Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Stick with It
     … The idea that there can be a total cessation for suffering, where have you seen that? It’s something you haven’t seen yet. This is where the conviction comes in. Conviction can be based on lots of things, such as the fact that it makes sense, seems reasonable, that it puts it within your power to put an end to suffering, whereas so … 
  3. The Buddha’s Narrative
     … Then he asked if he could use that knowledge to put an end to suffering. That question led to the third knowledge on the night of his awakening. He saw that focusing in on the intentions of the mind, that what you experience right now is based on two kinds of things: past intentions and present intentions. When you make your present intentions more … 
  4. True Friends
     … But the friend opened her eyes at the end and said, “I’ve never suffered so much in my life.” That was because she didn’t pay attention. You can breathe in ways that are really comfortable. You can create a sense of well-being throughout the body. So you want to experiment to see what kind of breathing feels good right now: long … 
  5. Enlarge Your Mind
     … When you have this enlarged awareness, you begin to see that the way you suffer from physical pain or mental pain is not just the individual sensation of pain. It’s the whole state of becoming you’ve been constructing around it: the identity based around the desire to have the pain go away and your sense of the importance of that pain in … 
  6. Moral Intelligence
     … If we allow the mind to wander into thoughts of greed, aversion, delusion or sensuality, ill will, harmfulness, then we’re going to suffer—and eventually other people will suffer, too. So our efforts to control the heart here, bringing it into line, choosing an object to stay on: It’s moral issue. We don’t usually think about it, but that’s what … 
  7. The Karma of Self & Not-Self
     … In other words, when you’re tempted to leave the path, you remind yourself that you got onto this path because you saw that you were suffering and you wanted to put an end to suffering. If you abandon the path, does it mean you don’t love yourself anymore? That you don’t care about the question of whether you suffer or not … 
  8. Attention with an Agenda
     … There is cessation of suffering when you develop dispassion for craving and the things that lead to craving. Fabrication is one of the things that leads to craving. So how do you develop dispassion for it? The Buddha didn’t teach a vipassana technique, but he did recommend a series of questions for developing insight into fabrications: “How should I look at fabrications? How … 
  9. Mastering Pleasure & Pain
     … to comprehend suffering, to abandon its cause, to realize the cessation of suffering, and to develop the path. So there are two reasons why you want to work on learning how not to be overcome by pleasure even though you are pursuing the pleasure of concentration. One is so that the mind won’t be open to being invaded by pain, and the other … 
  10. The River of Karma
     … And if you’re going to try to put an end to suffering through your own actions, you need some clear answers on a whole string of questions: “What can you do? What’s the range of your action? Do you have freedom of choice? Do your actions have any consequences? And what determines those consequences?” Those are metaphysical issues, but they’re very … 
  11. At Home with the Breath
     … If your happiness depends on somebody else’s suffering, you’re not going to want to see their suffering. You’re going to pretend it doesn’t matter, or it doesn’t exist, or that they don’t matter, or what you’re doing really isn’t causing them any harm. In other words, you blind yourself so that you can continue enjoying that … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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