Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. Sensitive to Stress
     … It’s in developing this kind of sensitivity, both through your concentration and through your discernment, that you can get to what the Buddha’s talking about. There is a state that is totally free of stress. It’s the ending of karma, but it’s found through skillful karma, i.e., the karma of concentration, the karma of discernment. It requires a sensitivity … 
  3. Borrowing the Buddha’s Wisdom
     … He also gives instructions on how to do it—the noble eightfold path, which boils down to virtue, concentration, discernment. This is the raft. He gives instructions in virtue in terms of right speech, right action, right livelihood; concentration in terms of right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration; discernment in terms of right view, and right resolve. He spells it all out. Now, there … 
  4. Above the World
     … It specifically refers to concentration practice but then beyond concentration to discernment and then ultimately to release. That’s the mind that’s really heightened. In other words, instead of spinning around after the world, we lift our minds up above it, so that no matter how the world spins, what direction it spins, whatever its ups and downs, the mind isn’t effected … 
  5. Filling in the Buddha’s Outline
     … That’s how discernment develops, and it’s through discernment that we overcome our foolishness and the problem gets solved.
  6. The Psychology of Virtue
     … Then in terms of discernment, you say, “Well, how do these intentions create states of becoming? And where in that process is the craving that leads to the clinging, which is the suffering?” So this is all of a piece, this triple training—virtue, concentration, discernment—in getting you to step back from what’s going on in your mind and realizing that you … 
  7. Eyes in the Back of Your Head
     … Second, it primes you for discernment. The whole issue of discernment is: What is the mind doing? If you just look at one spot, you miss all the other things that are happening around that spot. Often it’s the things that are happening around: Those are the issue. You can apply this principle either in the concentration itself or when you’ve come … 
  8. The Gatekeeper Doesn’t Just Note
     … This is where you bring in the work of discernment, because seeing things arising and passing away is only part of the Buddha’s strategy for dealing with the things that create trouble in the mind. You see something arise, but you don’t just watch it arise. You try to see what arises with it, what causes it. When it passes away, what … 
  9. Seeing Danger in Birth
     … heedful in our virtue, heedful in our concentration, heedful in our discernment. Heedful in virtue means realizing that whatever we might gain by even the slightest infraction of the precepts isn’t worth it. Those little gains get washed away, and then you’re left with the kamma. Heedful in your concentration means trying to be as careful as possible in your efforts to … 
  10. Help Others, Help Your Mind
     … It’s also the discernment faculty in the list. I read a translator one time putting a footnote on this, saying he didn’t understand why the Buddha, in defining discernment, defined it in terms of skillful and unskillful actions, or seeing what’s skillful, what’s unskillful. Apparently he thought that discernment had to mean seeing things in terms of the three characteristics … 
  11. Determined to Stay with the Breath
     … It allows you to take the discernment that you used at the beginning and sharpen it. All four of these qualities—the discernment, the truth, the relinquishment, and the calm—strengthen one another. That way, when you make up your mind you’re going to do something really worthwhile, you accomplish it. Your life is not littered with good intentions that never get fulfilled … 
  12. The Brightness of Life
     … Now, to do that requires that we develop our concentration, we develop our discernment—all the qualities of the noble eightfold path, but particularly the discernment. You engage in the path and then you reflect on it. The Buddha said this is how the Dhamma is found—by committing to the path, and particularly committing to what he calls the heightened mind: getting the … 
  13. Useful Vocabulary
     … This is why you need a combination of stillness and insight, or calm and insight; concentration and discernment. These two qualities have to go together. When they’re put together in the right proportions, then it’s hard to make the distinction between concentration and discernment because they’re right there together, working together. You get the mind still. You see something. You let … 
  14. The Use of the Present
     … In the Buddha’s image, virtue cleans your discernment, and discernment cleans your virtue. And under the term “virtue” in that passage, the Buddha included the practice of the jhanas and the knowledges you can gain based on jhana. As virtue and discernment clean each other, he said, it’s like one hand washing another hand or one foot washing another foot. Both sides … 
  15. A Refuge Inside
     … He used the concentration to develop discernment that led to release. So you take his example and follow it in your own life. You try to develop mindfulness and alertness as well, to gain a sense of being centered and at home in the present moment with a sense of ease—even of rapture. Then you use that concentration to develop discernment to see … 
  16. The Need for Agency
     … Some of it has to come from your own powers of observation, because your discernment is the factor that’s going to make the difference. You can borrow other people’s discernment for a bit, but real discernment depends on your own sensitivity to what you’re doing and to the results you’re getting from what you’re doing. That’s how the … 
  17. Nobody’s Servant
     … If you think about it with some wisdom and discernment, you realize you’ve got the choice to do something really good with your life in the course of your search for happiness. The Buddha offers refuge: a happiness outside of the world. You can choose to go there, you can choose to do the practice that leads to refuge. And the refuge isn … 
  18. Fighting off Ignorance
     … As you develop your powers of evaluation, that develops your discernment. As you become more sensitive to this part of your awareness, you realize it really does have an impact both on the body and on the mind. You can decide whether the impact is leading in the direction of more stress or less stress, and you can see that the less stress you … 
  19. Truth Without Air Quotes
     … There was someone one time who asked the Buddha, “What’s the purpose of virtue?” Virtue is for the sake of concentration. “What’s concentration for?” Concentration is for the sake of discernment. “What’s discernment for?” Discernment is for the sake of developing dispassion. Dispassion is for the sake of unbinding. “What is unbinding for?” The Buddha stopped there and said, “No, you … 
  20. In Line with the Dhamma
     … The same with working on developing mindfulness, concentration, and discernment: Develop enthusiasm for these things because they’re good things. They’re useful in all kinds of activities, and especially the activities that lead to awakening. The Buddha talks about this kind of desire as being an important element in right effort. It’s the kind of desire you have to generate. You have … 
  21. The Path is Fabricated
     … Some of the discernment is developed simply in getting the mind to settle down and reach very subtle states of concentration so that you can see things more clearly. As you clear away grosser levels of fabrication, you’re left with the more subtle ones. And with time, you learn how to sense those as well, to see that they, too, have their ups … 
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