Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. The Five Precepts for the Mind
     … It trains you in concentration and discernment. You have to be mindful to keep the precept in mind. You have to be alert, watching your behavior to make sure that it’s not straying from the precept. And it requires a lot of discernment. There are times when you’re tempted to get past a difficult situation with a little white lie. But it … 
  14. Do Jhana
     … The action leads to that kind of result.” The questions you ask as you’re looking at your actions are the questions of discernment. They replace our other, more normal questions, which are the questions of papañca: “Who am I? Where am I? What’s the world around me?” Those are actually the questions of hunger because your identity of who you are is … 
  15. Change Your Habits
     … Strength comes from your conviction, your persistence, your mindfulness, your concentration, your discernment. Figuring things out is the ultimate strength. Of the five strengths the Buddha talked about, discernment is the big one. Ajaan Lee has a nice quote. He says for a person with discernment, all you need is a machete and you can set yourself up in life. Even if you have … 
  16. Learning from Labor
     … If concentration is all you’re doing, you’re going to need some discernment, the discernment that opens things up. That can come only from within, as a result of seeing what you’re doing and getting more and more perceptive about what you’re doing and the results you’re getting. That’s how concentration acts as a basis for mindfulness, as a … 
  17. Strong & Heedful
     … conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. Conviction is conviction in the principle of karma. In other words, believing that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the intentions you act on. That conviction helps get rid of the delusion that somehow you can act in sloppy ways, or act in careless ways, or even act in evil ways, and not … 
  18. Ready for the Truth
     … the practice of virtue, concentration, and discernment—or what the Buddha called heightened virtue, heightened mind, heightened discernment. Discernment, concentration, virtue: all for the purpose of freedom. That’s the alternative, and it does set you free. The ways of the world tie you down. The more you acquire, the more responsibilities you take on, and the less time you have to devote totally … 
  19. The Safety of Dualities
     … It’s what discernment is all about. You start developing discernment by noticing what in the mind is skillful, what in the mind is not skillful, and then pursuing greater and greater refinement in understanding what’s skillful and what’s not. You learn by comparing the two sides of a duality. In that way, you protect yourself. You have a basis for making … 
  20. Concentration & Renunciation
     … You also need some discernment: the discernment to see what kind of perceptions you’re applying to the pain, in your relationship to the pain, that are aggravating it, that are actually forming a bridge from the physical pain into the mind, where they turn it into a mental pain and make it more than it has to be. So the meditation is here … 
  21. Nobody’s Servant
     … It develops your discernment. You learn how to read your breath, what it can do for the body. And when a sense of well-being comes up, it requires discernment, one, not to go jumping onto the sense of pleasure and leaving the breath; and two, to keep it going. And then three, once you’re keeping it going, what can you do to … 
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