Search results for: "Suffering"

  1. Page 87
  2. Top Priorities
     … The quality of your work suffers. The amount of help you can give them suffers as well. So this is one of those rare areas where looking after your own well-being is also, at the same time, looking at the well-being of other people. The more energy you develop inside, the more solid your mind, then the more you have to offer … 
  3. The Breath Soufflé
     … As the Buddha said, the path to the end of suffering is something you put together. The word he used, *sankhara, *can also mean fabrication, construction. You put these things together. The putting together requires effort. It requires all the factors of the path. So in the third step, you tell yourself, “I’ll breathe in aware of the whole body.” That talking to … 
  4. Dreams & Voices
     … But then there are the standards of the four noble truths, and one of those is the third noble truth, that the cessation of suffering is possible. And it’s not just a blank or boring lack of suffering. Think about when the Buddha came to teach the five brethren: Before he taught them the four noble truths, he said, “Look, I’m going … 
  5. Strategic Friends
     … You come to see more and more clearly that when the Buddha was talking about suffering and stress, it wasn’t because he was pessimistic. It was because he had a way out. He found that the ways you used to make yourself suffer can fall by the wayside. You look at them clearly, and you really don’t want to go there anymore … 
  6. Discernment Performs
     … If you don’t keep this up as a regular practice, you find that your health suffers. You don’t have the strength to keep up the meditation. Your concentration suffers. But once you’ve done the work with the breath, then you let things get as still as possible and allow that sense of the observer to separate out. And then learn how … 
  7. Borrowed Wealth
     … So the goodness that comes from meditation comes from getting the mind to settle down, and you can use that settled-down mind to understand why you’re suffering and how you can stop. That way, the mind gets lighter and lighter as you begin to peel away all of its attachments. You’ve got a genuine profit there: something, as they say in … 
  8. Barriers in the Heart
    A lot of our suffering and stress come from the limitations we feel in our lives. We’ve got this body that needs constant care, and even though we care for it, what does it do? It starts getting old, it gets ill, it finally dies, no matter how well we care for it. And it doesn’t ask permission before it does any … 
  9. How to Listen to the Dhamma
     … Appropriate attention basically asks two kinds of questions with regard to your behavior in general: “What’s skillful and should be developed, and what’s unskillful that should be abandoned?” Then, as you get into the mind: “Where is the suffering right now? What am I clinging to, how am I clinging to it, and where is the cause? What’s the craving that … 
  10. Right Mindfulness
     … You can keep in mind the fact that you want to put an end to suffering, or you can keep in mind a decision to rob a bank. In either case, it’s mindfulness. Mindfulness becomes right depending on the task to which you put it, it becomes wrong depending on the task to which you put it. There is such a thing as … 
  11. The Buddha’s Protection
     … In fact, the choices you make right now will make the difference between whether you suffer in the present moment or not. It’s a question of learning how to be skillful. This is the most basic of the Buddha’s teachings: the distinction between skillful and unskillful actions. One of his students was accused one time by people who said, “This teacher of … 
  12. Borrowed Goods
    We read about how the clinging-aggregates are suffering, so our first reaction is that we want to get rid of them, but it doesn’t work. Remember the Buddha’s statement that our duty with regard to them is to comprehend them. You get rid of craving, but with the clinging-aggregates you’ve got to know them, really understand them, to the … 
  13. Don’t Objectify
     … You’re giving them an example as to how to act, because they’ve been doing the same kind of activity, too, and they are suffering just as you are. You show them that it’s possible that they don’t have to suffer. So learn to look at things as activities, as actions. And you start right here: You’ve got the activity … 
  14. Against Your Type
     … the types of action that gives rise to suffering, the types of action that can put an end to suffering. Dependent co- arising, the four noble truths, emptiness: All the really big basic teachings are questions of action and result. That’s how the Buddha wants us to look at things. That’s what right view is all about: seeing things in terms of … 
  15. A Full Range of Archery Skills
     … This the Buddha says, corresponds to piercing ignorance, where you really see how you’re causing unnecessary suffering. You see that the problem lies inside, and you can see precisely which movements of the mind are causing the suffering. You understand what their allure is, but also see their drawbacks, so you can gain some escape from them. So remember, as we’re meditating … 
  16. One Thing Clear Through
     … This fits in with another principle that underlies discernment, which is the basic question of discernment, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term harm and suffering?” Realizing that the long-term is really worth it, and it’s going to have to come from your actions … 
  17. A Sense of Direction
     … You don’t think about how much you want them to suffer, because you don’t gain anything from their suffering. In fact, the more they suffer, the more unskillfully they’ll probably behave. So for your own well-being and the well-being of others, it’s good to develop thoughts of goodwill, wishing that they might find the causes for true happiness … 
  18. What You’re Responsible For
     … Our responsibilities are the state of the mind, what the mind says to itself, how it creates suffering for itself, or how it can learn not to create suffering for itself. This means that, as you’re sitting here, there are certain things even within you that you’re not going to be responsible for right now. It’s a cold, wet night, but … 
  19. A Rare Gift
     … Once you’re not weighing the mind down with problems all the time, not weighing it down with stress and suffering, you find that it can bear the affairs of the world a lot more easily. You can see what needs to be done, what really has to be done, and you can do it, without the sense that you’re already overburdened, thinking … 
  20. Defabricating Anger
    The Buddha says that we suffer from our ignorance, and the first thing we’re ignorant of is the extent to which we fabricate the present moment. We take the raw material coming in from our past karma, and then we turn it into an actual experience of the present moment. We that with three activities called fabrication: bodily fabrication, the in-and-out … 
  21. Big Things in Little Things
     … All those worlds of suffering, all those worlds of delusion come from the fact that we’re deluded right here. So the only way to end our delusion is to look very carefully right here, try to solve the problem right here. So even though right here may seem like a very small place, and the things we’re focusing on may seem very … 
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