Search results for: "Suffering"

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  2. Near to the Buddha
     … You say, “I don’t like suffering like this,” and you grab at whatever comes by that offers a little bit of pleasure. You’re not very choosy, and so it just gets worse and worse and worse. You’ve got to make up your mind: Who are you going to trust? Are you going to trust your defilements or are you going to … 
  3. Taking Charge
     … He doesn’t impose them on you, but once you’ve decided that you want to put an end to suffering, you’ve taken on those duties yourself. You want to comprehend the suffering and abandon its cause. So wherever you look in your mind, wherever you look in your actions, make sure that you’re following in line with these duties, trying to … 
  4. Right Effort & Right Mindfulness
     … It’s the desire that you don’t want to come back and suffer or, as Ajaan Mun would say, you don’t want to come back and be the laughingstock of the defilements ever again. You hold on to that desire and you then sort out all the other desires that you have in the mind that would pull you in other directions … 
  5. Explore & Experiment
     … When the Buddha talks about the causes of suffering, there’s one way in which he expresses dependent co-arising that goes down to consciousness on one side, and name-&-form on the other side. Nāma-rūpa is the Pali. Form, of course, is the four elements or properties. Name covers, among other things, acts of intention, attention, and perception. If you’re ignorant … 
  6. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … After all, do have the preference of wanting to put an end to suffering—of wanting to train the mind to follow through with all the skills of the four noble truths to comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize its cessation by developing the path. That preference you don’t abandon. But the preferences that would go against those duties: Those are the ones … 
  7. Four Roles to Play
     … Another problem is that you’re telling yourself strange things, things that are actually going to lead to suffering. So, the purpose of the meditation is, one, to get you more sensitive to how you’re talking to yourself on these many levels and, two, to start talking to yourself in a skillful way. This is why, when the Buddha has you get the … 
  8. Frustrated Desires
    When the Buddha defines the noble truth of suffering and stress, one of his examples was frustrated desires: not getting what is wanted. He tells you to comprehend that—the fact of not getting what you wanted—or to put it in modern terminologies, learning from your frustrated desires. This is the one point where Buddhism and psychotherapy are very similar. Psychotherapists will have … 
  9. Toughen & Tenderize the Mind
     … You see all the pain and suffering out there and you see the pain and suffering in your own mind. You also see your own defilements—where your greed, aversion, and delusion come in. The important thing is not to get discouraged; not to get depressed. This is where the other emotion that the Buddha recommends comes in, which is pasada, which is confidence … 
  10. Determination
     … I want something to show for the fact that I’ve been alive and been through all this suffering. I want something to show for it all.” The Buddha offers as the best goal the end of suffering. But this is a choice you have to make for yourself: How much are you going to focus on that goal? What other goals are you … 
  11. Grasping the Snake
     … There are other views, though, that can be used to put an end to suffering, and those are the ones the Buddha recommends as right view. Even there, though, it’s possible to use them to get into arguments. Think of the image of the snake. If you grasp the snake wrongly—say, by the tail—it’s going to bite you. But the … 
  12. Strength of Body, Strength of Mind
     … To be determined not to come back and suffer over and over again. Because you look at the world, all the different ways that the beings in the world suffer—I mean, it’s bad enough being a human being, with all the wars, the conflicts, the insanity that goes on in the human race. But there’s the possibility that you might slip … 
  13. Alert
     … There must be things you can do that would lead to the end of suffering, that would take you to the deathless.” The question was, “What?” He tried lots of different paths. In each case, he gave himself fully to the path, so that if it didn’t work, it wasn’t because he wasn’t really doing it. It didn’t work because … 
  14. Caring Without Clinging
     … But then he saw the truths of suffering or stress arising, passing away, and seeing why it arose and why it passed away, and what he could do to bring it to total cessation. Seeing that from a really still and equanimous mind: That’s when he really knew. And that was the knowledge—seeing things in terms of the four noble truths—that … 
  15. Put Your Heart into It
     … Actually, if you want to comprehend stress and suffering, you have to figure out why things are happening. That requires the mind: your ability to think, to explore, to come up with hypotheses and then test them. That is an important part of the practice. But the heart has to be trained as well. You can see this in the Buddha’s first instructions … 
  16. Honest & Observant
     … When the Buddha’s teaching us the path to the end of suffering, there’s nothing about it that’s far away. It’s all about what we’re doing right now, close up. And he’s moving us from ignorance to knowledge by telling us to be more alert to what we’re doing. So be more mindful; be more ardent. These are … 
  17. Keeping the Buddha in Mind
     … Think of how wisdom begins with that question: “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?” Think about that. That’s how the Buddha says wisdom begins—with the desire for long-term happiness. It’s wise in the sense that it realizes that … 
  18. A Meditator is a Good Friend to Have
     … If the person can follow you all that way, then he or she can gain total release from all kinds of suffering. That’s a huge gift you can give to someone who’s dying. It’s not always the case that the person dying can follow you that far. It generally would require someone who’s got a good meditative background, but you … 
  19. Judging the Dhamma
     … Once you see that it’s not necessary and it’s causing suffering, you’ll drop it naturally. Somehow, part of our mind believes it’s necessary to act in a particular way, to think in a particular way. But as soon as you realize you don’t have to do it, and it’s causing you suffering, why do it? Once you make … 
  20. Judging Your Efforts
     … Now, these duties aren’t imposed by anyone—aside from the fact of suffering, which is what imposes them—that and the fact that this is the only way out. The mind’s sense of its duties in some schools of psychology is called your superego, and in a lot of cultures the superego can be pretty punitive. It sets up extremely high standards … 
  21. Complexities of Karma
     … Be generous, be virtuous, develop thoughts of goodwill in your mind, and then try to develop as much concentration and mindfulness as you can, ultimately leading to discernment—a discernment that sees when the mind moves in certain ways, it creates suffering, and you don’t have to move that way anymore. When it moves in other ways, it creates the path to the … 
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