Search results for: "Wisdom"

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  2. Good Eating
     … This is why the Buddha said that the beginning of wisdom is when you ask someone who knows, “What, when I do it, will be for my long-term welfare and happiness?” In other words, you’re going to learn to feed off of your actions, and you try to feed off actions that give long-term gratification, rather than just a short, nice … 
  3. Slowing Down to Look
     … This is one of the problems of translating pañña, the word for discernment, as “wisdom.” We tend to think of wisdom as being wise sayings, and you can memorize lots and lots of wise sayings, but then the wise question is: When are they relevant? Discernment is a matter of seeing things as they actually arise, seeing what’s skillful and what’s unskillful … 
  4. Make a Difference
     … in a better position to pass judgment on them. We hear so often that we’re not supposed to be passing judgment. Well, that idea doesn’t come from the Buddha. Wisdom, discernment, for him, is a matter of passing judgment: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What will lead to my long-term harm and … 
  5. Training the Whole Mind
     … It rearranges all the power balances in the mind so that truth begins to take over, wisdom begins to take over, discernment begins to take charge. These become the big powers in your mind, the ones in charge of any discussion. When that’s the kind of mind you have, it’s a really good mind to live in. We live in physical places … 
  6. Bowing & Chanting
     … In case of the Buddha, those qualities are compassion, wisdom, and purity. If you really want to take refuge, you try to bring these qualities into yourself. The Dhamma teaches virtue, concentration, discernment, release. The Sangha represents your willingness to practice the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma—in other words, not just in accordance with your preferences, but in accordance with what the … 
  7. Mindfulness of Death
     … But you want to make sure that your goodness survives, your wisdom survives. Your mindfulness, your alertness, your ardency: You want them to be right there. You want them to be habitual. The more they become habitual, the more likely you’ll be able to draw on them. So as you’re sitting down under the trees, walking through the orchard, you don’t … 
  8. What Is Skillful?
    Wisdom, the Buddha says, begins with a series of questions: What is skillful? What is unskillful? What is blameworthy? What is blameless? What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness, and what, when I do it, will lead to my long-term harm and pain? Doing meditation is one of the answers to that question. It’s one … 
  9. In Tune
     … That’s a lot of where the wisdom lies. After all, anybody can find short-term pleasures without reference to whether they’re going to be making you happy in the long-term. But it’s when you think about the long-term, that’s when you’re wise. That means you’ve got to put your likes and dislikes aside. “I like doing … 
  10. Trustworthy Judgment
     … The Buddha was wise, so we try to develop our own wisdom. The Buddha was pure in his behavior, so we try to develop purity in ours. The Buddha was compassionate, wanting true happiness for himself, true happiness for all living beings, so we try to develop compassion as well, for ourselves and for the people around us. Only when we’ve developed these … 
  11. Easy to Instruct
     … And again, use your wisdom to make yourself willing to put them aside. That’s the kind of should we have here in practice. The second point was the line that says, “We should be easy to instruct.” Now, if you’re ever been a teacher, you realize that there are two qualities you look for in a student who’s easy to instruct … 
  12. Heedful of What’s Precious
     … So an important quality in gaining wisdom is learning how to ask questions, trying to figure things out. When a skillful state arises in the mind, you want to figure out, “How do I keep it going?” If it disappears, you want to figure out, “Well, what happened? Why did it disappear?” Similarly with unskillful states: If you see something unskillful coming into the … 
  13. The Primacy of the Mind (1)
     … The merit doesn’t come to us.” I don’t know where they got that idea, because the Commentary is full of talk about how when you clean up the monastery, you gain in wisdom. The place becomes new because of you. That becomes your merit. So, we look around and see opportunities for giving of ourselves. At the same time, we see opportunities … 
  14. Goodwill for the Breath
     … As the Buddha once said, wisdom and discernment begin with that question: What can we do that will lead to our long-term welfare and happiness? The whole teaching comes out of that question. We practice generosity, we practice virtue, as means for long-term happiness. We come to meditate, and it’s for the same purpose. So you want to do the meditation … 
  15. Right but Wrong
     … So when the truck driver thought that leaving his truck dirty was a sign of wisdom, understanding the inconstancy of all things, it was a misuse of the teaching. You try to be clean. One of the basic attributes of a good practitioner is that you’re clean about the place where you live, the place where you meditate, because that develops good habits … 
  16. Good & Bad Meditation
     … But you want to get so that you can pass judgment on things in a judicious way—i.e., you’re no longer judgmental, but you use your powers of judgment wisely, precisely, accurately, with real wisdom. You’re responsible for your meditation. Once you accept that attitude of responsibility, you become a lot more careful, a lot more mature. You don’t blindly … 
  17. Coping & Beyond Coping
     … You need the wisdom that comes from taking a larger perspective on things. The Buddha talks about this. There are cases where people come to him and they’ve just lost a wife, a husband, a child; and he has them reflect on the fact that this is the way it is: Wherever there’s birth, there’s going to be aging, there’s … 
  18. Make Yourself Reliable
     … So the way you feel your body from within often has nothing to do with any wisdom at all. It has more to do with the fact that you have certain habits. When anger comes, you tense up the body in one way. Greed, comes, lust comes, fear comes, laziness comes… when you’re feeling lazy, you can create all kinds of sensations in … 
  19. Your Actions Are Yours
     … And some people think that’s wisdom. When the Buddha talks about the discernment that’s penetrative—discernment into arising and passing away—the important adjective there is that it’s “penetrative.” When your discernment is penetrative, what does that mean? It means that you recognize that there are skillful actions and unskillful ones, skillful arisings and unskillful ones. If something is skillful, you … 
  20. Metta
     … That’s what brings some wisdom into your goodwill. You’re doing this for yourself, so that you can be a reliable person. Whether people deserve your goodwill or not is not the issue. You need your own goodwill both for your practice of the precepts and for your practice in meditation. For the meditation to go well, you’ve got to get the … 
  21. Evaluating the Practice
     … It’s a wisdom factor, a discernment factor, and it’s really important in the practice: looking at what you’re doing and learning how to evaluate it, trying to figure out what’s wrong and what can be corrected. It’s through developing this factor that you become a more and more reliable meditator, and also a more reliable friend to yourself. You … 
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