Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. Strong Against Anger & Fear
     … The virtue you maintain, the discernment you develop—these are all treasures. They’re not the kind of treasure that the kings can take away from you, dictators can take away from you, fire can burn, or water can wash away. The only way you can lose them is if you throw them away yourself. So you have to be heedful. That’s the … 
  3. Pleasure & Pain
     … the discernment you learn from other people — the things you hear, the things you read — that’s one level; the things you think through — that’s another level; and then finally the things you learn by trying to develop mindfulness, alertness, and other good qualities of the mind. The third level is where the insight really becomes your own — it’s your own sensitivity … 
  4. Breaking Old Habits
     … The phrase we chanted just now—“Those who don’t discern suffering”—on the surface sounds very strange, for everybody knows suffering. We’ve all suffered in one way or another in our lives. But the issue is: Do we really discern suffering? Do we really understand it? Do we see precisely what’s happening? If we could look into the way the mind … 
  5. No Dharma Without Karma
     … preliminary wisdom, discernment. Then you work on your precepts. And even before that, the Buddha recommends that you practice generosity—because there are lots of things you can learn about the mind, lots of things you can learn about the Dharma, by practicing generosity and virtue, and by bringing the right attitude toward them. You’re not being forced to do these things. In … 
  6. A Good Path to Be On
     … He says you can develop the skills of virtue, concentration, and discernment so that they can lead to total freedom. Think about that. Whenever you’re getting discouraged, remind yourself that there is this opening. There’s a possibility for you to become more and more skillful. And it doesn’t have to depend on anybody else. You don’t have to go around … 
  7. Look Around as You Follow the Trail
     … As the Buddha said, your discernment is what allows you to realize the goal, so you have to develop your discernment. After all, everything you need to know, everything you need to be aware of, is all here right now, simply that you’re not properly focused, not continually focused, not really observant, not asking the right questions. So you work on staying with … 
  8. Taking a Stance
     … What you need is the discernment to figure out how to make the best of your surroundings. This is one of the reasons why we meditate, so that we have the mindfulness and the alertness and the ardency that all go together to create discernment. Mindfulness: keeping in mind, what you’ve learned from the past, either from other people or from your own … 
  9. To Know the Buddha
     … The hearing is the discernment that comes from listening: thinking about it and trying to reason it through to see if it makes sense is the discernment that comes from thinking. But then there’s the discernment that comes from developing, when we actually develop in our actions the qualities he talks about. We can read about mindfulness. We can think about how mindfulness … 
  10. Feeding Off the Future
     … That’s another one of the strengths—that, combined with discernment. Discernment is where you see where you’re weighing yourself down unnecessarily. Again, think of yourself traveling across a desert. If you’ve got a huge load on your back, you need to take it off your back and sort through it: “What here is going to be necessary and what things can … 
  11. Death Without Drama
     … As for the best preparation for the future, it lies in gaining more discernment, more concentration, more mindfulness. You don’t know the details of what’s going to happen in the future, but you do know that when unexpected things come, the more mindful, alert, and discerning you are, then the more likely you’ll be able to handle these things well. And … 
  12. Lessons of Right Resolve
     … As the Buddha said, there are three levels of discernment: There’s the discernment that comes from hearing; the discernment that comes from thinking; and the discernment that comes from developing the mind by putting things into practice. When you start out with right view and you say, “Okay, it makes sense, what the Buddha says about action, what he says about the causes … 
  13. Right Now
     … As I mentioned the other night, they’re the terms in which he discusses discernment. All I emphasized the other night role was that discernment plays after you’ve developed concentration. But it can also be your preparation for concentration on a certain level—at least enough to clear away a lot of the distractions that would pull you out of concentration. Try to … 
  14. Investment Strategies
     … But if you realize that you’ve got good qualities and particularly the quality of conviction combined with discernment: Ajaan Lee once said that if you’re a person with discernment, all you need is a machete and you can set yourself up in life. In other words, you don’t need many things but if you’ve got good qualities invested in the … 
  15. Looking After Yourself
     … That right there takes a lot of discernment. Knowing that if there’s something you like to do but it’s going to lead to bad results, knowing how to talk yourself out of it: That’s an important kind of discernment as well. It’s strategic. Or if there’s something you don’t like to do but you know that it has … 
  16. Other People
     … It’s made by a combination of developing concentration and also having some discernment. The concentration gives you a good place to stay, your own separate sense of energy, your own separate source of energy—like in the days when the Burmese attacked Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya was able to withstand the siege for a long time because they had their own sources of water and … 
  17. Worry vs. Heedfulness
     … Which means that, as you look at your body, you say, “Okay, I can’t rely on this body to provide security in and of itself, but I can use the body to develop virtue, concentration, discernment, and those are the things that will provide security.” Use the body to be generous, use the body to practice the precepts, use it as your topic … 
  18. The Heightened Mind
     … This requires a combination of concentration and discernment. There’s another passage where the Buddha compares a person of discernment to someone who goes up into a tower, looks down to the people below, and sees patterns that he wouldn’t see if he were down there with people. If you lift your mind to a higher level like this and then look at … 
  19. Protection
     … All these are aspects of discernment. Often we hear of discernment being about the three characteristics and emptiness. But the Buddha also talks about discernment in very practical terms: understanding your mind, being able to convince the mind when things are difficult that it can do skillful things, even when it’s feeling weak or threatened. That’s how your discernment grows. These are … 
  20. Defilements with Their Bambi Eyes
     … You need some discernment in order to get the mind into concentration. As the Buddha said, there’s no insight without jhana and tranquility, and there’s no insight and tranquility—well, there can be insight and tranquility without jhana, but they won’t be strong. All these qualities work together. They’re various wings to awakening. Some of the lists have discernment coming … 
  21. Long-Term Welfare
    The Buddha once said that the quest for wisdom, the quest for discernment, starts with a question: “What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” This may sound strange, because we’re used to hearing the Buddha’s take on discernment or insight as dealing with inconstancy, stress, and not-self, which sounds like the very opposite of … 
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