Search results for: "Wisdom"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- Relating to Results… And it’s that childishness that the wisdom of non-attachment to results is meant to cure. But this non-attachment is not an indifference. You care deeply about doing things right because it’s an issue of life and death: true happiness vs. an endless round of birth and redeath, rebirth and redeath over and over again. It’s an important issue. It …
- Goodwill as Right View… It’s a form of wisdom. After all, it’s right view and right resolve together: your view that you would benefit if everybody could be happy, and your resolve to act on that view. So when you’re in difficult situations where you’re not quite sure what to do, at least hold onto your goodwill. Sometimes it helps the situation come out …
- Appropriate Attention… As the Buddha said, wisdom lies in seeing things as separate—things we tend to glom together. You know that in those two things—the craving or the passion and desire on the one hand, and these aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness on the other—the craving is to be abandoned, while you have to comprehend those aggregates that you’re …
- True Honesty… That question that the Buddha said lies at the beginning of wisdom—“What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?”: That points you in the right direction. But, as he says, when you get to the end of the path, you find that all the terms of the question get transcended. “My”: A sense of not-self comes …
- The Karma of Self… The beginning of wisdom, he says, starts with a question: What when I do it will lead to my long-term harm and suffering, and what when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? The “I” and the “my,” there, show two sides of the concept of self. One is the self as the producer: “What when I do …
- On Human Nature… As the Buddha once said, when a fool realizes that he’s been foolish, that’s the beginning of wisdom right there. He’s at least wise to that extent. Most people go through life as fools and yet think they’re wise and clever. Those are the ones whose quest for happiness is going to take a long, long time before finding anything …
- Factors for Stream Entry… So look carefully at how you develop it, because there are all different kinds of discernment, all different kinds of wisdom. The discernment the Buddha’s talking about is one that gives you freedom that you just can’t even imagine. And, as he said, this freedom: If you could ever make a deal that they would spear you with a hundred spears in …
- Respect as a Sign of Intelligence… In fact, the desire for true happiness is the beginning of wisdom. If you’re able to find true happiness, you can be a lot more compassionate to other people, too. Often, the reason people are harsh and unkind to one another is because they’ve been disappointed in their happiness. They feel that when they don’t get any happiness, why should anybody …
- Determination… In this way, he nourishes himself with that thought, uses his wisdom, uses his concentration, uses his virtue. There’s an interesting passage where Citta the householder is about to die. Some devas come to see him and say, “Set your mind on becoming a universal monarch, ruler of the continent of India, because you’d be a good ruler.” And the reason they …
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