Search results for: "Persistence"
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- 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 …
- Customs of the Noble Ones… This doesn’t mean he was sweating all the time, beating himself up all the time, but there was a persistence. If things required delicate work, he would do the delicate work. If things required patience, if they took time to see and to understand, he would take the time to see and to understand. But he was constantly working on, “What could I …
- It’s All in What You’re Doing… They talk about mindfulness, analysis of qualities, persistence, rapture, concentration, serenity, equanimity. That was in one of the sets. All the sets are sets of qualities. So you want to look into the qualities that are motivating you here, and that you’re applying to the breath. In terms of your motivation, the number one motivation, the Buddha said, is heedfulness. You’re reminding …
- Large-hearted… If you’re going to be persistent, you have to be resilient and enduring. If you’re going to be resilient and enduring, you have to find joy not only in the fact that your aim is high, but also that you’re going to enjoy what you do along the way, no matter how difficult it gets. I had a student one time …
- Purity Comes Through Discernment… This is where you take all the tools you’ve used in developing concentration—the breath, directed thought, evaluation, perception, feeling—and you apply them to the issue of why that particular thought, why that particular emotion is so persistent. Where is the attachment that keeps digging for it and bringing it out? Simply watching the thought come and go, come and go, come …
- Patience & Consistency… The purpose of this is to give mind a place where it can settle down and be consistent in its gaze, be consistent in its mindfulness, its alertness, its persistence—all the good qualities that nourish the mind. It’s not that you gobble down a huge amount in a short time and then wander off. You take a bit here and a bit …
- Taking the Buddha at his Word… The list starts with conviction, and then goes through persistence, mindfulness, and concentration to discernment. If you’re convinced that there are reasons for these practices, you’ve taken the first step. Then you stick with them. And it’s through sticking with them that, in the activity itself, you begin to see the good results. You start connecting cause and effect. That’s …
- Bodies & Minds Outside… What did they have that you don’t have? They had persistence. Where did they get that? It wasn’t that they were born with it. They developed it. You can develop it, too. This way, the reflection on other people’s minds can lift you up. When you hear about people sitting long hours of meditation, you say, “Why can’t I try …
- Determination… But then the other heart qualities besides goodwill focus on things like persistence and endurance: the strengths that see you through. These depend on the third quality, which is relinquishment. There are things you’re going to have to give up. But when you give them up, you have to give them up in a way that you’re not just depriving yourself. We …
- Not Just a Witness… If there was a course of action he thought was worthwhile, if it seemed likely to bear fruit, he would follow it with all his conviction and persistence and mindfulness and concentration and discernment—in other words, putting all his strength into the practice. When he got results—when he was convinced that these were the best results you could get from that practice …
- Break Things Down… And have some persistence.” In the same way, even though we’re told that the final thing that stands between you and awakening is your sense of self, we want go straight there. But you can’t do that. That ladder will fall. You need a healthy sense of self to get up to those higher levels, and that requires going through all the …
- Undefeatism… You’ll see that other voices will come up and say, “Well, I don’t know if I can do this.” Ask yourself, who are those voices? What do they want? You’ve got to maintain the determination to stay, the persistence. Then you examine it: What would be involved in having a daily practice? What would some of the problems be? What arguments …
- A New Framework… things like conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment. You have to be very alive to the difference that your choices make. This is where we push ourselves out of the bell curve: by being very careful about what we do. Ardent: This is usually translated in terms of right effort. You recognize what’s skillful, you recognize what’s unskillful, and you do what you …
- The Gift of Meditation… analysis of qualities; persistence, which means right effort; and rapture. These things energize you. In other words, you analyze what’s going on in the mind to see what’s skillful and what’s not skillful. If you see that something is skillful, you try to encourage it; if it’s not, you try to discourage it. This means, on the one hand, if …
- Maintenance Work… So these qualities of consistency, persistence, stick-to-it-ivedness, training the mind so it can really trust itself, depend on itself, rely on itself in the midst of all the inconstancy in the world: These are the qualities that make all the difference in the meditation.
- The Brahmaviharas Are Not Enough… That, in turn, moves into persistence when you actually try to abandon what’s unskillful and develop what is skillful. When you do this skillfully, you get a sense of fullness, a sense of rapture. And then the mind settles down into the remaining factors for awakening: calm, deeper concentration, and equanimity. The equanimity itself, though, is not the end. The Buddha talks about …
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