Search results for: "Wisdom"

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  2. Motivation
    We tend to think of Buddhist wisdom as something very refined. And there are a lot of refined aspects to it. But the basic principles are all very down-to-earth. One of the first exercises of your discernment when you meditate is how to get yourself to meditate when you don’t feel like it—or how to get yourself to meditate when … 
  3. Approaching Painful Memories as a Meditator
     … As the Buddha said, wisdom comes when you see things as separate. Your awareness is one thing; the memory is something else. So you create a place in the body where you can take a stance. You try to create this new identity in the mind, where you can also take a stance, where you can have lots of wisdom and compassion as you … 
  4. Heedful of Small Dangers
     … It’s a very pragmatic definition of wisdom. It’s a wisdom that matters—having respect for your long-term happiness and showing it respect in the way you manage your mind. After all, if you can’t respect your own long-term happiness, how can anybody trust you? You can’t trust yourself. Other people can’t trust you. You’re like the … 
  5. Nobody’s Servant
     … The first was wisdom. As you know, the question for the beginning of wisdom or discernment starts with, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” That question is wise because, one, you realize that happiness is going to have to depend on your actions, and two, you want long-term. That goes together with another question, “What … 
  6. Respect for the Mind
     … Simply the fact of taking your happiness seriously, the Buddha said, is a sign of wisdom. Because wisdom begins by asking this question: “What when I do will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” You ask this question to people who have found true happiness. So taking the issue of happiness seriously like this, realizing that some forms of happiness may seem … 
  7. Persistence
    In the list of the factors for awakening, persistence—vīrya—comes after the wisdom faculty, analysis of qualities. What this means is that we’re not talking about brute effort. We’re talking about effort informed by wisdom. And there are four major ways in which it’s informed. You start out by understanding what’s skillful and what’s not. Anything that comes … 
  8. Is the Buddha’s Wisdom Selfish?
    Wisdom begins, the Buddha said, with the questions, “What when I do it will lead to my long-term harm and suffering? What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” And wisdom finds its highest expression in the four noble truths, which are also concerned with suffering. You might ask, “This focus on your happiness and your suffering … 
  9. Keeping the Buddha in Mind
     … Think of how wisdom begins with that question: “What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What when I do it will lead to my long-term harm and suffering?” Think about that. That’s how the Buddha says wisdom begins—with the desire for long-term happiness. It’s wise in the sense that it realizes that … 
  10. Recognizing Fools
     … You have to listen to what they have to say and to at the way they act, and if you have some wisdom of your own, you begin to recognize who’s a fool and who’s wise. It’s a bit of a double bind. As the Buddha said, can a person of integrity know of someone else if that person has integrity … 
  11. Judging Your Efforts
     … As Ajaan Lee points out in the context of right mindfulness, ardency is the wisdom factor, which is interesting because you sometimes hear that sampajañña, alertness, is the wisdom factor. But that’s not the case: The wisdom lies in wanting and trying to do this well. It’s in learning how to do it well that you develop your wisdom, figuring out what … 
  12. Meticulousness
    There are a lot of traditional stories that associate cleanliness with wisdom: the attitude that likes to keep things neat, looks for the little details, is responsible, careful, shows itself outside in being clean, in looking after the place. It shows itself inside, of course, in developing insight. There’s a real connection. These weren’t stories that were just made up to get … 
  13. Change
     … This is an issue of wisdom. It’s because of our lack of wisdom, our lack of discernment, that we’re looking for happiness in the wrong places. The other change that’s dangerous is the fact that the mind can change so quickly. As he once said, the mind is so quick to change that there’s no adequate analogy for how fast … 
  14. No Happiness Other than Peace
     … You follow his instructions on how to pursue genuine happiness, and you end up developing wisdom, compassion, purity: the same virtues that the Buddha developed himself. Wisdom in realizing that your actions do make a difference in terms of your happiness, and that long-term happiness is better than short. Compassion in realizing that if you want your happiness to last, it can’t … 
  15. Three Levels of Refuge
     … It’s the beginning of wisdom. Then there’s the wisdom in knowing how to follow through. When you find that you’re going to go for the short term, how do you dissuade yourself? When you don’t feel inclined to go for the long term, how are you going to convince yourself that it’s necessary? This is why heedfulness is so … 
  16. Recollection of the Buddha
     … As the Buddha said, wisdom begins with a question: What when I do it will lead to long-term welfare and happiness?—the wisdom lying in, one, realizing that true happiness has to come from your actions. You can’t just wait for it to come floating by. And then, two, long-term is possible and is better than short-term. It’s a … 
  17. Analysis of Qualities
     … Discernment, or wisdom, is pragmatic. We’re not here to discover great truths about the world outside. We’re here to understand why we’re causing suffering and how we can stop. It’s a practical question, answered with a practical form of discernment or wisdom. I was recently reading a footnote on the factors for awakening in a sutta anthology. The author was … 
  18. Karma & the Sublime Attitudes
     … This is the sign of wisdom among doctors: when a doctor has a patient and yet he knows that he’s not the doctor for that patient. Maybe somebody else is. That requires a certain amount of humility. It’s all the better part of wisdom—because that’s what equanimity is in the brahmaviharas: the voice of wisdom. It keeps reminding you that … 
  19. Discernment
     … If you’re a human being, you’ve got some .” I began to realize maybe he was talking about something else besides wisdom. And I finally realized it was discernment: seeing distinctions, being able to tease things out. So we’re not here trying to gain the wisdom that lets us simply accept things. Sometimes people think that that’s the ultimate wisdom of … 
  20. The Seven Treasures
     … The seventh treasure is discernment, wisdom. This is probably the most important of all seven. As Ajaan Lee once said, if you have wisdom and discernment, then even if you’re born poor, if all you have is a machete to your name, you can still establish yourself in the world. And on the other side, if you’ve got all the advantages of … 
  21. The Wisdom of Self-regulation
     … That’s an important measure of your wisdom.” Usually when we think about Buddhist wisdom we think about fairly paradoxical and abstract things, but the real wisdom starts right here: in your ability to regulate your own actions, to follow the imperatives that the Buddha set forth, i.e. to develop what’s skillful and to abandon what’s not. That way, you take … 
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