Search results for: "Discernment"
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- The Management of Suffering… The final quality to look for, discernment, is defined as “penetrative knowledge of arising and passing away.” At first glance, that sounds simply like seeing things coming and going, but when the Buddha adds that adjective, “penetrative,” he means that you have a good sense of when something arises, whether it’s arising for good or for bad. Where does it come from? Where …
- Strategic Thinking… If you learn to think like this, your discernment develops in unexpected ways, ways that are helpful in all kinds of situations. As Ajaan Lee once said, if you have discernment, you can use anything to a good purpose. You’ve got this body, well, use your body for a good purpose. You’ve got feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness. You can learn …
- Breathing to Awakening… So, as you take an inquisitive attitude toward the breath and the mind’s relationship to the breath—and toward both of them as they relate to the present moment and as they relate to the process of fabrication going on in the body and the mind—you’re bringing your discernment to bear. That discernment is what’s going to give you your …
- Breath Meditation: The First Tetrad… What does the Buddha tell us to do with it? In the beginning, he says, use your discernment to discern the difference between long and short breathing—something very simple. Ajaan Lee would add that you can discern other differences as well—long, short, fast, slow, heavy, light, deep, shallow. Find the breath that’s right for you, a rhythm and texture of breathing …
- Fully Here… When the Buddha talked about full awakening, he said it’s both awareness-release and discernment-release. Awareness-release is the release from passion that comes from getting the mind into really strong concentration. Discernment-release is the release from ignorance that comes when your insight and discernment are really sharp. You need both—and you work on both together. Sometimes you’ll be …
- Universal Truths… Virtue, concentration, discernment: All these things should come together in your practice. So as you focus on the breath, try to do it in a virtuous way. In other words, do it with restraint. Remind yourself, you can’t go wandering off, dabbling in this, dabbling in that. You’ve really got to be true to the theme of your concentration. And your concentration …
- Sensitive to Fabrication… In particular: “What are you clinging to?” That passage we chanted just now has an unusual phrase, the very first one: “those who don’t discern suffering.” Everybody discerns suffering—but not clearly. All too often you hear people say, “The Buddha taught that life is suffering.” He never said that. He said something a lot more precise. He went through the different aspects …
- How to Read the Dhamma… Remember that discernment comes from listening, which includes reading, and from thinking. Then it comes in the practice. And although the discernment that’s going to make a big change in your mind is the discernment that comes from practice, it has to be informed by how you read and how you think. So go on the assumption that the Dhamma makes sense. If …
- Karma & the Sublime Attitudes… You’re trying to develop your powers of mindfulness, your powers of alertness, your concentration, because these powers will allow you to develop your discernment. The discernment is what frees the mind—frees it from all the restrictions it places on itself, all the unnecessary burdens and suffering it places on itself. So the results of staying here much longer-lasting, much more solid …
- The Uses of Concentration… As you develop discernment based on concentration, one, you get the ability to pull out of the defilement. This is an ability that you learn from mastering the concentration itself. You sit here with the breath and suddenly find yourself with another thought; you remind yourself, “This is not why I was here meditating” and you can pull yourself out. Well, you can do …
- For the Cessation of Dukkha… A lot of it comes from a simple lack of discernment and our tendency to glom things together. He says, when you learn how to see things as separate, that’s when the discernment really is doing its work. So the big separation line right now is between focusing on the breath and focusing on anything else that’s not related to the breath …
- How the Dhamma Protects… We develop the mind, develop our powers of concentration, develop our powers of discernment. That puts us in a position where these things don’t touch us. After all, look at the human world. Look at your own body. Once you’re born, there’s going to be aging, there’s going to illnesses, there’s going to be death. Even inside your own …
- Perfecting the Mind in an Imperfect World… You have to develop the quality of mindfulness, the quality of concentration, the quality of discernment so that you can really learn from your unskillful mental states. It’s like back in the days of the Cold War: the people who studied Russian because they wanted to figure out the enemy. Or policemen who watch a suspect for a while to see what he …
- You Are Not Powerless… Finally, there’s discernment, penetrating discernment, as the Buddha said, into what arises and passes away, what’s originated and what passes away. The “penetrating” means that you realize that things can pass away and arise, but some things, when they arise, are better than others. So you try to develop them. Here’s another irony. We’re taught that everything is One, that …
- Bad Stuff Happens… And it’s a path that provides a good support for discernment. And the discernment is what’s going to see you through the clinging. It’s going to see you through the reasons we cause ourselves to suffer: the clinging and the craving. And we can do something about it. It’s not the case that you gain discernment only after you’ve …
- Life in the Context of the Practice… And finally there’s discernment. Ajaan Lee has a nice comment about this. He says that if you’ve got discernment, then all you need is a machete and you can set yourself up in life. In other words, discernment is what teaches you to make the most of what little you’ve got and to appreciate what you’ve got, to make it …
- The Challenge of Faith… And then you have to use your discernment, one, to make the breath interesting so it’s easier to stay, and then, two, if there are other intentions that come up that are really tempting you, you have to figure out ways around them and not fall for them. So the discernment the Buddha is talking about is a pragmatic matter. It’s not …
- Just Events… You’ve got to use your discernment, too. Using concentration in a case like that takes a lot of energy. But if you use your discernment and say, ‘Okay, the awareness is one thing, the pain is something else, the body is something else,’ then you can hold that perception in mind. Then there’s a lot less struggle.” She told me later that …
- The Bureaucracy of the Defilements… the bureaucracy of your defilements—things like greed, aversion, and delusion, which cloud the mind and get in the way of genuine discernment. Our mind is very complex. It’s like a large organization, making all kinds of decisions all the time, and we have a tendency to delegate a lot of our decisions to our old habits. There are a lot of little …
- The Reflective Self… In the passage where he says that the Dhamma requires both commitment and reflection, this reflective self provides the reflection and becomes the basis for discernment. When you use it as you meditate, it plays the role of evaluation: “How is the breath right now? Is it good enough? Is it good enough for the mind to settle down with? How’s the mind …
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