Search results for: "Persistence"
- Page 16
- Practical Wisdom… This is one of the reasons why we develop alertness, mindfulness, concentration, discernment, and how we learn to be persistent and ardent in developing these qualities of heart and mind. That’s because these are the qualities that guarantee the quality of your intentions. There’s a teaching in the commentaries about the cycle of action. First comes the intention and then the result …
- Judging the Dhamma… This is why when you deal with pain, you’re told not to think about how long the pain has been persisting in the past or how long it’s going to last into the future. That thought weighs the present moment down unnecessarily. It places restrictions on how much freedom you have here and now. And the same principle applies to all your …
- Questioning Your Conviction… Sariputta, “Are you convinced that the five strengths of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment lead to the deathless?” And Sariputta says, “No, I’m not convinced. I know.” And how did he know? Because he questioned things, tested things, tested himself. **So even though conviction is the foundation post, it’s not the whole building. And before you put up the whole building …
- The Buddha Didn’t Play Gotcha… You use desire, you use persistence, you use your intent, as you really focus on what you’re doing. And you use your powers of analysis and ingenuity, figuring out what’s going wrong, what’s not working right here, what distractions are getting in the way. You bring all of these bases of success to bear on what you’re doing. But they …
- Reading & Meditating… They could give him hot compresses and other things to help alleviate some of the pain, but still the pain was persistent. Then one night he woke up, and all the monks who were looking after him were fast asleep. The first thought that went through his mind was, “Who’s looking after whom here?” But then he told himself that as long as …
- Attahi Attano Natho… mindfulness, the ability to keep something in mind continually; alertness, the ability to watch what’s actually going on; persistence, the ability to stick with something. These qualities, as you develop them, can provide food for the mind from within the mind. When disturbing thoughts come into the mind or disturbing things happen outside, if you’re mindful and alert, you can keep reminding …
- Things Don’t Have to Be This Way… They require persistence. This is where it’s hard: in the sticking-to-it. He says, simply, “Be mindful: Keep in mind the fact that you want to act in a skillful way.” Keep remembering that the power of the mind lies in its intentions, and that you want to learn how to focus those intentions properly. When the power of the mind is …
- Discernment Fosters Concentration… This is precisely the type of attitude you want to foster as you develop this factor for awakening, because then, from there the list goes on to persistence. You get down to work. Anything that’s unskillful in the mind, you hold it in check. As for skillful thoughts, you allow them but you try to lasso them in, realizing that the most skillful …
- Meditation as a Skill… This comes under not only desire, but also persistence. You just stick with it. Here again, you have to know how much energy to put in: how much is too much, how much is too little, how strong your focus should be, how weak it should be. Tune it so it’s just right. This relates to the third basis for success, which is …
- The Heart to Keep Going… Right effort is an essential factor in the path—generating desire, upholding your intent, maintaining your persistence to abandon unskillful qualities that have arisen. Notice that the unskillful qualities are there, and you’re going to do battle with them—you’re going to figure out one way or another to get yourself motivated to stick with the effort. This is one area where …
- Not-self in Context… As the Buddha said, when you have a sense of yourself, you have a sense of what talents and skills you’ve developed in terms of conviction, learning, persistence, relinquishment, discernment, and what he calls quick-wittedness—in other words, your use of your intelligence to come up with solutions to problems that haven’t been explained to you. You want to keep tabs …
- Who’s in Charge Here?… Who are you going to put in charge inside? When the Buddha talks about the faculties of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, that word “faculty” basically means who’s in charge in the mind. So do your best to put someone good in charge and make them powerful so that they can keep control over everything inside. That’s how your practice develops …
- Attahi Attano Natho… So we have to work on this skill—and it’s a skill that requires work, persistent work. It’s not that we jump from being totally unskillful to totally skillful all at once. It’s success by approximation. You work at it and you find yourself getting more and more perceptive, more and more sensitive, more and more discerning as the practice progresses …
- Step by Step… The reason we’re commemorating him is because of the good examples he set, primarily in the area of generosity, persistence, and truthfulness. We look back on the history of the world, and there are very few people that really stand out for their goodness, but those who do, stand out because of these qualities. They’re generous with other human beings. They set …
- The End of the World… Your goodness is crushed only by your own discouragement, by your own lack of faith, your lack of conviction, lack of persistence. Those are the things that crush you, and yet those are also things you can do something about. The mountains keep moving in, moving in. The world is swept away. It’s the nature of the world. If the north mountain doesn …
- Values of the Noble Ones… generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, equanimity. Those are all good things to develop. You simply have to figure out which ones are appropriate right here and now. If the list of ten is too long, just think, “How about goodwill?” Goodwill is not just a pink-cotton-candy attitude you spread out with cloud machines. It’s basically thinking, “What …
- Meaning & Becoming… It includes generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, equanimity. When you develop these qualities, they take you out. So, if you’re looking for meaning and significance., it doesn’t have anything to do with the relationships you develop, although if you want to find what the Buddha calls an admirable friend, someone to helps you develop these qualities, that’s …
- The Focus on Suffering… Analysis of what’s going on in the present moment, persistence, rapture: These are very energizing factors. If your mind is already scattered, it doesn’t help to add more of these things. In other words, the fire’s already too strong, and you keep pouring more and more fuel onto the fire, so of course it gets worse. That’s when you need …
- 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 …
- Feeding on Feeding… He just teaches you a new way to eat—the difference here being that as you feed on the path and develop the qualities of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, these become strengths. Ultimately, they get so strong that they bring the mind to the point where it doesn’t need to feed anymore. This is the part of the practice that really …
- Load next page...
