Search results for: "Persistence"
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- To Have a Purpose… When you develop the quality of truth, that includes the perfection of virtue, the perfection of truth, and the perfection of persistence. When you develop relinquishment, there’s still more persistence, along with the perfection of giving and the perfection of renunciation. Then finally, as you calm the mind, there’s the perfection of endurance and the perfection of equanimity. You’ve got all …
- Discernment on the Path… The other four—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, and concentration—are the rafters that you put up. But they’re not really secure until you put that top rafter at the peak of the roof. Once that’s in place, it holds everything else in position and makes it secure. In other words, your discernment is what protects your conviction and your persistence. It guides these …
- Warrior Knowledge… Some of them are random, others are more persistent, more pervasive, more persuasive, more in control. You’ve got to learn how to put a question mark next to them. If anything gets in the way of concentration, put a question mark next to it. “Do you really believe that? Is that kind of thinking really right? Is it really useful?” That’s the …
- The Mind Like Water… The next quality builds on that, which is persistence. You keep working at developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones. You don’t shirk your duties. You don’t take time off and say, “Well, I was practicing for a while, but it’s difficult, so I need to rest.” When you’re just resting, you’re just creating more problems for yourself—when …
- Getting Connected Inside… But if you’re gentle and persistent, they will begin to open up. Now, if you’ve had an injury or some other physical problem, those areas may not open up so easily. But you learn to work around them, to minimize the tightness, to minimize the patterns of tension that can go through the body when it’s not well aligned. The purpose …
- Exercising Discernment… The next quality is persistence, which relates to ardency. In other words, you really stick with the practice, again and again and again. If mindfulness is going to show you anything about the mind, if alertness is going to show you anything about the mind, you have to really stick with it. Otherwise, the really tricky parts of the mind hide themselves behind curtains …
- For Goodness’ Sake… generosity, virtue, renunciation, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, and equanimity. Goodwill stands out as good-heartedness. A lot of the others, though, are types of strength, which we may not associate with a good heart, but for the heart to be truly good requires strength. If you start out with good intentions but you can’t carry them through, they don’t really mean …
- The Five Strengths… The second strength, on top of conviction, is persistence. You really stick with trying to act skillfully. The more consistently you stick with this, the better it gets and the more it can do for you. If you let the mind settle down only while you’re sitting here with your eyes closed, you get some benefit from it, but then you can totally …
- Determination… In terms of the perfections, truth embodies the perfection of truth, the perfection of virtue, and the perfection of persistence—you really stick with this. As for relinquishment, that involves renunciation and generosity. Renunciation here doesn’t mean just giving up on things. Specifically, it means renouncing sensuality. Years back, I was reading an article saying that people don’t like the idea of …
- On Deserving to Be Happy… Based on that desire, you practice persistence. You stick with it again and again and again, trying to make yourself more reliable. If we just stab at the practice every now and then, we get just that: stabbing results. They come and they go, they come and they go, and they don’t amount to much. Sometimes we think we’re being wise: We …
- The Ten Priorities… The determination of truthfulness includes the perfections of truth, virtue, persistence, and endurance. There are a lot of difficult tasks in the path. You really have to stick with it. It’s not something you do for a weekend: spending Saturday learning about your awakened nature, then Sunday thinking about integrating your awakened nature with the rest of your life, and then going back …
- Shaping the Present… The other two are persistence and then rapture. Persistence is when you try to do things really skillfully. It’s that quality of ardency again. And specifically you learn how to motivate yourself to stick with things. If you find that you’re feeling sluggish, if nothing really seems to be working or nothing seems to be getting you up in the morning, you …
- Strength of Conviction… strength of conviction, strength of persistence, strength of mindfulness, strength of concentration, and strength of discernment. These are the things that carried them through. Whatever the difficulties they had to face—and there were many—these were the strengths they were able to fall back on, and able to develop, all the way to the point of the deathless. There’s that passage where …
- Independent Values… The fifth value is persistence: persistently developing good qualities and abandoning unskillful qualities in the mind, at the same time teaching yourself how to enjoy this. Most of us like our unskillful qualities. We like our greed. We like our anger. We’re comfortable in our delusion. Yet those are precisely the things that cause us suffering. When you realize this, you should develop …
- Good Friends Inside… This is a lot of what’s required for persistence, for discipline. It’s not just gritting your teeth and bearing with it. It’s learning how to make it entertaining, how to make it enjoyable, how to get your spirits up as you stick with the work. You find that once you can do this, you’ve learned some very important skills. These …
- Strength Training… The Buddha talks of the path as a path of strength, and the strengths of the mind are conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. The Buddha has one way of formulating the path in these five terms. He himself often compares the path of practice to various skills, and some of them have to do with strength. The skillful meditator is one who can …
- Don’t Worry, Be Focused… conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. You’ve got to find your energy here, and the energy starts with your understanding, understanding that your actions matter. That’s what conviction is all about, and that can make a difference. But there are some areas where your actions can’t make a difference. That’s where you have to drop any worries you might have …
- How to Think about Death… There’s generosity, there’s virtue, there’s renunciation—the ability to step back from sensual pleasures and find a higher level of pleasure in a concentrated mind—discernment, persistence—your powers of endurance—truth, determination, goodwill, equanimity. These are things of lasting value. They might not be as hard as the hardwood of release, but at least they’re not just twigs and …
- Driving Lessons… your *persistence. *You just keep at it. Whatever is skillful, you try to nourish and encourage; whatever is unskillful coming up in the mind, you try to let it go. The third quality is intentness: You give full attention to what you’re doing. That’s why the Buddha says to put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. Whatever is happening …
- In Cahoots with Your Defilements… Because even though it takes time, it takes energy, it takes persistence, commitment, it gets us out of suffering. It’s the kind of friend who doesn’t simply go along with our moods but actually points out what’s useful to us. As the Buddha said, that’s a sign of a true friend. He doesn’t simply flatter you but points out …
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