Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. Practice Without Gaps
     … That’s going to require discernment—on how to change the subject, how to avoid answering the question. Learning that kind of discernment will be useful when you start dealing with your own defilements as you try to get the mind into concentration. You have to learn how to think strategically to outsmart the strategies of the defilements. So we don’t wait until … 
  3. Discerning Actions
    Of the different factors in the path, discernment is the last to be perfected. But you have to begin with some discernment. Otherwise, the path wouldn’t appeal to you at all. You have to see that you’re suffering, and you have to see that it may be dependent on your actions. Or maybe you don’t focus so much on the suffering … 
  4. Mission Possible
     … You have some discernment. There was a time when Ajaan Fuang said I needed to use more of my discernment. I told him I didn’t have any. He said, “Of course you have. If you didn’t have any discernment, you wouldn’t be a human being.” So you’ve got some discernment, simply that you’ve got to learn how to use … 
  5. Bedside Dhamma
     … So whatever discernment, whatever concentration you develop as you practice, remember it’s there to be put to use. And it can be put to use. My teacher had a student who had extremely strong powers of concentration, but she felt somehow that doing the concentration would take care of all her problems. So she didn’t even try to apply her discernment in … 
  6. Resilience Plus
     … So try to find short statements of the Dhamma, basic principles of behavior, and, as they say in Thai, “decorate” your discernment with the discernment of others. That way, if you can’t think of something on your own, at least you’ve got something else to fall back on. This relates to the sixth strength, which is another way of decorating your discernment … 
  7. Restlessness & Anxiety
     … That way, you can induce more concentration and more discernment in the mind. These hindrances are obstacles not only to concentration but also to discernment. To deal with them, you’ve got to first borrow the Buddha’s discernment. Then, as you follow his recommendations, you start developing discernment of your own. You get quicker and quicker at recognizing when the mind is going … 
  8. Using Right View Rightly
     … So the question is, what do you need the rock for? What do you need to know about the rock? Why are you looking at the rock, and what use do you want to get out of looking at the rock? This is where real discernment comes in: knowing how to use these things properly. Discernment is not just parroting what’s in the … 
  9. The Focus on Suffering
    We suffer, but we don’t discern suffering. It’s an important distinction. Suffering is something we all know very directly. It’s one of the most direct experiences in the mind—it comes before thought. But we don’t really discern it because we’re not looking at it very directly. We’re off looking someplace else. In particular, there’s one form … 
  10. Discernment Is in the Doing
     … They’re there in right resolve, which is a part of discernment. Once you’ve learned why there’s suffering and how suffering can be ended, you make the resolve to act in ways that will put an end to suffering. So insight isn’t just a matter of registering facts. There’s a determination, a realization that something has to be done based … 
  11. A Magic Set of Tools
     … As you develop this sense of appropriateness, this sense of “just right,” you’re developing discernment in the midst of concentration practice. The Buddha said there’s no discernment without jhana, no jhana without discernment. The two qualities help each other along. So if you find yourself slipping off the breath, slipping off the topic of your meditation, remember these things. When things get … 
  12. Endurance Through Discernment
     … You have to bring in discernment, and discernment is a matter of looking into fabrication: How are you fabricating your thoughts around the pain? What are you telling yourself about the pain? And it’s perfectly legitimate to bring in the breath as well. Through the way you breathe you can create feelings that enable you to sit with the pain for a longer … 
  13. Precept Meditation
     … This requires ingenuity and discernment. Right here you can begin to see the connections with meditation. Once you’ve set up an intention to stay with the breath, you have to be mindful and alert to make sure you actually do stay with the breath and don’t go wandering off. You also have to use your discernment and ingenuity to fend off any … 
  14. Looking for Happiness Inside
     … How are you going to find it? It requires a lot of discernment to see what you’re doing to cover it up. Because it’s something uncaused, it’s potentially always there. Which means we can’t see it, and that means we can’t see it because our discernment isn’t sharp enough. So we need to sharpen our discernment. How do … 
  15. Determined Goodwill
     … First there’s discernment. You have to think about what goodwill means. In a cosmos where pleasure and pain are shaped by action, it means: “May all beings act on skillful intentions. May they not harm one another. May they understand the causes for true happiness and be willing and able to act on them.” In other words, you think of other beings not … 
  16. Determined to Make a Difference
     … He said you start with discernment—you choose a wise goal—and then you reflect on the wise ways to achieve that goal. In this case, we want to gain discernment into our own minds, which means we have to learn how to focus them, get them to be still, and to follow all the other elements of the path that are required to … 
  17. Determined to be Happy
     … You try to bring discernment to your choice of a goal—trying to choose a goal that’s going to put the mind at peace—and then you’re true in carrying out what you see as the most discerning path, and true in relinquishing whatever gets in the way. This is how you attain what you aspire to. This is how your determination … 
  18. The Buddha Teaches a Yakkha
     … That’s discernment in the pragmatic sense, the kind of discernment that really matters. You look throughout the Buddha’s teachings, and for him discernment is always strategic. Even the more abstract teachings on emptiness or dependent co-arising serve a strategic purpose. Learning how to use them properly is a sign of true discernment. You don’t just parrot what’s in the … 
  19. Conviction & Focus
     … There’s the list of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. That’s the standard one in The Wings to Awakening. Then there’s another one, the strengths of a person in training: conviction, a sense of shame—a healthy sense of shame— compunction, persistence, and discernment. The two lists have conviction, persistence, and discernment in common. Those are the core strengths. It’s … 
  20. Insight Is a Judgment Call
     … When the Buddha talks about developing discernment from those first two questions, a lot of it focuses on actions. There’s the discernment that comes with learning how to get yourself to do things you don’t like to do, but you know are going to give good long-term results; and the discernment that gets you to stop yourself from doing things that … 
  21. Reflect
     … So discernment does require work. It does require us to be discerning, to see the distinction between what’s skillful and what’s not, and particularly to be very sensitive to what we’re actually doing. Upasika Kee Nanayon would say that when an insight comes up in the meditation, always wait to see what happens right after the insight. What mental state follows … 
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