Search results for: "Discernment"
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- Strength of Conviction… Strength of discernment is the one that makes them all solid, but we have to remember: Discernment doesn’t come simply from things you’ve read—it doesn’t come from perceptions, or sañña. It comes from conviction: saddha, conviction that there’s got to be a way out. There’s got to be a way to survive hardships and come out not only …
- 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 …
- Refuge for All Beings… He says, if you have an unlimited mind, if you train yourself in virtue, train yourself in discernment, train yourself not to be overcome by pleasure or pain—which are issues of concentration and discernment—then when results come from past bad karma, they’re going to be a lot less. He gives the example of the lump of salt. If you put the …
- When Aging Closes In… mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. Mindfulness means keeping something in mind. You practice it together with alertness. The first thing you need to keep in mind, of course, is the fact that the training of the mind is the most important thing there is. When you look back on your life, you want to be able to see that you developed some of the perfections …
- Strong Through Admirable Friendship… And four, they’re discerning. You want to look for people like that and associate with them. You try to emulate them. You ask them how they develop their conviction. What inspires them to be generous and virtuous? What kind of discernment have they developed? And how? Then you try to follow those qualities and develop them in yourself. Having a living example like …
- A Sense of Yourself… So ask yourself, where are the cases where it’s hard? And where can you use your discernment to convince yourself that, yes, it is worthwhile to extend forgiveness. Discernment is the fourth quality. How discerning are you on the ways in which the mind creates suffering for itself, stress for itself? You can look at it as you meditate right here, right now …
- Seclusion Through Mindfulness… So seclusion involves both concentration and discernment. And this is what mindfulness does. In the lists of qualities that lead to concentration—say, in the noble eightfold path—discernment does come first, and mindfulness comes before concentration, but you need some concentration to get the mind willing to do the practices that mindfulness requires. So, they help one another along. So learn to delight …
- Worries & Regrets… Of course, there are ways in which he describes the progress along the path in which discernment comes last. But a certain amount of discernment, a certain amount of understanding, has to be there at the beginning. You start with right view. It’s not right knowledge—it’s not going to be knowledge until the end of the path—but you can tell …
- Strength Training… The Buddha talks of the path as a path of strength, and the strengths of the mind are conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. The Buddha has one way of formulating the path in these five terms. He himself often compares the path of practice to various skills, and some of them have to do with strength. The skillful meditator is one who can …
- Past & Future in the Present… your willing, which is your intention that moves into the future; your intention to stay here in the present; and your intention to be discerning. One of the Thai ajaans, Ajaan Chah, talks about how discernment has to come from desire. If you don’t really want to find true happiness, you can sit here and watch your breath for eons, and you’re …
- Take Time to Evaluate Your Life… This is where the concentration also involves a certain amount of discernment. You evaluate the object of your meditation, in this case the breath, so that the mind can be really snug with it, so that it’s not likely to want to wander off. One of the meanings of evaluation is that you evaluate the breath as it’s coming in, going out …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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