Search results for: "Persistence"
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- A Well-stocked Memory… Then comes persistence: You do what’s required to develop the skillful qualities and abandon the unskillful ones. Then, following that, come the factors deal with concentration directly: rapture, calm, concentration, equanimity. But there’s another description in which mindfulness is defined as being mindful of the Dhamma teachings you’ve memorized, that you’ve learned: what you’ve read, what you’ve listened …
- Making an Effort… There’s a phrase in the Pali, viriyena dukkhamacceti, which means suffering and stress are overcome through effort, through persistence. Sometimes the idea scares us off, but you have to remember that life itself requires effort. Think of the effort involved in simply keeping the body going, making a living, scrounging around trying to find some happiness. It all takes effort. It’s simply …
- The Power to Transcend Suffering… Once you find that you’re beginning to enjoy this, then the next base for success comes in, which is persistence. You just stick with it. Start applying your skill to all different kinds of things, different kinds of situations. The more you stick with it, the more you begin to appreciate it and the greater sense of confidence you have that you can …
- Learn from the Ants… So even when he was studying with the teachers who taught very high levels of concentration—the dimension of nothingness, the dimension of neither perception and non-perception—he saw that they’d developed conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. They devoted good qualities of the mind to this, but they rested content with something that wasn’t ultimate. He, however, wasn’t satisfied …
- Giving & Taking Time… These are some of the ways in which you can learn how to stick with something, develop your powers of endurance and persistence—your stick-to-it-ived-ness. Unfortunately in our society these character traits are not encouraged that much. “Click here, click here,” and automatically you’ll get instant gratification. And we start taking that for granted. A couple of years back …
- The Dhamma Is in the Method … contentment, persistence, and what the Buddha calls shedding. Shedding refers to shedding pride, shedding thoughts of wanting to get revenge. There’s another great story in the Canon of a young prince whose parents had been executed by a king. The prince decides to get revenge, so he applies for a job in the elephant stables of the king’s palace. In the evening …
- Goodwill as a Guardian… than a happiness that’s absolutely safe: safe from heedlessness, safe from making you behave in unskillful ways. You develop the qualities that the Buddha said were key to his awakening: persistence and an unwillingness to settle for second best. So thoughts of goodwill protect you not only from ill will, but also from laziness and complacency—if you think those thoughts in the …
- A Slave to the Dhamma… truthfulness, in the sense of making up your mind you’re going to do something good and you stick with it all the way through, no matter how hard it gets. Persistence, determination: all the Capricorn virtues. It’s important to realize that this is a part of training the mind. If training the mind were simply a matter of closing your eyes and …
- Chewed Up by Your Food… conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. This way, the mind, more and more, can stand on its own two feet. And unlike the body, the mind—when it feeds off mental food, off the food of the path—eventually reaches the point where it doesn’t need to feed anymore. With the body, you always need to keep it well fed. The mind, though …
- How to Be Self-Centered… And although it requires determination, persistence, and endurance, it should also be done with joy. Here again, Ajaan Suwat: “Have a sense of how fortunate you are to do this practice. Take joy in the fact that you can.” When you can develop that attitude, then you’re self-centered in the right way. As long as you need a self—and you will …
- Like an Athlete in Training… You’re trying to strengthen the mind, so you strengthen the qualities that give rise to more conviction, more persistence, more mindfulness, more concentration, more discernment. Watch out for the food that would eat away at these things. In this way, you protect the Dhamma inside yourself, which is where it’s best protected. You look outside, and sometimes it’s hard to see …
- A Position of Strength… conviction in the importance of maintaining a skillful state of mind, persistence in keeping it going, mindfulness, concentration, discernment. When these things are strong, when they’re in charge of your mind, then you can trust it. It becomes your refuge. You realize that your happiness doesn’t have to depend on things outside. It can depend on these qualities inside, and nothing outside …
- Mindfulness… Those factors are analysis of qualities, rapture, and persistence: the qualities that energize the mind. Then there are qualities appropriate when the mind is overly excited, overly energetic: calm, equanimity, and concentration. Those calm the mind down. You need both sets of qualities in the practice. It’s simply a matter of finding balance, and of having a sense of time and place. There …
- A Special Time… So keep your desire well focused, be persistent, give this your full attention, and analyze what you’re doing so that you can see what’s working and what’s not. Then use your ingenuity to figure out things that will work. When you find that what you do isn’t working, well, what could you do to change it? These are all qualities …
- You Can Do It… What do you need beyond being a human being in order to mediate? You need some persistence and you need some truthfulness, so you stick with it. These are two qualities that are emphasized over and over in the forest tradition: that if you stick with this quest for true happiness and you really are serious about it—not grim, but serious—that’s …
- An Island in the Flood… the nutrition of conviction that what you do is going to come back at you, so you want to do things well; the nourishment of persistence, sticking with something again, and again, and again, making good things habitual; the nourishment of mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. There are all these good things here on this island in the middle of the flood. So do your …
- The Real World Isn’t for Real… He encourages persistence, i.e., learning to take delight in developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones, whether it means just watching them or actually actively undoing the unskillful ones to replace them with something more skillful. The Buddha has you feed on mindfulness, concentration, discernment—finding joy in all these things. When you can find joy in this path, you can look at …
- Songkran Blessing… There’s also the strength of persistence, when you stick with the principle that you want to do what’s only skillful, you want to abandon anything that’s unskillful. The strength of mindfulness, when you keep in mind what’s right and what’s wrong, not only while you’re here at the monastery, but also as you go through life. Concentration, when …
- Skillful Fears… Then there’s persistence: putting energy into trying to do whatever is skillful and to abandon whatever’s unskillful. Then there’s mindfulness: keeping in mind what’s skillful and what’s not, and keeping in mind the need to develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones. And that leads to concentration, which is where you get your real nourishment. The Buddha compares concentration …
- The Heightened Mind… As you go through the day, it’s not just to get the particular job done, it’s to develop qualities of the mind like persistence, determination, and endurance. Then you give the mind a chance to rest. “Rest,” as the Buddha says, “in renunciation.” In other words, you renounce thoughts of sensuality and all the thoughts that go along with sensuality: thoughts of …
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