Search results for: "Persistence"
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- True Values… It develops persistence. It develops endurance. It develops determination, equanimity. So you look for that kind of work, but you do it for the purpose of your true well-being. That’s something you always have to keep in mind. While you’re here, take advantage of the opportunity to develop these skills. While you’re out there, carry these values with you. Remind …
- Rightly Directed… the strength of your own conviction, your persistence, your mindfulness, your concentration, your discernment. These will be the only strengths you’ll have at that time, and they’re not the kind of strengths you can suddenly develop at the last moment. They have to be part of a lifelong process, a lifelong exercise program. As we sit here and meditate, that’s a …
- Freedom through Restraint… But the qualities of persistence and focusing your desire in the right place, paying careful attention to what you’re doing, using your ingenuity to figure out what to improve, what to maintain, how to improve things: These are the qualities that lead to concentration. These are the qualities that lead to mastering any skill. They require that you give up a fair number …
- An Auspicious Day… It’s your persistence that helps makes you mindful, and your mindfulness that stitches all these present moments together into something of real worth.
- Duties… mindfulness, analysis of qualities, persistence, rapture, calm, concentration, equanimity. In other words, it’s the practice where you start with being mindful, and then you use your discernment to bring the mind first a sense of energy inside—that can be your food inside, your medicine inside—and then to calm it down. That’s also a kind of medicine, also a kind of …
- Determination… You have to develop your energy, your persistence, your stick-with-it-ivedness, your mindfulness and alertness, to refine your discernment so that when you see the results of your actions, you can be a good judge of them. When things are not going well, is it a sign that the path is not going to work at all, or simply that you’re …
- The Gatekeeper Doesn’t Just Note… And to watch things that steadily and that consistently and that persistently, you need a sense of steady well-being. You need a place where you can take your stance with a steady gaze, because you’re going to be trying to compare the allure with the drawbacks. This is where the contemplation of the three perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self come …
- How to Read Yourself… Maybe right now the strength of concentration is weak, but look to see what else you’ve got in terms of your conviction, your persistence, your mindfulness, your discernment. Ajaan Mun made a lot of the idea of using your discernment to develop your concentration. When Ajaan Lee wrote the book, The Craft of the Heart, which is one of the first books in …
- Balancing Effort & Patience… As you’re persistent in this, the skillful qualities grow. Sometimes they grow faster than you might expect, sometimes more slowly, but as long as you’re looking after them properly, they’ll take care of the rest.
- Circumspection… There are the ones that are energizing, like analysis of qualities—that’s the wisdom or discernment faculty—persistence, and rapture. These things energize you. Then there are the calming factors: serenity, concentration, equanimity. You’ve got to figure out which ones you need right now. So how do you figure that out? You watch. You try things out and see what works and …
- Effort against the Hindrances… In other words, base your persistence, which is the second base for success, on the first base: the desire to actually get the mind into concentration and to get past these things. That’s half the battle right there. These techniques then can complete the job, so that the effort you put into the meditation really does bear fruit. The mind can settle down …
- Commit & Reflect… That leads to the next faculty, which is persistence or effort. You actively do try to give rise to skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones. Now, with some of those unskillful qualities, all you have to do is watch them and they go away. It’s as if they’re embarrassed. They thrive in a mind where you’re not paying much attention. When …
- Nourishment from the Breath… As the Buddha says about the bases for power, you always have to have the desire and persistence and intent for there to be concentration to begin with. You have to want to get the mind to settle down, you have to stick with it, and you have to pay full attention. The fourth basis for success is what turns the concentration into a …
- Staying True… This is the element of viriya, or persistence in the practice. It also depends on truthfulness, or sacca. You make up your mind you’re going to stay here, and you’re not going to listen to any voices that tell you to go someplace else or that there are other more important things to do. Only if you stay here can things can …
- Focus on the Precepts… As for larger principles, the Buddha uses them for issues like contentment, non-entanglement, persistence, conviction, but he doesn’t translate the precepts into larger principles, because you can get into trouble that way. For example, some people say the first precept teaches the sanctity of life. Well, if life is sacred, then you can use that principle to justify lying to protect some …
- Look in the Mirror… analysis not only to unskillful mental states, but, ultimately, also to the path—as when he has you analyze the five faculties: Conviction has its allure, but it has its drawbacks. Persistence has its allure, but it has its drawbacks. The same with mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. Even these are things you have to gain escape from. And how do you do that? Through …
- Merit: Goodness of the Heart… Who would he teach first? He first thought of teaching his old teachers, the ones who had taught him about conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment as they understood it. He wanted to share what he’d found with them. But it was too late. They had been reborn in states of the cosmos where they were out of touch with everybody. Then he thought …
- Skillful Desire… You’ll be persistent as you keep coming back, coming back, coming back to the friend. You’ll give your full attention to the friend, figuring out what needs to be done to make things better. Those are all the bases of success right there. They all come from desire. The desire is the part that you have to provide and that you have …
- The Brightness of Life… conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. He says you don’t really know these five faculties until you’ve seen their origination, their passing away, their allure, their drawbacks, and the escape from them. So even the path is something we’re ultimately going to be putting aside. That’s the brightness of life: the point where you can put aside the path, where …
- Finding Balance… If your mind needs more energy, focus on the energizing ones, which are analysis of the dhammas or qualities of the mind, persistence or energy, and then rapture or refreshment. The analogy here is of a fire that’s burning low, so you put more fuel in the fire. Analysis of qualities comes down to something very specific. It’s not an extended abstract …
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