Search results for: "Conviction"

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  2. How to Be Happy
     … The first quality is conviction. And here conviction doesn’t mean that you believe blindly whatever the Buddha said, but you do believe in the fact that he was awakened and that his teachings are worth giving a try, a serious try. So what do they teach you? They teach you the power of your actions. This is another reason why they’re worthy … 
  3. Strength to Be Good
     … You combine conviction with discernment, in which you realize that there are short-term kinds of happiness and long-term kinds of happiness. The beginning of discernment is when you see that you want to be willing and able to abandon the short-term ones, if necessary, to gain the long-term ones. It’s a trade. Then there’s the strength of effort … 
  4. Discernment All Along
     … You start with conviction. You have a general conviction in the principles of the Buddha’s awakening, but the discernment doesn’t come until the end—and that confirms your conviction. Then, the seven factors for awakening: You start out with mindfulness, and then you have what’s called analysis of qualities, which is the discernment faculty. Then from there you get the mind … 
  5. A New Framework
     … It talks about how the conviction that there has to be a way out of suffering comes from the fact of suffering itself: seeing it, looking at it, deciding that you’ve had enough. Then from that conviction, the rest of the path grows. This is where you have to be resolute. You have to focus on this issue above everything else: what you … 
  6. Playing Your Lute
     … And the “everything else” here applies to your conviction, your mindfulness, your concentration, and your discernment. In other words, when there are limitations on your capabilities, don’t sit down with a thought, “I’m going to sit here and won’t get up until I attain supreme awakening. If I don’t attain supreme awakening, I’m going to let my blood and … 
  7. Overconfidence & Underconfidence
     … In meditation, it comes down to looking how much energy you have, how much energy can you put in right now, so you adjust all the other factors of the practice in terms of your conviction, your mindfulness, your concentration, your discernment to be in tune with the amount of energy you have. For example, tuning your conviction: There are passage where the Buddha … 
  8. Steal the Dhamma
     … You ask yourself, “How far have I come in conviction? How far have I come in generosity, virtue, discernment, learning, ingenuity?” Four of those qualities—conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment—are the qualities of an admirable friend. So, to what extent have you learned from your admirable friends? To what extent are you an admirable friend to yourself? Then there’s learning, which means learning … 
  9. Toughen & Tenderize the Mind
     … So have conviction that there is a pattern here. But to see it requires that you be very patient. That conviction strengthens your patience and makes the mind tougher. Then the mind has the luxury of being sensitive. It’s not scared by the negative things it sees coming up inside, because if you can see them, then you’ll also ultimately see that … 
  10. Objectivity
     … This requires patience, and patience requires conviction. This is why it’s important to associate with people who are well along the way in the path, so that your conviction has some basis, so that it has the power to ward off unskillful desires—if not permanently, at least enough to give yourself some time, so that you can work on the practice. Then … 
  11. Thinking Your Way to Stillness
    Ajaan Suwat often recommended that we start each meditation by developing an attitude of conviction and confidence in what we’re doing. Meditation, he said, was a high level of work, something we should feel inspired and fortunate that we have the chance to do. So, as you meditate, you don’t just go through the motions. You give it your whole attention. You … 
  12. True Friends
     … One is conviction—the belief that what you do, what kind of intentions you act on, really are important. If you act on skillful intentions, it’s going to lead to pleasure. If you act on unskillful intentions, it’s going to lead to suffering. It may take a long time for the results to come. You see a lot of people acting on … 
  13. The Brightness of the World
     … The first is conviction, conviction that your actions really do matter. This is a principle you want to learn from other people: The choices you make really do make a difference, and the quality of your intention determines whether your actions will lead to happiness or not. You want to look for a person who believes in that, because that person is more likely … 
  14. Unskillful Voices
     … That’s what the conviction in kamma teaches you: that you can make a difference, and that what you choose to do right now is really important. Then you just stick with that conviction: That’s persistence. That’s another strength. You learn to be mindful in order to keep that view in mind. You keep reminding yourself: Okay, do the skillful thing right … 
  15. Lessons from the Buddha’s Awakening
     … That’s why his awakening is the object of our conviction: We’re convinced that he, through his own powers, gained awakening. And what he saw in the course of his awakening has information that can give us guidance in how we run our lives, even today, more than 2,600 years later. We have to keep in mind that the Buddha told us … 
  16. Factors for Awakening
     … It’s not simply a matter of conviction, although the simple fact that you’re going to follow this path of looking at what’s skillful and unskillful requires that you be convinced that the Buddha knew what he was talking about. That, and conviction that there are wise people who’ve been trained in this path and who know what they’re talking … 
  17. Faith in Present Intentions
     … When you’re heedless, it’s as if you’re already dead.” This is why we have to have conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, that he showed that it is possible through human action to find a true happiness. There are parts of your experience where you really can push and push all the way to a true happiness, a happiness that doesn … 
  18. The Power of Truth
     … The fact that they’re reasonable simply aids in giving us confidence or conviction in their truth. That’s one of his observations that go against our understanding in the West that things like conviction or faith are opposed to reason. We have that belief because there’s a major religion in our society that extols things you have to take on faith even … 
  19. The Wounded Warrior
     … We’ve got to hold onto that conviction, whether it seems especially realistic right now in terms of the state of your mind right now. You can take comfort in the fact that you too have those potentials, that you too can develop them through your actions. Which is the second part of conviction: that your actions really do make a difference. They are … 
  20. Terror & Revulsion
     … mindfulness, alertness, concentration, and discernment, all founded on a sense of pasada or saddha, which means conviction, conviction that your actions can make a difference and that there is a way out. This way, samvega’s paired with heedfulness. You realize that your actions are important and so you have to be very careful about what you do. Because it is very easy to … 
  21. Admirable Friendship
     … generous, virtuous, people who have a sense of conviction in the Buddha’s awakening and the principle of karma. It’s when you see that you’re suffering: That’s when you begin to be willing to gain influence from outside. Because admirable friendship doesn’t just mean that you find good people. It also means that you emulate them. It’s like asking … 
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