Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Worlds Inside & Out… What were his intentions? What was his understanding of how there was suffering and how there might be an end of suffering? But another important part of what he learned was just that sense of, “Had he had enough?” So even though you may not be able to remember past lives or to see all the beings in the universe dying and being reborn …
- The Interactive Present… Actually, part of the mind is enjoying it while another part is suffering. What you want to do is bring the suffering part out, give it voice, give it some space to express itself. This is especially needed in our culture. People who don’t submit to their lust are said to be repressed and have all kinds of warped beasts in the basement …
- Treasure Island… Compunction is when you realize your actions will have consequences, so why go to the effort of doing something that’s going to lead to suffering down the line? It makes no sense at all. Based on your shame and compunction, there’s the treasure of virtue. You decide to abstain from anything that’s harmful. You remember that the virtues of the precepts …
- Love is Conditional, Goodwill Is Not… Compassion is basically what goodwill feels when it sees other beings suffering. You’d like to see that suffering end: again, regardless of whether you like the person or not. If you see someone who is enjoying good fortune or is doing things that would lead to good fortune, you want to be happy for them. That’s empathetic joy. Again, that’s the …
- Sweat the Small Stuff… But you’re not going to see suffering if you just think about large issues all the time. When you’re thinking about large issues, you’re dealing in abstractions. And sometimes the abstractions can get too big to handle. The biggest abstraction is this sense of “I am”: “I am a good person; I am a bad person.” If you feel that you …
- Whatever It Takes… It simply means recognizing that as long as you’re suffering, you still have a lot to learn. So you want to learn. It’s the desire to learn that’s going to carry you through. You’re willing to do what it takes. You don’t set up little laws inside yourself, saying, “I’m going to learn only this kind of thing …
- Insight Is Seeing What’s Worth Doing… You might say, “Well, I’d like to see that person suffer a little bit more before they’re happy.” But it doesn’t really accomplish anything. Even with people who are really cruel and doing a lot of damage in the world, you can wish them goodwill because you want them to understand true happiness and act on it. They’d have to …
- Time & Place… The nature of suffering is always the same. The nature of its cause—its origination—is always the same. And the duties that fall to the truths are duties that are always incumbent on us: to comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize its cessation, and develop the path that attacks the problem at the cause. These are the teachings that are true and beneficial …
- Pissing on Palaces… You hear a monkey call, and what you hear is its pain and suffering. It’s all around us. When the Buddha referred to his teaching of the Dhamma and the Vinaya, he’d use different words for how he taught. The Vinaya was something he formulated. In other words, he had to put together the rules for there to be a Vinaya. But …
- The Dhamma Without Price… He invited him to become a monk to practice to put an end to suffering. So the Sangha was established almost immediately after the Dhamma was first proclaimed and was shown to be effective. This shows that the Buddha was very far-sighted: that for the Dhamma to stay in the world would require a social institution of a particular kind. It was over …
- Learning & Respect… After all, what is the Buddha’s message? We’re suffering because of our actions—which means we’re doing something wrong. So we have to learn: What is it that we’re doing wrong? We come into this world, we have certain desires that shape our sense of who we are, the world we live in, and when those desires are fairly well …
- Horror Stories… What’s the cause of suffering, where is it found, what can we do to put an end to it, what is the end of suffering like? The potentials were all there in the present moment, simply that he hadn’t been in the right space, and hadn’t had the right supporting factors in mind to really observe carefully what was happening. If …
- Developing Discernment… And ultimately, of course, we want to see the arising and passing away of suffering, stress, so that we can understand how it arises, how it passes away. If you don’t see the arising and passing away, you can’t see the factors that go into causing them. When you can’t see the factors that cause them, you can’t let them …
- Equanimity… There was a Dharma teacher one time who once said he didn’t want to be born into a world where there was no suffering because he wouldn’t be able to exert his compassion. You have to stop and think about that: It sounds noble, but then you wonder: Do you need other people to be suffering so that you can feel good …
- Resistance… putting an end to suffering. As the Buddha points out, in the course of training the mind you’ve got to learn to deal with skillful and unskillful thoughts — “skillful” meaning those that lead in the direction of putting an end to suffering; unskillful ones, those leading in the other direction. At least you’ve made it clear to yourself where you want to …
- Unattractiveness… You want the mind to be in good shape as it’s going to age, because we can cause ourselves a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, if we try to fight aging. When death is actually coming, there can be a lot more suffering if we’re still attached to the body. The Buddha said this is one of our main reasons …
- A Post-goodness World?… What is skillful, what is unskillful? What is blameworthy, what is blameless? 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? And first-level answer to those questions is the three types of meritorious action: generosity, virtue, and the development of goodwill. As the Buddha …
- You’re Doing Something Wrong… These are the things that, if you do them in ignorance, you’re going to cause suffering. If you do them with knowledge, they can become part of the path. This connects with the basic message of the four noble truths, one that people often miss: The four noble truths are basically saying you’re doing something wrong. The fact that you’re suffering …
- A Clear, Calm Lake… As the Buddha said, “Birth is suffering.” You get this human body and it leaves you exposed all kinds of things. You start out totally helpless. If it weren’t for the help of other people—your parents or whoever raised you—you would have died very, very quickly. It’s because we have people looking after us that we’re able to survive …
- The Economy of Goodness… Knowledge, in this case, is knowledge of the Dhamma, the Dhamma that shows you the way to the end of suffering. In the Pali this is called, “having heard much.” In those days when you heard things, especially about the Dhamma, you would memorize it. If you look at the Buddha’s teachings, you’ll notice that they were delivered in a format that …
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