Search results for: "Conviction"
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- Heedful of Ruts in the Mind… of it; when something skillful comes, you try to develop it. You follow the duties of right effort. As the Buddha said, heedfulness lies at the base of all the strengths: conviction, persistence—persistence is right effort—right mindfulness, right concentration, and the discernment of right view and right resolve. Everything good comes out of heedfulness. So always keep that quality uppermost in your …
- You Contain Multitudes… When you’re firm in that conviction, then you can get all the other selves gradually into line. Say, “Hey, we’re looking for happiness.” Some of them will say, “But I want happiness right now.” This is what the concentration is for: Learn how to tap into a skillful sense of well-being whenever you need it so that you can show even …
- A Unified Committee… And all of that depends on conviction. So you have to be convinced in the worth of concentration: *samadhi-garu atapi—*one who is ardent with respect for concentration. Respect, faith, trust: They all go together. You have to trust concentration. It may not seem obvious how it’s going give rise to insight or when it’s going give rise to insight, but …
- Family Ties… As he said, some parents have no virtue, no generosity, no conviction, and no discernment. And your way to repay them is not just to hang around and do everything they tell you. You try to find some way of inducing them to be generous if you can, more virtuous if you can. The “if you can” here is important. Sometimes you realize you …
- Self-reliance… people who have conviction in the Buddha’s awakening; people who are generous, virtuous, discerning. And you try to emulate their qualities. You listen to the Dhamma, you try to remember it, think about it so that it makes sense, and then measure your own actions against the Dhamma. And you’re not simply involved in listening, you’re really actively trying to search …
- Learn from the Ants… So even when he was studying with the teachers who taught very high levels of concentration—the dimension of nothingness, the dimension of neither perception and non-perception—he saw that they’d developed conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. They devoted good qualities of the mind to this, but they rested content with something that wasn’t ultimate. He, however, wasn’t satisfied …
- Energy & Efficiency… And the Buddha then said, “In the same way, you should tune your energy to the point where it’s just right and then tune the rest of the strings of your practice.” In other words, conviction, mindfulness, concentration, discernment: Tune those to the level of your energy. In that way the practice will come out right. So keep this in mind as you …
- Chewed Up by Your Food… t have to be a certain way for there to be a sense of well-being in the mind. This is how this good food develops the strengths of the mind: conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. This way, the mind, more and more, can stand on its own two feet. And unlike the body, the mind—when it feeds off mental food, off …
- Four Mountains Moving In… The media will divert our focus other places, but we have to hold firm in our conviction that what we do is important, what we do is going to make the difference between danger and lack of danger. Because it is possible to get to the end of danger, this interconnectedness of ours. Sometimes we call it inner-being, but it’s basically inter …
- Like an Athlete in Training… You’re trying to strengthen the mind, so you strengthen the qualities that give rise to more conviction, more persistence, more mindfulness, more concentration, more discernment. Watch out for the food that would eat away at these things. In this way, you protect the Dhamma inside yourself, which is where it’s best protected. You look outside, and sometimes it’s hard to see …
- A Position of Strength… choose to do or say or think comes from a position of strength and not a position of weakness. The strength there is the strength of skillful qualities in the mind: conviction in the importance of maintaining a skillful state of mind, persistence in keeping it going, mindfulness, concentration, discernment. When these things are strong, when they’re in charge of your mind, then …
- The Mind Comes First… He would often say, as you begin to meditate, to get the mind in a state where it has a sense of confidence, a sense of conviction, a sense of joy in what it’s doing. Keep that joy going regardless of how quickly or slowly the body seems to respond. “If the mind were to have a face,” he’d say, “have a …
- You Can Do It… They include conviction, a sense of shame, a sense of compunction, learning, generosity. These are all things that human beings can work on, human beings can master. Some of those knowledges might be beyond us, but the ability to see a defilement and put an end to it is not, the ability to get your mind to settle down is not. These things are …
- An Island in the Flood… the nutrition of conviction that what you do is going to come back at you, so you want to do things well; the nourishment of persistence, sticking with something again, and again, and again, making good things habitual; the nourishment of mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. There are all these good things here on this island in the middle of the flood. So do your …
- The Real World Isn’t for Real… chips. The more you eat, the more you want, but they never really satisfy you and they make you sick to boot. The Buddha offers genuine health food for the mind: conviction in the power of your actions. He encourages persistence, i.e., learning to take delight in developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones, whether it means just watching them or actually actively …
- What Are You Bringing?… Bring an attitude of respect, of conviction, of confidence, because that makes all the difference in the meditation. If you’re simply here thinking, “What am I going to get out of this?” your attitude toward meditation is more like an exchange or a monetary trade. You won’t put anything into it until you’re convinced you’ll get something out of it …
- Songkran Blessing… The strength inside, of course, would be the five strengths, beginning with the strength of conviction that your actions really do make a difference in life, so you want to be careful about what you do. There’s also the strength of persistence, when you stick with the principle that you want to do what’s only skillful, you want to abandon anything that …
- A Gift of Strength… First there’s the strength of conviction: that your actions really are important, the things you do, the things you say and think, really do shape your life. What does that mean? It means you have to look after the source of your actions, which is the mind, the intentions in the mind. In fact, the Buddha actually said at one point that your …
- Protecting Your Space… But you’ve got to have the conviction that your actions are creating the majority of the things you sense in your environment. So you’ve got to look at your actions. What kind of environment are you creating for yourself as a meditator? The first step in creating a good environment is following the precepts. For the monks, of course, this means following …
- Planting a Tree… This is why conviction is an important principle in the practice. It’s what keeps you going. In some cases, it has to be joined with patience. And the best way to be patient is to learn how to enjoy what you’re doing, without thinking too much of where you want the meditation to go. Ajaan Fuang used to say, “Play at the …
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