Search results for: "Discernment"
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- 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 …
- Adult Dhamma… Because after all, what is the path that the Buddha points out? There’s virtue, there’s concentration, and there’s discernment. These are all qualities in your own mind. We all have them to some extent. Learning how to develop what’s in your own mind is what’s going to make all the difference. The Buddha’s discernment isn’t going to …
- Happy for People You Don’t Like … What this means is that you should develop them with strong concentration and also use your discernment to analyze what you’re doing, to analyze what you’re wishing in a way that leads to dispassion. A good example is the development of empathetic joy. Of the brahmaviharas, it’s the one that gets discussed the least—and actually it’s one of the …
- To Sustain Your Practice… The fourth thing to look for is for someone who’s wise and discerning, and particularly who really discerns why we suffer and how we can put an end to that suffering. Now, obviously, these characteristics are found best in someone who’s gained the first taste of awakening. Their conviction in the Buddha has been confirmed. Their discernment into the problem of suffering …
- Conviction in the End of Suffering… And the path of virtue, concentration and discernment seems like a good thing.” But that third truth, that’s the one you’ve got to take on conviction. Yet as the Buddha points out, conviction is a kind of wealth. It’s a strength. Often we don’t think of it in those terms. We’ve been through so many instances where we had …
- Asalha Puja – Completeness… We take the qualities of the path—which boil down to virtue, concentration, and discernment—and try to make them complete. These are qualities that all of us have to some extent. The Buddha made this point over and over again: The fact that he gained awakening wasn’t because he was some sort of special being who could do things and develop things …
- Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice… conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. “Concentration” in both cases means the jhanas, but the theme leading you to develop those jhanas, and from there on into discernment, is something that varies. Some people can just work with the jhana itself. You look at whatever state of concentration you have settled into and you examine it to see: Where is there still any stress …
- What’s Worth Doing?… that discernment is a process of judging which things are worth doing, which things are not. That principle applies all the way through the practice. The answers get more refined as we go through the practice, but it’s always important to keep that question in mind. The mind is primarily active. The passage we chanted just now talks about the eye and the …
- A Safe Space Inside… And it’s going to have to be through your own actions, through the practice of virtue, concentration, discernment. You want to hold to those views so that your goodness, your solidity, doesn’t have to depend on other people being solid. The world is full of winds. I was reading today of a hurricane that’s going to come and hit the area …
- Faith in the Practice… We hear that the practice starts out with virtue and then goes to concentration and then to discernment. But actually, you have to develop all three at once: virtue in your day-to-day actions, while trying to develop your concentration and your discernment at the same time. This way, they strengthen one another. Now, for most laypeople the five precepts are plenty, but …
- A Home of Your Own… You have to have some discernment as well: the discernment to see what is really important to think about and what’s not. When something is not worth thinking about, you know how to take it apart so that it doesn’t take over. This means that getting the mind still is not just a matter of resting, it’s also a matter of …
- First Principles… But in figuring things out, that’s how you develop your discernment. Again, it’s not somebody else’s concepts pasted across your experience. It’s your sense of what works, what doesn’t work; which actions are worth doing, which ones are not worth doing. And when you are tempted to do something unskillful, how can you talk yourself out of it? When …
- Admirable Friendship… conviction, virtue, generosity, and discernment. If you’re wise, you look for people who have these qualities and you try to emulate them. Conviction means conviction in the principle that your actions do matter and that you’re the one making the choices. You can’t blame other people for the choices you make. And your actions have results. They have consequences, so you …
- Today Is Better than Yesterday… That’s the strength of discernment. One of the images in the Canon for discernment is of a fortress wall covered with plaster. In other words, it’s smooth. Your defilements have no foothold to make inroads into the mind. The only way you can make your mind smooth like that is to be as continually aware as possible, and to be especially leery …
- Good Fences… It’s the discernment, though, that’s going to end the problem. It cuts things off at the source. So have this combination of mindfulness and discernment, remembering that in Thai, the words for mindfulness and discernment, *sati *and pañña, when put together mean “intelligence”: the practical intelligence of someone who knows how to take the knowledge they’ve been getting from the Dhamma …
- Goodwill as Right View… We have to use our own discernment. But it’s an important insight to realize that discernment has to be based on goodwill. That is a rule of thumb. When you’re dealing with yourself—say, when you’re meditating—you want to meditate with goodwill. This doesn’t mean being kind to yourself by giving yourself ice cream all the time. But it …
- May All Beings Be Heedful… What makes them skillful? They’re the proper answer to that question that lies at the beginning of discernment: “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?” So, basically, developing heedfulness—thinking in the long term—is what you want. Heedfulness is the realization …
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