Search results for: "Discernment"

  1. Page 14
  2. The Language of the Breath
     … This is the beginning of discernment. Discernment starts out with simple things, like: Which way of breathing feels best for the body right now? As you work with that question, you find yourself getting more and more sensitive to the breath energy in the body. Exactly what does it mean, this “breath energy” in the body? What are the different ways it has of … 
  3. Two Roads to the Grand Canyon
     … Virtue, concentration, and discernment all require work. If virtue were easy or natural, it wouldn’t require training. The Buddha wouldn’t have called it a training. The same with concentration: You do have to put an effort into it. It’s a very delicate effort in the sense that it requires a lot of precision, but it also requires strong dedication. The same … 
  4. Evaluating the Practice
     … You can learn what’s stated in the texts about what discernment is and the things that discerning people see, but real discernment is when you’re able to see them in your own mind. This is how you do it: You watch yourself in action. And this, of course, starts with the Buddha’s instructions to Rahula. I know a lot of people … 
  5. Bless Yourself
     … This is where your real strength lies—the strength of discernment—when you see clearly what you’re doing, along with the results of what you’re doing. Part of discernment is alertness on steroids—you’re very clear about what your actions are, you see where you’re causing yourself unnecessary suffering, and you can see how you can stop. Again, this is … 
  6. Consciousness, Awakened & Not
     … Why did the Buddha formulate the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment? If you can simply open to the unconditioned, why would he formulate such a difficult path? In some schools, they define discernment in terms of how you define emptiness, and they have courses of study that go for years until you get the right understanding of what emptiness is and what it … 
  7. Noble Ardency
     … Ardency is also very directly related to the development of discernment. As you look at what you’re doing, ask yourself, “Is this good enough? Is there still some stress here? To what extent is the stress unnecessary? To what extent is the level of stress changing? Is it going up or down?” This is where you get to watch: If the level of … 
  8. Two Eyes, Not Just One
     … That’s discernment-release. There are a couple of passages where the Buddha does talk about discernment-release on its own, which has led some people to think that you can just gain insight and not have to worry about too much concentration. But where he actually defines discernment-release, it means the release of people who haven’t attained the formless jhanas. Now … 
  9. Look after Your Baby
     … You have to strengthen your persistence, your mindfulness, your concentration, and your discernment. Those strengths are listed in a row—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment—but that doesn’t mean that you start with just the beginning ones. All five have to support one another. So look to see where you’re lacking. Are you lacking conviction in yourself? Are you lacking conviction in … 
  10. Testing Insights
     … The left foot is like concentration; the right foot is like discernment. You need them both all the way along. The concentration is the doing, the discernment is the watching and the evaluating. As in his instructions to Rahula: He said you have to evaluate what you’re doing all the time as you’re doing it—before, during and after. In the same … 
  11. Commit & Reflect
     … As the mind gets still and more nourished, that’s when discernment arises, discernment with regard to what you’re doing right now, which ties back to your conviction in what the Buddha learned on the night of his awakening—that present karma really does play a huge role in shaping your experience now and on into the future. So you really want to … 
  12. Stay Principled
     … So you want to keep the precepts in mind and use your ingenuity in applying them so that the practice of the precepts in and of itself develops mindfulness and your discernment. After all, discernment isn’t just a matter of cloning the wisdom your read about in books. Discernment is figuring out how to do the skillful thing given the situation. It’s … 
  13. Open Door Meditation
     … This is where discernment is necessary. You’ve got to see what it is, this flow of thoughts that’s coming in, and who’s sneaking in behind the shadow of a good thought. Because those are the thoughts that are going to derail you. So it requires extra discernment and extra concentration to maintain your center as you go through the day. Which … 
  14. Building Concentration
     … As Ajaan Lee once said, if you know causes but without knowing the effects, that’s not discernment. If you know effects without knowing the causes, that’s not discernment, either. You have to know the two together, and the best way to know that, of course, is to make sure the causes come from within. Those are the ones you know most clearly … 
  15. Fear of Death
     … virtue concentration, discernment; virtue, concentration, discernment. Just have a strong sense that this is the Dhamma you can take as your refuge. You don’t need anything else aside from this. This is your protection against those fears, your protection against the dangers that otherwise await. So do your best to cultivate these three trainings, because they really provide safety.
  16. Staying True
     … So when you’ve got the discernment and you’ve got the calming here, it helps the mind to give up all the things that are going to get in the way of its original intention, which is to stay with the breath, to develop these qualities of mindfulness and alertness. This set of qualities—discernment, truthfulness, relinquishment, and calming—are called the four … 
  17. Good Fundamentals
     … The more experienced the people are in terms of generosity, virtue, conviction, and discernment—particularly discernment into how to put an end to suffering—the more you benefit. What it comes down to is the Buddha’s realization that the Big Problem in life is the suffering we cause, and yet we don’t have to. Why do we cause that suffering? It’s … 
  18. All of a Piece
     … It’s the last two, the Buddha said, that constitute the measure of your wisdom, the measure of your discernment: your ability to talk yourself into doing the things that you don’t like to do but give good results, and ability to talk yourself out of doing things that you like to do that give bad results. It’s a very down-to … 
  19. Tuning Your Lute
     … As for the discernment you’re going to gain, you say, “The discernment that comes from maintaining concentration is worthwhile”—because you never know what you’re going to see. Something out of the corner of your eye strikes you that you’ve been doing again and again and again, and you’ve never really noticed it. But maybe for once you will. So … 
  20. The Mind Set Tall
     … You feel less threatened by the things you learn from discernment. It’s a basic principle that real discernment means seeing your own stupidity, your own lack of honesty with yourself. These are things we don’t want to look at, things we don’t want to see. But it’s what we have to see, what we have to look at, if we … 
  21. Shelter Through Restraint
     … The Buddha talks about not neglecting discernment, and he means all the time. An important part of discernment is seeing the connections between things. As Ajaan Lee once said, if you see causes without the results, that’s not discernment. If you see results without their causes, that’s not discernment, either. You have to see the connection. So you have to stop and … 
  22. Load next page...