Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. A Warrior’s Strengths
     … And you have to be willing to learn in this way, because that’s where your discernment develops. Discernment comes in seeing cause and effect, and if you don’t see it on your own, the discernment never comes. Other people may admire you for your bravery or dismiss you for your cowardliness, but that’s not the issue. The issue is finding which … 
  3. Jhāna & Discernment
     … There’s a passage where he says, “There’s no discernment without jhāna, no jhāna without discernment.” What he means is that if you want to get the mind into concentration, you have to be able to observe it: See what it’s doing, how it’s putting things together, because that’s the process the Buddha wants you to study and discern. It … 
  4. Mindfulness over Time
     … They talk about discerning long breathing and discerning short breathing, and if you were totally in the present moment, you wouldn’t know what a long breath was. You would have forgotten when the breath started. You wouldn’t be able to compare a long breath with a short breath. Actually, mindfulness means keeping something in mind. That cuts across the present moment, coming … 
  5. Strong Through Mindfulness
     … The Buddha wants us to be discerning, which means seeing, when things come, why they come, how they come, and how we can recognize, when something comes, whether it’s to be developed or abandoned. That’s the kind of discernment we want. And that depends on keeping things in mind. When the Buddha talks about making yourself an island in the flood so … 
  6. The First Noble Truth
    The First Noble Truth November 5, 2015 The passage we chanted now starts with a very strange phrase: “those who don’t discern suffering.” You would think that everybody would discern suffering. But in this passage the Buddha’s talking about understanding suffering on a deeper level. When he explains the truth of suffering—he uses the word dukkha, which can cover everything from … 
  7. Your Tranquility & Your Insight
     … Again, this is how you develop discernment, your discernment. If you could do it just by rote, it wouldn’t be very discerning at all. It would be like a factory process. But the mind is not a factory. And your attachment to things: Even though there’s a common denominator in all attachment, the particulars of your attachments are going to be yours … 
  8. Equanimity in Action, Equanimity at Rest
     … wanting the ability to accept what you can’t change, the courage to change what you can change, and the discernment or wisdom to know the difference. But life is a lot more complicated than that. There are a lot of things that you could change but wouldn’t be worth it. And that requires real discernment. After all, even though we try to … 
  9. Damming & Diverting
     … This is where the discernment comes in. The discernment has already helped in analyzing it in terms of fabrication. But as you keep diverting and diverting and diverting these unskillful thoughts, you get closer and closer to their source. Their source is the allure: why you go for these things. Sometimes you hear that we go for things because we think they have innate … 
  10. Self-Control
     … That’s the Buddha’s gift to us, showing us the skill of learning how to treasure our virtue, our concentration, our discernment, as our most important possessions—how to protect our intentions to make sure that they’re not simply pushed around by negative things outside. You look around at the world and it’s hardly ideal at all. We’re living in … 
  11. Strategic Wisdom
     … That’s where the discernment comes in, because in getting the mind to settle down, it’s not that the discernment comes only after the mind really is still. The process of getting the mind to settle down does require some wisdom, it requires some discernment, requires you using your intelligence and your ingenuity. That kind of concentration has discernment built into it. You … 
  12. Skills to Make a Difference
     … This is how discernment develops. Remember, the Buddha’s first question for discernment is a dualistic question: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? When, when I do it, will lead to my long-term harm and pain?” You’re trying to see these distinctions. When the Buddha sets forth his answers to that question, basically they … 
  13. To Strengthen the Path
     … The other strength that’s related to that is discernment. When you see that you’re creating suffering for yourself anywhere, you want to look into it. We talk about seeing things in terms of the four noble truths, and it sounds kind of exotic and formal. But it’s actually something very close to what we do a lot of the time with … 
  14. Sort Things Out
     … That doesn’t require much discernment at all. But we’re in a stage of the practice where you have to make distinctions. You’re suffering. You want to stop. In light of that distinction, some actions are skillful; some actions are not. Some actions are more skillful than others. There are gradations. It requires discernment to see that. The discernment gets sharper the … 
  15. Mud Houses
     … Use the aggregates of concentration to develop discernment to induce a sense of dispassion for other aggregates. But then you’re still here with the concentration; you’re still here with the discernment. This is where the discernment gets really sharp, when it begins to see that even the concentration and the discernment are fabricated. If you’re going to find real happiness, you … 
  16. Opting Out
     … The same with discernment: All three of these dhammas of the path are dhammas of restraint. With discernment, you realize there are certain desires you could give in to, but they’re going to lead to suffering, and you find a way beyond those desires. When the goal is reached, when release comes, you’ve found a happiness that doesn’t have to depend … 
  17. Develop Your Inner Observer
     … And it’s not just in the beginning stages, as when Rahula was told to ask himself about “this action I want to do,” “this action I’m doing,” “this action I’ve done.” When the Buddha is talking about developing discernment, developing mindfulness as a governing principle, he has you say, “I will try to develop any discernment that I haven’t developed … 
  18. A Positive-Sum Game
     … Yet if you look inside the mind, here’s something where you can gain power, gain control over the mind for the purpose of concentration, for the purpose of discernment, for the purpose of release. That’s a game when there are no losers. It’s a positive-sum game. So focus on what you can control. Learn how to get some control over … 
  19. Deconstruction
     … You come out, and you can tell yourself that you gained discernment as you came out. But there’s no discernment in that concentration. It’s just brutally beating the mind down. Some people get addicted to this because they like the quiet. They don’t like going back to breath meditation, because it requires work; it’s not as quiet. But the Buddha … 
  20. Protecting Yourself Against Yourself
     … This is why concentration needs the protection of discernment. When you’re in concentration, you’re focused on one thing. Now, right concentration has the qualities of discernment built right into it, with that directed thought and evaluation. You’re looking at the breath, evaluating how the breath is going, and then figuring out how to breathe in a way that’s more comfortable … 
  21. Wise Endurance
     … The Buddha’s first principle of determination is not to neglect discernment. We have to think about how the messages of the Buddha’s teachings on discernment aid in putting up with difficult situations. The important thing they all emphasize is the fact that you can do something to make sure you don’t suffer. In some cases, this involves thinking of new ways … 
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