question of deserving happiness, or not deserving happiness, remember that the Buddha never uses the word “deserve.” No matter how bad your past karma is, he never says that people deserve to suffer. When someone does a particular kind of action, that particular kind of action will lead to a certain kind of results. But that doesn’t mean that …
- Feelings of Pain… You need the skills that enable you not to suffer from what’s going on at that point. That’s precisely what you develop as you’re meditating. You develop the skills to deal with pain, to deal with distraction. So this is something good to do. Give yourself a good pep talk as you get started in the meditation, as to why this …
- Customs of the Noble Ones… If they want you to be fearful, they can threaten you: “You’re going to suffer from hardships. You’re going to suffer from lack. Things are going to become scarce and more expensive.” So one way of getting out of the control of customs based on defilement is learning how to be content with just enough to practice. It’s your expression of …
- A Meditation Karma Checklist… He teaches karma to the extent that it’s useful in getting the mind to be trained so that it can put an end to suffering. That’s as far as his teaching goes, but that’s pretty far. It’s much better than having a map to everything but still suffering. So use these teachings to take you where you want to go …
- Skills to Take Home… The Buddha’s teaching on skillfulness, his explanation of how suffering is caused and how it can be put to an end: These things are constant. They don’t depend on the culture; they don’t depend on the time or place. So you start by holding to that. You try to keep your precepts pure, keep your views straight—in other words, understanding …
- The Desire to End All Desires… When the Buddha said that craving was the cause of suffering, many people think that he meant all kinds of craving and all kinds of desire are bad. But that’s not what he said. He specified three kinds of craving as causing suffering. But he also assigned the desire to be skillful and the desire to avoid unskillful behavior to the factor of …
- Attachment to Views… He realized that neither of those knowledges in and of itself was going to put an end to suffering. So he looked into them to see what kind of lesson could be drawn from them that will help put an end to suffering. And he noticed that once he saw the connection between actions and the pleasure and pain that you’re going to …
- Heedfulness All the Way Through… What’s the heedful thing to do with that? You your discernment to see where you’re creating unnecessary stress, unnecessary suffering for yourself, right there in the concentration. The Buddha talks about what he calls “five-factored noble concentration.” The first four factors are the four jhanas; the fifth one is the ability to step back from what you’re doing and observe …
- Goodwill Without Limits… So try to lift both the heart and the mind to a Brahma level, where you can see that you don’t gain any benefit from anybody’s suffering at all. We read about investors saying that the economy is such that we have to inflict a little bit of pain on other people, so that we can gain what we want. Well, that …
- Make the Most of What You’ve Got… This relates to the word “becoming.” As the Buddha said, all our desires for becoming lead to suffering, but he also uses becoming on the path. This is very typical of his strategies. There are many things that you use as you’re on your path that you then discard when you reach the goal. It’s like making a chair or a set …
- The Body Doesn’t Care… The duty for the second noble truth, the cause of suffering, is to abandon it because it’s when you abandon the cause that you can solve the problem of suffering. Look at the third noble truth: That actually is the abandoning, where you successfully abandon the craving. But there’s an extra duty there on top of that, which is to be very …
- Shame & Compunction… So it’s a combination of right view and right resolve—right view in the principle of kamma, and leading to the deeper right view of realizing what causes suffering in the mind comes from our own actions. But the way to the end of suffering also comes from our own actions. Then you have the right resolve of goodwill. Given that you have …
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