Search results for: "Persistence"
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- Sophisticated Dhamma… It requires a lot of effort, a lot of persistence, just to stick with one object. Sometimes it seems that focusing the breath is like trying to balance a ball bearing on the tip of a needle. It just keeps falling off, falling off, falling off. So you have to have a lot of respect for the potential of concentration to keep at it …
- Getting the Most Out of the Present… determination, persistence, endurance, truthfulness, goodwill for the people who’d benefit from getting the duty done, equanimity toward the things that you’d rather be doing. You realize that you can’t have your druthers all the time. When you can think in this way, then everything in life becomes a part of the practice. None of your time is wasted. Our problem is …
- Discernment: Commit & Reflect… When you have conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, all these things come together to make your discernment strong. Then the discernment turns around and solidifies those other qualities, because you begin to see things for yourself. You’re taking them not just on faith or because you believe in them. It’s because you’ve seen them. You move from right view to right knowledge …
- Strong Against Anger & Fear… That’s the basis of all the strengths the Buddha recommended—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment: They’re all based on heedfulness. That’s a point that’s not stressed often enough. We hear so much about interconnectedness and the joy we should find in being interconnected—that somehow, if we appreciate our interconnectedness, we will be nicer to one another. Whereas the Buddha …
- Sowing Good Seeds… You plant the seed of staying with the breath, of being mindful, being alert, being persistent, and it grows into a greater and greater sensitivity, greater and greater stability, a sense of well-being, clarity, maturity of mind, as you outgrow childish habits. So make sure you’re planting a good seed right here. Plant the best seed you can. Tend to it, and …
- The Elephant Hunter… They required conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. So he developed those qualities. When he found that the results were not what he’d hoped for, he moved on. But he committed himself first, then he reflected. That’s what he asks you to do, too. Conviction is basically taking on, as a working hypothesis, the teachings that you are responsible for your actions …
- Purity of Heart… We strengthen the mind in our conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. When these qualities are developed, the mind reaches the point where it doesn’t have to depend on any kind of food at all for its happiness. They say that arahants have understood food, and they’re totally independent of nutriment, and, as a result, you can’t trace their path, in …
- Tenacity… You cultivate it, you use it to bring all your wisdom and ingenuity and persistence and intentness to this breath. That gets you to the point where you don’t need desire anymore. The ultimate happiness is that fulfilling. As long as you’re not there yet, learn to cultivate skillful desire. Hold on to the factors of the path as tools, because without …
- Concentration: A Balancing Act… analysis of qualities, persistence, and rapture. Analysis of qualities means reading what’s going on in the mind, trying to be as observant as possible. If you’re feeling sleepy, you can ask yourself, “How do the manifestations of sleepiness play out in the body? Where do you feel them?” In other words, give yourself a question to pursue, to pique your interest. In …
- A Memorial to Your Life… The first is persistence: You stick with it. You have a clear sense of what’s skillful, what’s not skillful, and then you motivate yourself to do what’s skillful. Then you reflect. The reflection is basically the intentness and the circumspection with which you do this. Those are the other two bases for success. ** You really give this your full attention: That …
- Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice… conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. “Concentration” in both cases means the jhanas, but the theme leading you to develop those jhanas, and from there on into discernment, is something that varies. Some people can just work with the jhana itself. You look at whatever state of concentration you have settled into and you examine it to see: Where is there still any stress …
- Goodwill Plus… Then, based on that, there’s the factor for awakening which is persistence—you stick with this—and that’s followed by rapture. It’s a different kind of rapture from the ordinary rapture of when it feels really good to have goodwill. This is the rapture that comes from insight, when the mind begins to understand how it fashions reality in the present …
- A Safe Space Inside… Then there’s persistence. You really stick with it. Whatever is going to be skillful, you try to give rise to it. Whatever is not skillful, you try to abandon it. You also try to be mindful of the lessons you’ve learned about what’s right and what’s wrong. These are lessons you learn from outside, lessons you learn from your own …
- Feeding Off the Future… This leads to persistence. When you have that kind of nourishment from conviction, it makes it easier to stick with something. Because, again, the path doesn’t always give its rewards immediately or as quickly as we’d like it to. But that doesn’t mean it’s not going to give the rewards. Simply that we have more work to do than we …
- The Good We Already Have… This is the persistence that makes the difference. It’s like walking a tightrope. Sometimes you lean too far to the right and fall off; lean too far to the lef and fall off. But after a while, you get so that you can stay on, keep your balance for longer and longer and longer periods of time until it becomes instinctual. You get …
- Fear… that basic principle, believe in the principle of karma—skillful intentions do lead to happiness; unskillful ones, to pain, suffering—you’re going to be very careful about what you do. Persistence comes as the next strength. You just keep at it, because you realize the law of karma is not like a traffic law: It’s not enforced only from 4:30 to …
- Dethinking Thinking… In each case, he developed conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment appropriate to that particular path. When the path didn’t work, he had to ask himself, “Well, why?” That required some thinking, some analysis, to figure out the drawbacks of that path, because that was going to determine what his next path might be. But as for what kind of thinking was actually …
- Good & Independent… This means that from conviction we go to persistence, energy. We do our best to try to figure out what in the mind is unskillful and what in the mind is skillful. We encourage the things that are skillful, like heedfulness, mindfulness, goodwill, concentration. Things that are unskillful, we try to put them aside. Any hindrances that come into the mind, anything that gets …
- Cleanliness is Next to Mindfulness… the desire to do it skillfully; the persistence that sticks with it till you’ve mastered it; intentness, paying a lot of attention to what you’re doing; and analysis, using your powers of discernment to see what’s not yet right, trying to figure out how to get around problems, how to solve them. This fourth factor also involves ingenuity — all the active …
- Using the Committee of the Mind… That’s followed by persistence, where you actually try to abandon what’s unskillful, develop what’s skillful. You continue doing that, you keep at it until there’s a sense of fullness that comes from the fact that you’ve been able to abandon unskillful qualities. That’s the definition of the rapture that comes in the first jhana: rapture born of seclusion …
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