Search results for: "Wisdom"
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- The Karma of Not-self… That’s basic wisdom. And it requires a skillful kind of self to do that. In one way, you might say that you have lots of different selves, and some of the selves can train the other selves: The self that forms around an unskillful desire can be trained sometimes by a self that forms around a skillful one. So it’s not the …
- No Preferences… There’s a sutta where the Buddha defines wisdom and discernment in terms of how you handle four courses of action. The first two are the things you like to do that give good results, and the things you don’t like to do that give bad results. Those two are not hard. They’re no-brainers. You avoid the things that you don …
- What We Have in Common… Each had something distinctive to offer to the group—in terms of wisdom, harmoniousness, or the sacrifices he or she made on the path. But it was all for the same purpose, which added to the honor of the group as a whole. So here we are, coming from many different backgrounds ourselves: different parts of the world, different strata of society. What brings …
- The Bureaucracy of the Defilements… As long as everything is transparent—you’ve got wisdom in charge, you’ve got discernment in charge—you find that this bureaucracy, instead of continually churning out problems and churning out suffering, can actually become harmless. Blameless. Useful. So it’s the bureaucracy of your defilements, not the bureaucracy of the ego, that you have to watch out for. The problem lies, not …
- The Lightened Mind… There’s a line of thought that says the path culminates in discernment or wisdom, but that’s not the case. The path culminates in release. Here release means release from all things fabricated, including the discernment that gets you there. This is how you ultimately lighten the mind. That’s when the mind is brought to its highest state. That’s when it …
- Our Variegated Minds… Then we can work from that desire, to develop wisdom, compassion, purity. We can also work with the fact that other people have that desire buried someplace in them. That’s how we can connect, It’s how we can live together, regardless of whether we like one another or not. As long as we can connect with that basic desire, there’s room …
- Evaluation… The Buddha never said that wisdom sees everything as oneness. He says it’s a matter of seeing things as separate, and then you see which separate things are related to one another, which ones are not, and you learn how to use that knowledge properly. We’re not presented with the present moment simply as a done deal. We’re actively shaping it …
- Right View from Right Effort… that it’s through effort that we gain wisdom. You look at the noble eightfold path: It starts out with right view, which informs our efforts. But then again the efforts turn around and train right view. The things you learn through the practice that you can’t learn from books, you can’t learn from hearing someone else talk about them: They come …
- For a Routine That Isn’t Routine… But how are you going to find profound knowledge if you don’t start with seeing the difference between this and that, and the connection between this and that? After all, in Pāli, the word pañña, which is sometimes translated as “wisdom”—I prefer “discernment”—is related to a verb, pajanati. And the way the Buddha uses *pajanati *covers a wide range of mental …
- The Buddha’s Currency… Everything else in the world comes in pairs, but with the Dhamma it’s one thing clear through—the wisdom and the happiness that come from letting go. Here you’re letting go of material goods, but you’re letting go in a way that you know that they’ll be well used. Then you get deeper and deeper inside, and the higher forms …
- Sowing Good Seeds… We all read about how Buddhist meditation leads to wisdom and discernment. Well, it’s not a matter of programming yourself to see things in a certain way. And it’s not a matter of sitting here and waiting for discernment to drop on you out of the sky. The act of trying to be sensitive to the present moment is what develops your …
- Look Around as You Follow the Trail… But there’s also a lot of wisdom in realizing that you have to be strategic. If you’re going to develop the kind of discernment that can detect what has to be realized, it’s going to have to be developed right here, as you observe the mind as you observe the breath, something you can observe directly. You observe the mind trying …
- Pain… Remember the Buddha’s comment about wisdom. It’s not seeing the Oneness of all things. It’s seeing things as separate. Things that you’ve glommed together in the past, you begin to realize are separate things. And because they’re separate, they don’t have to weigh the mind down. So remember, you want to maintain that original intention—not that the …
- Tenacity… You cultivate it, you use it to bring all your wisdom and ingenuity and persistence and intentness to this breath. That gets you to the point where you don’t need desire anymore. The ultimate happiness is that fulfilling. As long as you’re not there yet, learn to cultivate skillful desire. Hold on to the factors of the path as tools, because without …
- Initiative… You can’t expect the wisdom of the universe to come in and do it for you. You’ve got to be responsible. That’s the attitude you’ve got to have. “I’m sitting down here. I’m going to meditate. If my mind wanders away, I’m going to bring it back. If it wanders away again, I’m going to bring …
- Faith… little kids from Thailand who had no hope in life, but they gained in wisdom, gained in all kinds of good qualities, because they took seriously the idea that, Yes, we live in a world where people can gain awakening through their own efforts, and it doesn’t require anything superhuman. It simply requires that we develop this quality of conviction as a faculty …
- True Friends & False… But in areas where you can choose, try to use as much wisdom as you can manage. As you sort out the true friends outside, it helps you sort out the true friends inside. You start recognizing your false friends inside as well. This may involve making sacrifices in your life. There are situations where you could benefit materially from certain friendships, but again …
- Be Prepared… Your compassion, your wisdom, your ability to be generous, all the good qualities we’re trying to develop in the path: All these things come from heedfulness, realizing that there are dangers, but there are ways of avoiding those dangers. We’re not going to be totally free of danger until nibbana, but in the meantime we can help protect ourselves, and in protecting …
- Death Is Normal… It was Plato who once said that wisdom begins with the thought of death. Realizing that our time here is limited, we have to do something special to make the most of it. We can’t just fritter our eternity away because we don’t have an eternity to fritter away. We have to face the fact that we’ve got to get the …
- Conserving Your Strength… All the Buddha’s wisdom is meant to be used. It’s meant to give you a sense of priorities as to what’s important and what’s not, and how you get go about attaining what’s important, how to get perspective on the issues that may seem large in your life but really are very minor. That’s why there’s the …
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