Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. The Field Hospital
     … That way, you start protecting your concentration with discernment, and you strengthen your discernment with your concentration. Of the factors of the noble path, these two are the ones that are the most important: right view and right concentration. So see if you can get them working together—so that you can maintain your field hospital. That way, when you get wounded, you have … 
  3. Start the Year Right Here
     … It starts turning into knowledge and discernment that really can have a revolutionary effect on the mind. In the way you relate to yourself, the way you relate to people around you, you begin to see patterns you didn’t see before. You see some patterns that really are unskillful. Well, you can change them. There are patterns that are skillful. You maintain them … 
  4. Food for Endurance
     … So, in this way, there are three sources for happiness, just as there are three sources for discernment. In the texts they talk about discernment coming from listening, discernment coming from thinking, and discernment coming from developing good qualities. Well, the same three categories apply to happiness: There’s happiness that comes from listening—you realize that there’s still good Dhamma in the … 
  5. Up for the Challenge
    When the Buddha teaches wisdom or discernment, he always talks about things that are in pairs. For instance, there’s one teaching where he says a sign of wisdom is when you know which duties fall to you and which ones don’t. It means there’s a distinction. There are some things you’ve got to work on, some things you’ve got … 
  6. Succeeding at Happiness
     … Then use your discernment, your powers of analysis, both in the act of giving and in reflecting on it. As you give, try to maintain a good attitude in the mind. As the Buddha said, have the attitude that something important will come of this. There were people in his time who said giving didn’t really accomplish anything at all. Everybody was going … 
  7. The Gift of Discernment
     … But the first thing the Buddha wanted to talk about—what, for him was the most important part of his teaching—was discernment. He provided us with admirable friendship so that we would be inspired to adopt what he thought was the most important internal factor, which was appropriate attention: applying discernment to the present moment. In his first sermon, he starts out with … 
  8. The Dhamma Wheel
     … Have you been able to identify where in your mind is the suffering? We have that chant that says, “those who don’t discern suffering,” and the first time around it sounds strange. “Everybody can discern suffering,” you might say. But even though everybody has a sense of suffering, they don’t really discern it. They blame it on all kinds of things that … 
  9. A Seeker’s Habits
     … You want to develop conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment. You work on these, and as you work on these, they begin to make a difference. The one thing he asked you to believe was in the principle of karma: that what you do makes a difference. So as you’re sitting here meditating, it’s not that you’re sitting here waiting for something … 
  10. Determination
     … The first quality is discernment. You have to figure out: What’s a really wise goal to have? What would be a worthwhile way of dedicating your life? Because you do have the choice: You can dedicate your life to a particular goal or you can just say, “Well, I’ll just go with the flow of whatever comes to me.” But the flow … 
  11. Perception
    Perception August 19, 2005 That phrase in the chant just now — “those who don’t discern suffering” — sounds a little strange, doesn’t it? You’d think that everybody would discern suffering, but the verb here is important. Everybody experiences suffering, but not everybody discerns it. “Discerning” means to understand, to see it for what it is, to the point where you can let … 
  12. Being Your Own Teacher
     … And through the practice, you develop what the Buddha calls bhavanamaya-pañña—the discernment that comes from actually developing qualities in the mind. You can hear things and you can think them through. That gives you one level of discernment. But the real discernment that’s going to cut through your defilements has to come from putting the teachings into practice, being your own … 
  13. Part V : Finding a Teacher
     … They come with poison for the mind.” Finally, there’s discernment—which, in this context, is defined as discernment of arising and passing away. What this means is that you learn to look into the mind to see exactly how it’s creating suffering out of things where it doesn’t have to. You can be sitting in a particular situation and suddenly find … 
  14. A Stranger to Your Thoughts
     … One is stillness and the other one is discernment. They go together. They are not two radically different processes. Because after all, to get the mind to settle down and be still, you have to discern what’s going on in the mind. And to discern really clearly, you have to get the mind to be still. But this is not a Catch-22 … 
  15. Asking the Right Questions
     … As for trying to get some discernment, the questions are not totally unrelated. The discernment questions have more to do with seeing things as fabrications—in other words, seeing the intentional element that goes into what you’re creating here. And that’s right here with the breath. The breath itself is a type of fabrication. Your directed thought and evaluation are verbal fabrication … 
  16. Savor Your Breath
     … You want to learn to be sensitive to these things on those terms, because those are the very basic terms of discernment: things as they’re directly experienced. Discernment is not a matter of imposing somebody else’s ideas on your mind, telling yourself, “They say you have to see things as inconstant, stressful, not-self. Okay, where’s the inconstancy?” Then you make … 
  17. A World of Limitations
     … The first one is discernment, being able to discern what’s important, what goals really are worthwhile, what obstacles you’re going to have to overcome in order to get there, what things you’re going to have to do, and what things you’re going to give up: in other words, really understanding the territory. Once you decide that something really is worth … 
  18. Catch Yourself Lying to Yourself
     … If you don’t learn how to be subtle in your speech and don’t learn how to be discerning in a subtle way about your precepts, it’s going to be impossible to be subtle in your discernment about what your mind is doing, how it lies to itself. The primary example is when the mind gets distracted. Often the decision has been … 
  19. Moral Intelligence
     … Emotional intelligence he aligns with discernment—in other words, seeing what motives you have for your thinking, and seeing where different emotions lead, and in particular, motions of passion, aversion and delusion, which, as the sutta we just chanted pointed out, are like fires burning everything you look at and listen to, smell, taste, touch, think about. The discernment in seeing these emotions as … 
  20. Taking Apart Suffering
     … Often we think that you get the mind concentrated and then you work on discernment, but it doesn’t always work that way. In order to get the mind to settle down, you have to understand what the obstacles are, and learn how to take them apart. This means you have to use some discernment to develop concentration. Sometimes the obstacle is pain in … 
  21. In Training
    The Buddha’s instructions on breath meditation start with two steps where you develop your discernment, and then the remaining steps are trainings. The things you discern to begin with are very simple. When is the breath long? When is it short? Then you can discern subtler things. How does long breathing feel? Does it feel right for you right now? How about short … 
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