Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Perception
     … Now, perception does play a role in dependent co-arising, which means that if you do it with ignorance, it’s going to cause suffering. If you learn how to do it with knowledge, you can avoid suffering. You can actually use perception as part of the path, as when you’re getting the mind into right concentration. But you want to look carefully … 
  3. Gifts of Noble Wealth
     … They’re not just casual truths, four nice things that are useful to know about suffering among all the other things you can know. The Buddha’s basically saying that these are the most important issues that you need to focus on: the questions of what you’re doing to cause suffering and what you can do to put an end to it. If … 
  4. Dedicating Merit
     … It is true that we recognize that we each are making ourselves suffer and we have to work on putting an end to that suffering ourselves. Each of us has his or her own karma. You can’t take your karma and give it to somebody else. So it looks like we’re just working on our own goodness, our own happiness, and forgetting … 
  5. Protecting the Mind from Itself
     … If you see that the action you intend to do would cause harm or suffering to anybody, you don’t do it. This applies to harm to yourself or harm to others. If you don’t foresee any harm, then you can go ahead and do the action. But while you’re doing it, you have to keep an eye out to see what … 
  6. For Your Benefit Here & Now
     … Then there’s the realization that the present moment is where you’re creating suffering for the mind and you don’t have to. If you want to see that suffering—how you’re creating it so that you can put an end to it—you’ve got to stay right here. So that gives you even more motivation to stay here. And as … 
  7. What Is Skillful?
     … If it all happens in ignorance, it’s going to lead to suffering of one kind or another. If you do it with knowledge, then it becomes part of the path. So here we are with the breath, right next to the place where intentions get launched. And we have some control over how we breathe, and we have some control over how we … 
  8. Passion for Nostalgia
     … But you have to realize that this is all suffering. You’re clinging to these different aggregates. And what are you getting out of them? You’re placing ruts in the mind, or as the Buddha would say, you’re bending the mind. We would say they’re ruts. You get into the rut and it’s hard to get out. This is one … 
  9. Shaping Your Life
     … And through the present moment you shape the future in a way that’s really skillful, causes less and less suffering for yourself, less and less suffering for the people around you—always mindful of the fact that the way you experience the present moment is a doing. There’s an effort that goes into it. It’s a skill that can be developed … 
  10. Surveying the World
     … If you could pull that arrow out, then you’d be free from the suffering. So the problem is not with the world. The problem is in the heart. On the night of his awakening, when he surveyed the world again, he had already seen his previous births, going up and down on all sorts of levels. The question was: Was there a pattern … 
  11. The Pursuit of Happiness & Goodness
     … But he didn’t say, “Well, because the world offers us a lot of suffering, we simply just have to suffer.” The wise person is one who can find a sense of well-being inside in spite of what’s going on in the world—and can find it in a way that doesn’t weigh on the world at all, and offers a … 
  12. Mindful to Be Skillful
     … Right view is where skillfulness moves into the four noble truths, because you want to see things in terms of what you’re doing to cause stress and suffering, and what you need to do in order to abandon the cause. It’s in this way that these two teachings come together. But they’re not just things to memorize, not just little rules … 
  13. Heightening the Mind
     … This is why the Buddha insisted that there are four noble truths, not just the truth of the cessation of suffering, but also the tasks of understanding suffering, abandoning its cause, and developing the path. These are all very important parts of the teaching. They’re all noble truths. The development of the path is largely two things. One, developing qualities that enhance the … 
  14. The Fool & the Wise Person
     … How could such a broad-minded, enlightened person like the Buddha get caught up on the details? Well, it’s because of the details that we create suffering for ourselves. It’s the little things that we tend to overlook: those are the things that are causing us problems. Every little movement of the mind is either skillful or unskillful, so you have to … 
  15. Commit, Reflect, Discern
     … As he said, this is the factor that can turn anything in the mind into a source of suffering. The word avijjā doesn’t mean just not knowing about things. It also means a lack of skill. You’re not skilled in the duties of the four noble truths: You don’t know how to comprehend suffering well, you don’t know how to … 
  16. Trustworthy Judgment
     … Several years back when I had my last visit with Ajaan Suwat, he had been in a car accident and suffered some brain damage, but his training in meditation hadn’t abandoned him. He was able to tell when the mind was sending him weird perceptions, skewed perceptions. As he said, that thing he got from his meditation, that didn’t change; but he … 
  17. Joyous Endurance
     … As he said, if you look for your happiness there, if you make that your direction, you’re just going to keep on suffering. But if you can learn how to use causes and conditions to aim at something that doesn’t change, then you’re rightly directed. So right now we’re trying to create a state of concentration in the mind. Direct … 
  18. The Primacy of the Mind (1)
     … This is how you organize your response to the facts of aging, illness, and death—how you organize your response to the realization that you are responsible for the suffering that weighs down the mind, which means that you can make a difference. You can choose to stop causing that suffering. So instead of going with the flow, you go against the flow. You … 
  19. No One in Charge
     … If you act on motivations based on greed, aversion, or delusion, there’s going to be suffering. If you act on motivations based on renunciation, non-ill will, or harmlessness, it pulls you out of suffering. So it’s not the case that, because there’s no purpose to things, there’s no pattern at all. You’re not totally free to shape things … 
  20. A Pervasive Well-being
     … Once the mind is in this state of awareness and supported by all the other elements in the path—right view, right resolve, right action, right speech, right effort, right mindfulness—it can do amazing things to your understanding of yourself, your understanding of the way the mind acts, the way it creates suffering for itself, the way it doesn’t have to create … 
  21. Discerning the Middle Way
     … As the Buddha said, with some causes of suffering all you have to do is look at them and they go away. Those are the kinds that survive in the mind simply because you’re not looking, not paying much attention to them. But as you notice them and watch them, you realize, “This is ridiculous,” and you can drop them. But there are … 
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