Search results for: "Conviction"
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- Light Your Way… You have to have conviction in the Buddha’s awakening. You have to be virtuous, generous, develop your discernment, so that you can understand how the mind is creating suffering for itself. And then when you get there, you have to be extra specially careful, not to get complacent. If you have this right attitude, it’s like driving in a car. You’re …
- In Training… How is your conviction? Do you really believe the Buddha was awakened? Or is it just some story from a distant past in a different country? If you do have conviction of the Buddha’s awakening, what does that mean to you? What possibilities does it open? What demands does it make on you? After all, we live in a world where there has …
- Teaching Old Dogs New Selves… I want the old ways of doing things right now.” This is where your conviction in the path will come in handy: conviction in the fact that the Buddha was awakened, that he found a way to awakening by abandoning his old selves. Now, there will come a point, of course, when you don’t need any sense of self. That’s when you …
- Defilements Are Real… Conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, conviction in the power of action; persistence in trying to give rise to skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones; mindfulness to keep all this in mind, so that the mind can get into concentration and have a sense of its home where it can stay apart from the greed, aversion, and delusion; and then the discernment to take …
- Limitless is the Buddha… So try to develop a sense of conviction and confidence in what you’re doing here, that this really is good work, both in the sense that the work itself is pleasant—you’re not asked to do anything demeaning, you’re not asked to harm anybody else—and in the sense that where it leads is also a very good goal. Start out …
- The Reality of Emotions… There’s a passage in the sutta on transcendent dependent co-arising that traces all the factors leading up to suffering, but then states that from suffering you can develop conviction, and through conviction you develop the path. From developing the path, you develop joy. This is the Buddha’s analysis of how you go from householder grief—the fact you’re not getting …
- To Go Where You’ve Never Gone Before… When you see the deathless, that’s when, as the Buddha says, your conviction in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha is verified. You’re beginning to see what you hadn’t seen before. There’s still more work to do, but at least you have a toehold. In the image in the Canon, you’ve crossed the river to the point where you’re …
- An Exercise in Freedom… Once you’ve started on the path and your conviction begins to waver, or your energy begins to fall slack, you remind yourself, “Do I really want true happiness?” And you realize that if you really loved yourself, you’d have to answer Yes. So for the sake of your true happiness, you want to keep practicing. In other words, you have the “I …
- Good Humor… And then tune everything else, all the other faculties — conviction, mindfulness, concentration, discernment — to the level of energy you can manage.” It’s like tuning a guitar. First you tune one string and then you tune the other strings to the first one. In meditating, your first string is the amount of energy at your disposal. You want to put enough pressure on yourself …
- Initiative… You engage in admirable friendship, which means that if they have good qualities, and the Buddha gives a list—conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment—you try to emulate those qualities. You actually ask them, “How do you do this?” If you have trouble being generous, ask people who are generous, “How do you do this? What is your way of thinking that allows you to …
- A Refuge from the Winds of the World… They’re people of conviction; you try to develop conviction, too. They’re people of generosity, virtue, discernment; you try to develop those qualities as well, because you pick up the qualities of the people that you’re near. There’s an image in the Canon of a leaf. If you use the leaf to wrap up fine-smelling spices, the leaf will smell …
- Right Now… So when we develop conviction in the principle of karma, we take responsibility for our actions. We look carefully at what we’re doing and at what the results are. That’s why it’s such a good teaching to adopt. One of the very first lessons the Buddha gave to his son after his son was ordained as a young novice was to …
- The Value of Effort… If you hold in mind your conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, you’ve got to be convinced that you can do something about suffering and stress. You can bring them to an end. That’s what the basic conviction in our practice is: that the Buddha really did awaken to something special. There’s something special out there. Why not go for it …
- Protest Your Virtue & Right View… He develops some conviction in the Buddha and occasionally comes to see him. He’ll come to report his insights as he reflects on the life of a king, and one of his insights is that people who protect themselves only with arms, with armies, but don’t protect themselves by engaging in skillful behavior, really leave themselves unprotected. Whereas those who do engage …
- Your Desire to Practice… And when you have conviction in the Buddha’s awakening that it is possible to get past these things, you’re not quite so overwhelmed. All this is inside work. Or, as they say, it’s an inside job. And you have to overcome some very strong tendencies that want to keep you coming back, coming back, coming back to the old pleasures that …
- Nobody’s Servant… Conviction, conviction in the principle of karma, that your actions really do make a difference; generosity; learning the Dhamma, and discernment. All these things are goodness inside, and we develop them through the meditation and also through learning the Dhamma, stocking ourselves inside with good things, so when things outside are lacking, we’re not poor. We’re wealthy with internal wealth. That makes …
- Analysis of Dhammas… Ajaan Maha Boowa at one point once said, “Try to prove the Buddha wrong.” In other words, you have conviction in the Buddha. But still, you’ve got to test it. Is this conviction well founded? To find out, you pay appropriate attention. In other words, you look at what you do when you try to follow the path, and you gauge the results …
- How to Look, How to Listen… The Buddha said that this is the one you use to measure how much you’re going to be acting on your conviction, how much you’re going to be expecting out of your mindfulness, your concentration, and discernment. He gives the image of playing a lute. Back in those days, lutes probably had five strings. And as you know, in playing with any …
- Attention with an Agenda… It’s because we have conviction in the four noble truths, and the third one in particular, that we’re looking for reasons to let go. When we can let go, that’s when we find that what the Buddha said was true—there really is a deathless element that you can contact, you can touch inside. It is the highest happiness. This is …
- A Meritorious Heart… It’s a rare person who suffers and then, reflecting on that suffering, develops the conviction that’s needed to get on the path. So you see that there is suffering out there, and you hope that people will develop the conviction that will allow them to get beyond their suffering, but you don’t want to wish suffering on people. Then as you …
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