Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Persuasion… Have a very live sense that, yes, it’s going to be you down the line who’s going to suffer from the unskillful things you do now. But there’s also you down the line who will benefit from the skillful things you do. Now, the problem is that your old powers of persuasion have been pretty good at poking holes in those …
- Reflections… Then you finally realize that this is why you’re suffering: You like doing them, but they cause what is actually suffering. So you’re going to have to change your attitude, change your allegiance inside. And that takes a lot of honesty to realize, “Okay, I’ve been wrong. This has been a mistake.” Not everyone can do that. But you’re not …
- Acceptance & Equanimity… You accept the fact that there are these things in the world, but then you have skills for dealing with them in such a way that you don’t have to suffer from them. The same principle applies to a quality that’s very close to acceptance, and that’s equanimity. Look at the various lists in which equanimity is mentioned. It’s always …
- Appreciation… They interpreted the first noble truth as “Life is suffering.” They interpreted nirvana as total annihilation: that somehow the only way out of suffering was to be wiped out. Yet here they saw Buddhists having a good time at Buddhist festivals. They thought, “These poor Buddhists, they don’t understand their own religion, they’ve distorted what the Buddha had to say”—that’s …
- Tranquility & Insight Together… And as the Buddha said, we do these things out of ignorance for the most part, and as a result, even though we’re looking for happiness or looking for pleasure, looking for well-being, we end up causing some stress and suffering—or actually quite a lot. If, however, you bring some knowledge to what you’re doing—understanding where there’s stress …
- Listening to the Practice… After all, if you’re not piling a lot of unnecessary suffering on top of yourself, you can be a lot more sensitive to the sufferings of other people. And you actually have more strength not only to be sensitive but also to do what you can to minimize any discomfort, any inconvenience that you may be causing them. So being kind to your …
- The Buddha’s Cost-Benefit Analysis… realizing that—given the four noble truths, particularly the truth of how suffering is originated—you want to avoid any thinking that would originate more suffering. So you learn how to step back from your thoughts, step back from your desires, and view them in this context of a cause-and-effect chain—where they come from, where they go—so that you can …
- Fabricated Path, Unfabricated Goal… In the beginning, you’ll be dealing with blatant examples of suffering, or blatant causes of suffering. So, for the time being, that amount of concentration is good enough for you. If you can see through a particular cause of suffering—if you realize that you’re losing your interest in it, you’re losing your desire to follow it—then that’s enough …
- A Refuge in Quiescence… what, when you do it, will lead to happiness; what, when you do it, will lead to suffering—not as a matter of conviction, but as a matter of knowledge. That’s when this home inside becomes really solid. The Buddha gives an analogy to building a house: You put up the rafters, especially the rafters for the roof, and then you place the …
- Renunciation… When you see that the causes of suffering are inside, and that the potential for putting an end to suffering is inside as well, you want to focus all your efforts here and not let them get scattered out. So as you’re working on right concentration, remember that this is how we fulfill the factors of right resolve. It’s the greater happiness …
- Stay… Why is there suffering? Why do the craving and clinging keep leading to becoming? Why do our actions always keep leading to suffering, even when we don’t intend to do things for the sake of suffering? These are the questions you can answer only when the mind gets really still and can learn how to stay still. So try to make that part …
- Mental Balance… Where’s the stress and suffering? What is the action that’s causing the stress and suffering? When you see it, you stop it. The more meticulously you can watch this one topic, the better the results are going to be. The more you’re acquainted with your own mind, the better the results are going to be. So everything focuses here. All your …
- The Need for Evaluation… The second purpose is to be able to watch the mind, to see what’s going on in the body, to see what’s going on in the mind, so that you can understand how you’re giving rise to suffering and how you can put an end to it. So we’re here both for well-being and for knowledge. And it’s …
- A Becoming Critic… As the Buddha said, any craving that gives rise to becoming is going to give rise to suffering, too. So it’s important to understand, in our quest to put an end to suffering, how we create these worlds of becoming. If you simply try to destroy them, you take on a new identity as the destroyer. That leads to more becoming. The Buddha …
- Mind Control… He’s not the sort of teacher who says, “Just be mindful,” or, “Just be fully present, and everything else will take care of itself.” You’ve got to look for where the suffering is, where there’s a cause of suffering, what events in the mind actually have the potential to become the path to the end of suffering. These are things you …
- In Accordance with the Dhamma… But as the Buddha said, the pain of that was minor compared to what Angulimala would have suffered if he hadn’t gained awakening. So wishing karmic retribution on people is not the Buddha’s way of doing things. That’s the way the world is, but his way was against the way of the world. No matter how much you may “deserve to …
- Hedgehog Knowledge… At this point it’s hard to call dukkha suffering. It’s more like a sense of stress. Even in this state of concentration, you find that there’s some stress. So, what are you doing to keep that stress going? What can you do to let it stop? And you notice, if you’re sensitive, that it comes and goes, comes and goes …
- Three Levels of Refuge… There are no more defilements; there’s nothing in your mind that can create suffering anymore. You realize that the only suffering that really weighed the mind down was the suffering the mind created for itself. When you reach that point, that’s the ultimate level of refuge. You reached it through your own actions, but you trained your actions through the example and …
- Sensuality… The properties also provide a useful basis for understanding suffering, this tendency we have, when there’s a physical pain in the body, to glom everything together. It’s our ability to separate these things out, see the pain as one thing, and the physical properties as something else, that helps us to comprehend suffering. So this is a very useful exercise. It helps …
- Inconstancy… The causes of suffering are to be abandoned, so that the cessation of suffering can be realized. So for the time being, you use the principle of inconstancy to figure out what are the causes for the path, and how you keep them going, even though they are inconstant. It’s only when you get to the end of the path that the duties …
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