TOPIC

Suffering



As the Buddha famously said, life is suffering. Different religious and philosophical traditions have long debated about whether suffering is inevitable or necessary to the human experience and how to best reduce, avoid, or endure the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual distress encountered in day-to-day life. As such, there is a wealth of information available from both psychological and spiritual sources on how to handle the experience of suffering.

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Turn Your Thinking Upside Down

We base our lives on seeking happiness and avoiding suffering, but the best thing we can do for ourselves—and for the planet—is to turn this whole way of thinking upside down. Pema Chödrön shows us Buddhism’s radical side.

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FindCenterForgiveness is not just a selfish pursuit of personal satisfaction or righteousness. It actually alleviates the amount of suffering in the world.

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07:32

Pain Is Not Suffering

In this video clip taken from the Buddhist Geeks Conference 2011, Kelly McGonigal explores the neuroscience of meditation to help us understand how practice shapes the mind, and offers fresh insight into concepts like mindfulness and suffering.

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Love on Every Breath: Tonglen Meditation for Transforming Pain into Joy

Today, when our human family is facing so many challenges, it is more important than ever that we find peace and sustenance in our hearts. Love on Every Breath, or Tonglen, is an eight-step meditation for anyone who wants to nourish and open their heart.

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An Overview of Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy

Viktor Frankl is the founder of logotherapy, a form of psychotherapy that he developed after surviving Nazi concentration camps in the 1940s.

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FindCenterAffliction is often that thing which prepares an ordinary person for some sort of an extraordinary destiny.

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09:40

Gangaji: The Suffering Trap

No matter what the world is telling us, if our internal story of what’s occurring has to do with being victimized, then we suffer. The willingness to tell the truth about who you are, is the willingness to no longer be a victim, regardless of circumstances.

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Tears to Triumph: Spiritual Healing for the Modern Plagues of Anxiety and Depression

Instead of allowing ourselves to embrace our hurt, we numb it, medicate it, dismiss it, or otherwise divert our attention so that we never have to face it.

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How the Stories We Tell Ourselves Control Our Lives

As human beings, our predominant agenda is to survive. The instinct is deep in our DNA. Of course we want to stay alive, but now this instinct has become more of an emotional response. It's less about a threat to our actual existence and more about the barrage of perceived threats to our ego.

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FindCenterAs my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation — either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.

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Buddhism