Search results for: "Wisdom"

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  2. The Core of Experience
     … Do you sincerely want to be happy? Do you want to take your desire for happiness as something important? For the Buddha, that’s the beginning of wisdom and discernment: taking your desire for true happiness as having essential value. And then, from the assumption, discernment develops. It develops through asking the question, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term … 
  3. The Treasure of Virtue
     … In this way, you develop wisdom, discernment, and compassion through the precepts. You develop purity by observing the precepts. These are all qualities of the Buddha. In fact, these are his three main qualities: wisdom, compassion, purity. You can develop them, too, by looking for happiness in a mature way, a wise way. The Buddha never says that you should sacrifice your happiness for … 
  4. Circumspection
     … When you reflect on the Dhamma, you reflect on Sariputta in his wisdom. When you reflect on the Sangha, you reflect on Moggallana with his psychic powers and his compassion. It’s an interesting connection: psychic powers and compassion. Ajaan Lee did have a lot of psychic powers, and he devoted them to compassionate purposes. He helped people with their poverty. He helped people … 
  5. The Flow of Time
     … This is the beginning of wisdom and discernment, when you ask that question, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” It’s wise because, one, you realize it’s going to depend on your actions; two, you realize that long-term happiness is possible; and three, you want long-term. So you’ve got to learn how … 
  6. Ajaan Suwat’s Gift
     … A large part of the wisdom of ardency is right there. Ajaan Suwat was once asked why Buddhism didn’t have a god. If only Buddhism had a god, the person said, it would give people a sense of reassurance that there was somebody out there looking out for them when they couldn’t quite make it on their own. Ajaan Suwat’s response … 
  7. Fire
     … That’s the beginning of wisdom. Then there’s your desire to develop your discernment so that you can figure out exactly what is “just right” effort: That exercises your wisdom and discernment as well. So we’re working on concentration and discernment at the same time, tranquility and insight at the same time, based on desire. Then, as you have a sense of … 
  8. You Can’t Eat the Buddha
     … It involves developing qualities of wisdom, purity, compassion: the wisdom to realize that you’re going to have to depend on yourself for your happiness, and that the happiness that’s worth working toward is a long-term happiness, not a short-term. From that realization grows compassion: the understanding that other people want happiness, too, and if your happiness depends on their suffering … 
  9. How We Cling
    You may remember that passage where the Buddha says that wisdom or discernment begins with two questions: “What when I do it will lead to my long-term harm and suffering? What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” The wisdom lies in seeing that happiness and suffering come from your actions. Your actions are important because they … 
  10. Truths of the Will
     … That’s the beginning of wisdom right there. And it’s not just the beginning. It’s a principle that carries all the way through. We have the example of Ajaan Mun and the whole forest tradition. From the outside it might seem very unlikely that they would have been able to find anything special in their practice, but they did. So take heart … 
  11. Expanded Possibilities
     … Part of this came from sensing his psychic abilities—he seemed very quick to read my mind—but also his wisdom and compassion. He never bragged about his powers. He never talked about them. But they were there, and he used them well. And it was the wisdom and compassion with which he used them that convinced me that he was the kind of … 
  12. The Center of Your Life
     … If you really want to be happy, what does it mean? What do you have to do?” And as he discovered, it’s the first step in wisdom is to ask, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” The long-term there is important. You don’t want a happiness that comes and goes and kicks you … 
  13. Friends with The Breath
     … This, the Buddha said, is the beginning of wisdom: learning how to see things as separate. We hear so much about wisdom of oneness and the wisdom of interconnectedness. But the Buddha himself said insight comes from seeing things as separate. Pain is one thing. The body is something else. Or that perception that the pain is a solid block: Look at it carefully … 
  14. Vows
     … This is the beginning of wisdom. That means learning how to talk yourself into being willing to give these lesser pleasures up. Wisdom is a strategy. All of this comes back to discernment, that first quality. It keeps popping up again and again. To be truthful requires some discernment: How are you going to stick to your vow? Say that you make a vow … 
  15. Instruct, Urge, Rouse, & Encourage Yourself
     … Ardency is the wisdom faculty. The way the Buddha defines mindfulness, you could be mindful of anything; you could hold anything in mind. Simply being able to remember things that were done and said a long time ago: That’s how he defines mindfulness. Nothing about giving priority to what’s skillful or putting aside what’s unskillful. The same with alertness: You’re … 
  16. To Make Suffering Crumble
     … We sometimes hear that the Buddha said that wisdom is seeing things in terms of their oneness. But he never said that. Wisdom sees things as separate—how they’re interacting, but they are separate things. The form of the body is one thing. The feeling of pain is something else. And then there are your perceptions, such as the perception that the pain … 
  17. Clearing Your Space
     … Part of the training is that he gets turned into different kinds of animals, to see the world from their perspective, to learn what wisdom the animals may have. One time he’s turned into a wild goose flying across the North Sea. He finds himself in formation with other geese. He gets in a conversation with a goose next to him, and they … 
  18. Craving & Desire on the Path
     … The Buddha was wise in the way that Ajaan Lee would define wisdom: the sort of wisdom that can take almost anything and get good use out of it. The Buddha had no use for sensual craving, no use for sensual clinging, but the other forms of craving and clinging, he found a use for. It’s up to us to figure out how … 
  19. Give It Your All
     … His comment on how wisdom begins is directly related to this. Wisdom, he says, comes from going to a contemplative and asking him, “What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” This question grows out of having been generous. You’ve learned that by giving up certain things, you’ll get greater happiness in return, and you want … 
  20. Noble Right Concentration
     … In fact, sometimes you hear that as the definition of Buddhist wisdom, or the beginning of wisdom: All things change. But it’s not a very useful observation on its own, because it doesn’t say why they change, how they change, what kind of change is good, what kind of change is bad. But if you put that observation into the context of … 
  21. Feeding on Right Resolve
     … Here it’s interesting to note that when Ajaan Lee’s talks about the factors of mindfulness, alertness, and ardency in his discussion of right mindfulness, he points out that ardency—the persistence—is the factor of discernment and wisdom. It’s the same when you understand the four noble truths: The wisdom lies in seeing what should be done with those four noble … 
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