Search results for: "Discernment"
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- Protection Through the Practice… Then you carry out their instructions and you become more discerning yourself about what those dangers are. When you meditate, you don’t simply follow instructions. Meditation is designed to make you sensitive to cause and effect as they’re happening in the mind, and that requires that you experiment and observe the results of your action. Meditation is also designed to give you …
- A Path Under the Trees… When you think in these ways, you bring some discernment to your concentration. It’s not the case that you have to wait until your concentration is perfected and then you develop discernment. You develop discernment in the process of getting the mind to settle down, because you come to see the mind a lot more clearly and understand what it’s doing. This …
- Switzerland Inside… The first one is that whatever going to happen in the world, you have no idea what will happen, but you do know that whatever comes up, you’re going to need a lot of inner wealth—like the mindfulness you’re developing right now, the alertness, the concentration, the discernment. These things will stand you in good stead no matter what. So, put …
- Nurturing Patient Endurance… The remaining two qualities the Buddha said you have to work on are discernment and ingenuity. Discernment means basically seeing what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing. And then ingenuity, quick-wittedness: Patibhana is the Pali term. It’s a term that doesn’t appear in many lists, but it is important. You don’t go just by what …
- Bases of Power… It’s in learning how to read your own mind that the concentration develops your discernment, and develops your sensitivity as to what works and what doesn’t work. That’s where the real discernment lies. So we use these lists that the Buddha provided as ways of reading ourselves, and it’s in reading ourselves that we learn the discernment that’s not …
- The Need for a Purpose… Someone asked the Buddha one time, “What is virtue for?” “Virtue is for the sake of developing concentration.” “What’s concentration for?” “Concentration is for the sake of developing discernment.” “What’s discernment for?” “For the sake of release.” “What’s release for?” “For the sake of unbinding, total freedom.” “What’s unbinding for?” The Buddha said, “No, stop there. Your question is going …
- Skillful Thinking… This is the Buddha’s guideline for discernment. Actually his guidelines go back even more simply than that, pointing out that there are actions that you may like to do that give good results, actions that you may like to do that give bad results, actions you don’t like to do that give good results, and actions you don’t like to do …
- Determined to Be Undefeated by Death… The first is that you use your discernment: Remind yourself of why it’s good to settle down, the benefits of getting the mind to rest and to have a chance to see itself clearly as it’s reflected in the breath, and whatever other ways you can think will make yourself want to stay here. The second step is that you’re true …
- Magha Puja… Those two activities will help you cleanse the mind, so that the mind will be bright, a light to itself, filled with the light of discernment. Those candles that we were carrying around the sala tonight: Those stand for discernment. The flowers stand for concentration, the mind that blooms. The incense stands for virtue. As the texts say, the fragrance of virtue is greater …
- Mindful Judgment… It says we don’t discern suffering, which sounds kind of strange. After all, everybody knows that there’s suffering. It’s one of the most basic facts of being aware. Being a conscious agent, we’re bound to come into pain, suffering, mental suffering, physical pain. These things just right here, but we don’t really discern them. To “discern” them means to …
- A Willingness to Learn… And in the course of doing that, it gains a lot of discernment. And this is the discernment that ultimately leads to release, the total cure. There are passages where the Buddha talks about getting the mind into strong states of concentration and then staying there long enough, not being in a hurry to jump onto the next stage. Otherwise, you get lost in …
- Food for the Mind… And when concentration is strong, discernment develops. When discernment is strong, the mind is released. So these five qualities—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment—are the qualities that give strength to the mind. And in particular concentration. There are many passages in the Canon where the Buddha talks about the mind feeding on the rapture of jhāna, or of jhāna as being provisions …
- Still… After all, we’ve read so much about how you don’t want to get stuck on concentration, that the real business in the meditation is the discernment. But a lot of discernment comes from maintaining the concentration. The part of the mind that’s antsy to move on: When you can learn how to relax it, the antsiness, the tension, dissolves away. You …
- Dichotomies… There was a famous translator one time who translated that passage and then wrote a footnote saying he didn’t understand how this was the proper description for discernment. I guess he was assuming that discernment had to mean seeing things in terms of the three characteristics. But the Buddha’s wisdom teachings are all about “two’s.” The two teachings he says are …
- Your Judgments Matter… So try to exercise your powers of judgment, because for the Buddha this is an important part of discernment. When he talks about developing analysis of qualities, the discernment factor in the factors of awakening, you start out by seeing what’s skillful and what’s unskillful. In a similar vein, the Buddha would talk about developing your discernment by looking at things in …
- A Dhamma Bucket List… The last quality is discernment. The Buddha calls this penetrative discernment into arising and passing away that leads to the right ending of stress and suffering. You don’t simply watch things come and go. As you meditate, you try to get a sense of which things are good things to come and which things are good things to go. That’s what’s …
- Pleasures & Pains on the Middle Way… It’s a path that requires discernment. Extremes are easy—easy in the sense that they don’t require much thought. But finding the point of just right requires discernment. And it’s in developing your sensitivity to that point of just right in different circumstances that your discernment becomes sharp enough to see something that goes beyond.
- Breath Energies… You want to keep it protected—because as you do, your powers of mindfulness grow; your powers of concentration grow; your discernment gets more and more sensitive. Discernment isn’t just a matter of learning words and then applying them to what’s going on. It’s a matter of sensitivity—noticing what you’re doing. And sometimes what you’re doing is very …
- Dhamma Survivalism… It’s composed both of concentration and discernment. The concentration is what gives you that sense of well-being, simply being here right now, breathing in, breathing out, focused in the body, gaining a sense of the different energies flowing around, and seeing what you can do with them—learning to take an interest in this dimension of your awareness, because it has a …
- Five Steps to Insight… through mindfulness and through discernment. The Buddha himself makes the comparison. He says mindfulness is like a dam that stops things. In other words, you remind yourself you don’t want to go with that thought, so you block it. Discernment is what cuts the current, takes it apart. So you may want to look into it—when this distracting thought arises, exactly how …
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