Search results for: "Suffering"
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- Deep Time… There’s more a sense of a lot of the suffering accomplishing nothing. So the proper response is not a tragic view of the world. It’s more samvega, followed by dispassion: in other words, realizing that you simply don’t want to keep on continuing with all these cycles. They go nowhere. They go up and come down, up and down, around and …
- The Path to Stream Entry… Seeing the deathless, you realize that what the Buddha said was true; it really does put an end to suffering. You’ve had a glimpse: As the Canon says in several places, you’ve actually had a direct experience, a direct knowledge of nibbāna. That’s what guarantees your conviction in the Buddha. Think of the sutta of the elephant’s footprint: The image …
- Meditation as a Skill… The big problem, as the Buddha said, is that we want happiness and yet we cause ourselves suffering. There’s a blank space there in the mind someplace. We don’t see the connection between what we’re doing and the stress and suffering we’re causing through what we do. If you can solve that problem, you’ve solved everything that really needs …
- Talking to Yourself… At the moment, other people’s suffering is not your issue. Other people’s happiness, other people’s abilities or lack of abilities: These are not the issues right now. The issues are your own ability or lack of ability, the way you place suffering and stress on your own mind, and your ability to relieve some of that even if it’s just …
- Decisions… The Buddha talks about the duty with regard to the second noble truth, which is the cause of suffering. He says you let it go. And what is the cessation of suffering? It’s precisely that: the letting-go of the cause of suffering, the letting-go of craving. But that truth also has a duty, which is that you want to verify it …
- Virtue, Concentration, Discernment… You see how the mind creates unnecessary suffering for itself—sometimes in the concentration, sometimes as you’re leaving concentration, sometimes as you’re going through the day—and you learn to drop that. Whatever is causing it, you drop the cause. So it’s all one process, simply that it differs in levels of subtlety. What you find that as you make it …
- Committed to the Breath… You’re committing yourself to the energy that’s keeping the body and the mind together—the question being: “What am I already doing with the energy, and what better things can be done with this energy?” As we all know from the Buddha’s analysis of how we all cause suffering, there’s a lot of activity that goes on even before we …
- At the End of the Day… That’s the suffering in the four noble truths. The physical pain itself is not the suffering in the four noble truths. The suffering in the four noble truths is the clinging. And how do we cling? We cling through perceptions. Work on your perceptions around the pain. Be curious about the pain. Then you can transfer the same set of questions into events …
- Escape from Inter-eating… There’s a lot of suffering that goes into that. So he taught us to be heedful of both dangers. This is where his teachings on heedfulness go beyond the ordinary. Ordinary teachings on heedfulness say that if you’re going out into the wilderness, you learn how not to be prey of whatever big animals are out there, prey to whatever diseases are …
- Four Determinations… We’re determined, of course, on the end of suffering, which Ven. Sariputta, one of the Buddha’s main disciples, equated with the subduing of desire and passion. We’re determining on total freedom, determining on unbinding, which, the Buddha taught, completes four determinations. The first is the determination for discernment, because the discernment that frees us from our defilements is the highest noble …
- Centered on Concentration… Training requires discipline, with the realization that our untrained minds cause a lot of suffering. The Buddha once said that the mark of a wise person is realizing that the mind needs training. If you want to be truly happy, you’ve got to train the mind, because the biggest source of trouble in the world is this untrained mind. Greed, anger, and delusion …
- Noble Wealth… Because as the Buddha discovered, there is a big problem if you want to put an end to suffering. The cause of suffering is the kind of craving that leads to becoming: taking on an identity in a world of experience. But the problem is that not only does craving for becoming cause becoming, but craving for non-becoming—i.e., destroying the becomings …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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