Search results for: "Wisdom"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. How to Read Yourself
     … But he had the wisdom to see that there must be something else, another path. He was willing to give up the pride that went with his austerities. Then, as he got the mind into concentration, he began to gain knowledge. And again, he didn’t get waylaid by his knowledge. There were people in his time who, when they began to remember previous … 
  17. The Skills of Stillness
     … This is where wisdom comes into the meditation. You could be mindful of anything, you could keep anything in mind. You could be alert to anything in the present moment. But if you try to do this well, you try to keep in mind the things that are relevant to getting the mind to settle down and you’re alert to what you’re … 
  18. Circumspection
     … There are the ones that are energizing, like analysis of qualities—that’s the wisdom or discernment faculty—persistence, and rapture. These things energize you. Then there are the calming factors: serenity, concentration, equanimity. You’ve got to figure out which ones you need right now. So how do you figure that out? You watch. You try things out and see what works and … 
  19. Focused on Results
     … After all, the Buddha said that wisdom begins with the question, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” That’s looking for a result right there. Long-term results, lasting results: That’s what we want. The question is, “How do we get those lasting results?” Two wrong ways of being focused on results that get in … 
  20. Virtues & Values
     … So if a thought is unskillful, you try to develop the wisdom to recognize it as unskillful and to make up your mind to abandon it. If a skillful quality arises in the mind, again, you don’t simply watch it come and go, and think that that’s insight. You try to develop it; you try to maintain it. You protect it. And … 
  21. Four Virtues
     … You want wisdom, you want mindfulness and discernment to do your looking. In this way, you’re developing qualities you’re going to need for formal meditation. Looking, listening, and smelling, thinking, tasting, and touching: These are things we do all the way throughout the day. So there is always opportunity for practicing, for developing the mind. Another one of the four virtues is … 
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