Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Creativity & Play
     … the fact that you’re causing yourself suffering right here and now. This means, one, being able to imagine yourself not causing suffering and, two, imagining approaches that might get you to that goal. Experimenting with different ways of breathing, different ways of conceiving the breathing, different ways of focusing the mind, different ways of asking questions: There’s a lot to play with … 
  3. Perfection in an Imperfect World
     … We tend to forget all the suffering—or if we see the suffering, we say, “Well, that’s part of life. You have to put up with it.” But the Buddha is saying No, you don’t have to put up with that. There’s something better. I know there are people who don’t like being held to this standard. They’d rather … 
  4. Determined on Goodwill
     … At the very least, with the pursuit of the end of suffering, it is a wise goal. But you’ll find as you work on the path that your concept of where you’re going, and how you’re going to go there, will have to grow and develop. So this element of truthfulness is not only just a matter of sticking to your … 
  5. Truth Without Air Quotes
     … These are the processes that lead to suffering. If you want an end to suffering, this is what you’ve got to do. It’s interesting that with dependent co-arising, in later centuries, the question arose: Is dependent co-arising happening in the context of the world at large or inside the mind? There was a good reason why that question was left … 
  6. The Wisdom of Self-regulation
     … And we need direction on how to shape it wisely, because we suffer when we shape our experience of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas in unskillful ways. We relate to the world as a whole in unskillful ways, both in figuring out what we want out of the world and how to go about it. So because the mind is active … 
  7. Ups & Downs
     … It makes sense that the amount of suffering people have in their lives has a lot to do with the state of the mind, and here’s a way of getting your mind in shape. So if you gave up, would you really be loving yourself? That’s a skillful use of the concept of self. So bring it out to use when you … 
  8. An Auspicious Day
     … Instead of identifying with it and seeing that you’re made to suffer by it, you can ask yourself, “How am I making myself suffer around the pain?” That’s a useful approach to the pain. The same with feelings of equanimity. Even equanimity can be unskilful at times, so you have to be alert to when it should be developed and when it … 
  9. When You Care
     … You don’t want to do anything that would cause you to suffer down the line. You think of all the good things you have in life right now, and they’re all there because you cared enough in the past to act in skillful ways—even when it was difficult. Now that you’ve got those good things, do you want to throw … 
  10. Stepping Out of Yourself
     … It’s not that things come in to make us suffer. We go out and we grab hold of them. And then we’re trapped. The image he gives is of a fire. Back in those days, they believed that fire clung to its fuel. When it went out, it went out because it let go. And when it let go, it was released … 
  11. Ekaggata
     … As a result, they end up causing themselves a lot of suffering—and a lot of suffering for people around them as well. So a basic part of the training in terms of generosity, virtue, meditation, is becoming more sensitive to your own actions. It’s interesting to note that when the Buddha starts out talking about the principle of action, he does it … 
  12. Right & Right
     … It works all the way in the sense of leading all the way to the end of suffering. Zero suffering in the moment. Total release. That was the proof of how you can be right and right at the same time, i.e., you have the right knowledge and you’ve applied in the right way. So this is a process that requires maturity … 
  13. Even Common Animals Can Be Trained
     … You can’t move us away.” When you see that they’re unskillful, that they cause you suffering and harm, you can learn how to stop engaging in them. This ability to step back from our habits is what makes us human beings really different from animals. Animals are very instinctive. I was reading a while back about some baby beavers who’d been … 
  14. On Deserving to Be Happy
     … Remember the Buddha never asked people if they deserved to suffer before he taught them. He said, “This is how you can stop suffering,” regardless of what they’d done in the past. After all, the mind can change direction. As I said, what you are comes from what you do, so you might as well do good things. Look at them and do … 
  15. Wind, Fire, Water, Earth, Space
     … And we’d be depriving ourselves of a lot of the tools that are really, really useful for understanding how we create suffering and understanding how to bring that suffering to an end.
  16. Willing to Question Yourself
     … Without those things, we would die or we’d really suffer quite a lot. The body has a lot of needs. But then you look at the body in and of itself, and it’s not anything that’s all that valuable. I was reading one of Ajaan Funn’s Dhamma talks recently, and he was talking about all these things in the body … 
  17. Right Resolve in Real Life
     … The discernment begins with the realization that, as the four noble truths say, if the mind is suffering, it’s because of something in the mind. An abbot of a monastery in England was talking one time about a number of members of his community who were complaining all the time about the conditions in the monastery: This wasn’t right; that wasn’t … 
  18. Awe
     … To think in these ways really helps us to let go of the attachments that are causing us suffering, that weigh the mind down. So here we are in the midst of a storm. But there’s something deep inside that doesn’t have to suffer from the storm, doesn’t have to be threatened by the storm. Even though we may reflect on … 
  19. A Noble Path
     … We understand things for the purpose of putting an end to suffering, for the purpose of walking the path. He doesn’t talk about the real nature of things in and of themselves, whether they have a real nature or don’t have a real nature. But, he said, if you learn to look at things in this way and act on it, this … 
  20. Endurance & Restraint
     … After all, the selves we’ve been for such a long time have been creating suffering. We want to learn new skills and, as we develop the new skills, we become new people: Harmless to those around us. Steadfast in the face of difficulties. Not weighing ourselves down unnecessarily. Here again, think about the principle of endurance: How you talk to yourself makes a … 
  21. Surveying the World
     … one, so that you won’t have to suffer as the world suffers—you’ll have your own independent source of well-being; that’s for your own good, and for the good of others—and, two, so that you’ll be in a better position to figure out what you can do that would actually be helpful to the world. After all, think … 
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