Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. For Goodness’ Sake
     … In other words, when your discernment points out the fact that the consequences are going to be good or bad for certain actions, you’ve got to look at your emotions. Are they on the side of what your discernment is telling you, or not? Sometimes they are; sometimes not. When they’re on the side of your discernment, then there’s no real … 
  12. The Middle Way
     … Our discernment has a way of blowing out very easily, too, as the winds of the world keep buffeting it. So every year on the full moon night of July, every time this night comes around, we try remind ourselves we have to maintain that candle of discernment, that light of discernment in spite of the winds of the world. If we don’t … 
  13. Determined to Practice
     … to abandon unskillful behavior, to get the mind into concentration, to develop discernment, to gain release. All these things follow naturally from the initial conditions. The problem is those initial conditions: Those are the things that do require an act of will. They don’t happen on their own. There are two primary ones that the Buddha mentions. One is friendship with admirable people … 
  14. Nobility Through Inner Strength
     … If there’s an impulse to go away, how do you say No to the impulse? How do you learn to keep the mind here with a sense of well-being? That way, you’re developing your own discernment. It’s through trying to be skillful that our discernment develops. Otherwise, we can learn about all kinds of wise things in the books, but … 
  15. Can All Beings Be Happy?
     … It might work for you.” The same with wisdom and discernment: It’s good to be able to share what you’ve got, to encourage other people to develop their wisdom and their discernment as well. But, and this is where it gets difficult, there are limits to how much you can influence the behavior of other people. That’s where equanimity has to … 
  16. The Garden of Enlightenment
     … When there’s joy and pleasures, it’s natural there’s going to be concentration, and so on down the line, from concentration to discernment, from discernment to release. These processes are natural, but they don’t just happen on their own. You’re taking a natural process and you’re training it in a particular direction, starting with the precepts, which are an … 
  17. The Power of the Mind
     … heightened virtue, heightened mind, heightened discernment. Okay, which part of that training is not yet heightened in you? Does your virtue need to be heightened? Does your concentration? Your discernment? What’s lacking? You’ve got three months to settle down, living in a community of other people who are also practicing. What do you want to make out of this time? Choose wisely … 
  18. Your Inner Teacher
     … If you want to a person’s discernment, you have to see how that person deals with questions, knowing if the question needs to be rephrased, if the question needs to be put aside, answered with a counter question, or given just a plain old straight answer. That’s how you can get a sense that person’s powers of discernment. But again, it … 
  19. Right Fear
     … It’s only when you adhere to the precepts that other meditation techniques have a chance of really working, leading you not only to concentration but also to discernment—the discernment that’s honest enough to see your mistakes, that’s not afraid of seeing your mistakes: honest enough to admit them and ingenious enough to find a way to not make the same … 
  20. The Skills of Truth & Calm
     … You’re determined on discernment; you’re determined on truth, relinquishment, and stilling or peace. In other words, you’re trying to use your discernment to understand how to get the mind to settle down. You’re true to yourself in trying to master this skill and in being very honest about when the mind is wandering off, so you that can do something … 
  21. Training Your Inner Teacher
     … All of that comes under discernment that comes from listening. The next steps are the discernment that comes from thinking. You take the Dhamma you’ve heard and you compare it with other lessons you’ve learned, and you think about it, till what you have learned recently makes sense in terms of what you’ve learned before. That’s the discernment that comes … 
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