Search results for: "Wisdom"
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- Learning by Doing… One of the definitions of discernment or wisdom is penetrative knowledge of arising and passing away. A lot of people focus on “arising and passing away.” They say, “This means that you just watch things coming and going.” But there is that adjective, “penetrative.” It means understanding that there are good things arising and bad things arising. And when things arise, some of them …
- What You Can’t Change, What You Can… The wisdom lies in seeing where you draw the line. At what point do you have to say, “Okay, on this issue, I’ve got to be equanimous. Things are not going to change—at least they’re not going to change right now. I have to put them aside for the time being.” That kind of insight comes with experience. There’s no …
- Break Things Down… As the Buddha said, an important aspect of wisdom is seeing things as separate: You have habits but you don’t have to identify with them. Urges come up, old habits come up, but you don’t have to ride along with them every time. You can step back and say, “No. This time around I’m not going to go there.” If you …
- Discernment All Along… Back in those days, if you opened any dictionary, it would say that pañña means “wisdom.” So I complained. I said, “I don’t have any wisdom.” He said, “Everybody has some paññā if they’re practicing. If you’re born in the human realm, you’ve got some.” Which made me stop to think about what he meant. I realized it was discernment …
- Take the Buddha Seriously… We hear so much about the wisdom of Oneness, but we don’t hear it from the Buddha. He says you have to learn to see individual events in the mind as individual events, for the purpose of getting past them, for the purpose of gaining victory over them if they’re unskillful—because as long as you identify with them, it’s going …
- True Friends… This is where the wisdom gets tested: in learning how to talk yourself out of doing the things that you like to do that’ll be harmful, and how to make yourself want to do the things that you may not particularly care to do yet, but will lead to long-term happiness. This is the attitude of an adult. You don’t just …
- Healing Breath… The ardency includes the element of wisdom, which sees what’s skillful and what’s not in your mind, together with the effort to encourage what’s skillful and to abandon what’s not. So you want to bring these qualities to the breath. As Ajaan Lee once said, the breath is like a solvent for medicine; the qualities of mind are the actual …
- Discernment & Determination… This is one of the reasons why, when I translate the word pañña into English, I find that “discernment” is the best equivalent, better than “wisdom.” One time, Ajaan Fuang told me to use my *pañña *when I was having problems in meditation. I told him the reason I’m meditating is because I don’t have any pañña, thinking that it meant wisdom …
- Compunction… It’s the wisdom faculty in mindfulness practice, where you’re wise enough to see that if you want happiness, there are things you’ve got to do. If you don’t do them, the happiness is not going to come. We tend to think of wisdom and intelligence as having to do more with book learning. But from the Buddha’s point of …
- The Brightness of the World… This ability starts with a simple question: “What, when I do it, will lead to long-term welfare and happiness?” As the Buddha said, wisdom and discernment begin with this question. Then you look at your actions and see where you’re actually causing stress and harm. Because you realize happiness depends on your actions, you want to look and see: In what areas …
- A Happiness Without Boundaries… The wisdom leads you to compassion, and it also leads you to realize that if you’re really serious about finding true happiness, you’ve really got to be pure in your thoughts, your words, and your deeds. That’s what you’re doing as you’re sitting right here. You’re not harming anybody by what you are doing, you’re not harming …
- Dichotomies… But the Buddha’s wisdom teachings are all about “two’s.” The two teachings he says are categorical are dichotomies. The first is that unskillful qualities should be abandoned, and skillful qualities should be developed. Sometimes those activities—the abandoning and the developing—are two sides of one thing, but what’s skillful is really different from what’s unskillful. The other categorical teaching …
- Testing Insights… Heedfulness is the beginning of wisdom: Remember that. That’s what enables you to learn how to rely on yourself in the practice—if you can train yourself to be heedful, watchful. One of the difficulties in teaching meditation is that, on the one hand, the teacher wants to give as much information as possible to help people along the path, but not so …
- W.W.B.R.… All of these contemplations we tend to equate with the wisdom part of the practice, which we think should come after the concentration, but that’s not necessarily the case. Sometimes it requires some wisdom to get the mind to settle down. This is why the Buddha said that to get the mind into jhana requires both tranquility and vipassana, or insight. Sometimes you …
- If at First You Don’t Succeed… The Buddha said this is a measure of the wisdom of your discernment, a measure of your wisdom in practical terms: When there’s something you don’t want to do but you know it’s going to give good results, you’re able to talk yourself into doing it. Something that you like doing, and you know gives bad results, you’re able …
- A Real Education… As the Buddha said, wisdom and discernment begin with the questions, “What when I do it will lead to my long term welfare and happiness? What when I do it will lead to my long-term harm and suffering?” The emphasis is on your actions because they make the difference. That’s what’s wise about these questions—that, together with the realization that …
- Trust Your Desire for Happiness… The great wisdom of the Buddha’s teachings is that he tells us to take that seriously. It’s not a selfish thing. For so many people, the desire for happiness is narrow, selfish, and hedonistic, but as the Buddha said, if you really are serious about happiness, you have to be purer in your actions—in other words, harmless. You have to develop …
- Three More Recollections… I was reading a piece one time by someone—I don’t want to mention which branch of Buddhism he came from—but he was saying, “Wisdom around the precepts means knowing when to observe them and when not to observe them.” That’s not wisdom. That’s just the ordinary way of the world. And look at the way of the world—people …
- Directing the Flow… You have to use wisdom, you have to use discernment in sticking with the precepts. When there’s a desire inside that comes up against a precept, that wants to say something that the precepts don’t allow, look in your mind for the desire that wants to stick by the precept. And understand why it’s important to stick by the precept. This …
- Goodness & Goodwill… You think about the Buddha’s wisdom as being more important than justice in that case. So try to have a wise attitude. You don’t necessarily have to go for justice. Go for wisdom. It would be good if people would voluntarily see the connection between their unskillful actions and the way they suffer, and learn how to stop those unskillful things. The …
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