In this podcast, the guys discuss suffering and how you can minimize your experience of suffering. Reducing or eliminating suffering can create a joyful and fulfilling life experience for you and those you’re close to.

Rick’s Reference:

4 Noble Truths; Eightfold Path. The Four Noble Truths comprise the essence of Buddha’s teachings. They are the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of how to end suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering.

The Eightfold Path describes the disciplined practice leading to no suffering:

1. Right vision: Understanding: understanding that life always involves change and suffering; realizing that following the Noble Eightfold Path is the way to overcome suffering and be really happy.
2. Right emotion: Committing to wholeheartedly following the path.
3. Right speech: Speaking in a positive and helpful way; speaking the truth. Not complaining or being a victim EVER.
4. Right action: Living an ethical life according to the precepts.
5. Right livelihood: doing work that doesn’t harm others and is helpful to them.
6. Right effort: Thinking in a kindly and positive way. Not judging.
7. Right mindfulness: Being fully aware of oneself, other people, and the world around you.
8. Right meditation: Concentration or discipline in calming the monkey mind leading to inner peace and wisdom.

Although the Path has eight separate steps, they are not intended to be followed one after another. The Buddhist way of life involves all of them and every aspect of life.

Keith’s Reference:

Eckart Tolle (see previous references) Tolle writes in the introduction to his second book, Stillness Speaks:

“A true spiritual teacher does not have anything to teach in the conventional sense of the word, does not have anything to give or add to you, such as new information, beliefs, or rules of conduct. The only function of such a teacher is to help you remove that which separates you from the truth … The words are no more than signposts.”

He says that his book, The Power of Now, is “a restatement for our time of that one timeless spiritual teaching, the essence of all religions”. He writes that religions “have become so overlaid with extraneous matter that their spiritual substance has become almost completely obscured”, that they have become “to a large extent … divisive rather than unifying forces” and become “themselves part of the insanity”.

Tolle writes that “the most significant thing that can happen to a human being [is] the separation process of thinking and awareness” and that awareness is “the space in which thoughts exist”. Tolle says that “the primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it”

According to his official website, “at the core of Tolle’s teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next step in human evolution. An essential aspect of this awakening consists in transcending our ego-based state of consciousness. This is a prerequisite not only for personal happiness but also for the ending of violent conflict endemic on our planet”.

In his book A New Earth, he describes a major aspect of the human dysfunction as “ego” or an “illusory sense of self” based on unconscious identification with one’s memories and thoughts, and another major aspect he calls “pain-body” or “an accumulation of old emotional pain”.