Search results for: "Discernment"

  1. Page 35
  2. Doubts
     … Because the only thing that’s going to resolve doubt is discernment, the kind of discernment that leads to release. That’s when you know for sure that what the Buddha taught was true. Until then, you have to go on working hypotheses, so choose the ones that are wise. Learn how to think in the ways that the Buddha recommends. As I said … 
  3. Attached to the Body
     … The only completion is when you pull away, build up qualities of mindfulness, alertness, concentration, discernment in the mind. Start taking these as food for the mind rather than looking through old trashbins for your nourishment. The food that comes from the practice is a kind of food that can make the mind strong enough so that one day it can stand on its … 
  4. Feeding Instructions
     … We had that chant just now: “those who don’t discern suffering.” It sounds odd. When people are suffering, they should know they’re suffering, you’d think. But that’s not what the Buddha means. To discern suffering, he says, means to see what it really is: It’s clinging to the aggregates. As you know, his explanation of the first noble truth … 
  5. Healing Breath
     … When you simply bring the mind to concentration, that doesn’t solve all the mind’s problems, but it does put it in a position where it can start using its discernment in a deeper and subtler way. But it’s important that you not be in too great a hurry to rush through the concentration to get to the discernment, because the work … 
  6. Strengthening Conviction
     … conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. The fact that conviction comes first shows that it’s important. As one of my teachers in Thailand once said, you notice that the list leading up to discernment doesn’t start with concepts or ideas. It starts with conviction. Discernment comes from conviction—provided, of course, that it’s conviction in the right things. Traditionally, this means … 
  7. Bringing Daily Life into the Practice
     … Who’s flowing out? Your greed and your anger? Or your discernment? You want your discernment to be the strongest flow, so that when you look at things, you can take them apart and see where they might draw you into lust or anger or greed or fear. Then remind yourself: You don’t have to be drawn in that way. Again, have a … 
  8. Mastering Pleasure & Pain
     … insight working together with stillness; discernment working together with concentration. These are not radically separate things. They require special balance. But they have to work together if you’re going to get the best results. Discernment without concentration lacks a lot of power. Concentration without discernment goes nowhere. It just sits there. It’s when you can get the two of them working together … 
  9. A Sense of Yourself
     … One is conviction; the others are virtue, learning, generosity, discernment, and quick-wittedness. These are all skills you can develop. You want to have a sense of where you are, where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are in these areas, so that you can use your strengths to make up for your weaknesses. So: How’s your conviction? Are you really convinced that … 
  10. Audacious & Undaunted
     … It leads to persistence, it leads to mindfulness, concentration, discernment. This is relevant to us, because the Buddha’s message was that he found it and we can find it too. On the night of his awakening, he learned some important insights. After getting the mind into solid concentration, he turned the power of that concentration to the question, “Is death the end, or … 
  11. Remembering Ajaan Suwat
     … This is a training, and you have to submit yourself to the training if you’re going to know whether this kind of discernment works or not. This is the example that Ajaan Suwat set. He didn’t just talk about these things. He was very strict about the precepts, he worked at concentration, he worked at discernment. You could pick this up in … 
  12. The Brightness of the World
     … The fourth quality is discernment, the ability to see where your actions are causing suffering and to figure out how to put an end to that kind of suffering. Whether it’s on the external level or the internal level, learn to see suffering or stress when it arises, and be able to connect it to its causes. This ability starts with a simple … 
  13. The Buddha’s Investment Strategy
     … This way you give rise to discernment as well, leading to concentration. These two qualities – discernment and concentration, as they’re supported by mindfulness and alertness – bring the mind to greater and greater stillness, greater and greater clarity. So as we’re working with the breath, we’re not just working with the breath. We’re also gaining insight into the processes in the … 
  14. Directing Yourself Rightly
     … You’re here to develop the training in virtue, concentration, and discernment because those are your treasures. Those are your protection. Progress in those things is genuine progress. When you look at the world outside, you see so many people living their lives, working on a particular cause, and then it all gets dashed to pieces by a change in the economy, a change … 
  15. Lessons from the Buddha’s Awakening
     … But then he’ll get to a point where he says, “Well, you’ve got to figure this out on your own,” because it’s only in exercising your own ingenuity that you’re going to grow up and develop the discernment you need. It’s not a matter of paint-by-number. The Buddha developed discernment. He developed concentration. You’ve got to … 
  16. Separate
     … The Buddha says that the essence of discernment is to see things as separate, as other. Things you used to hang onto, things you used to even think of as an extension of yourself, really are separate from you. As long as you feel that you have to depend on them, that’s going to be a scary thought. But when you realize that … 
  17. Analyzing Results
     … This is how the practice of concentration can lead to sharpening your discernment. The discernment and the concentration help each other along.
  18. Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice
     … It’s through observing these processes that we gain discernment. I was reading a while back an interview in which a teacher was talking with a student. The student said that she had been meditating on her breath and found there was a fair amount of pain in her body. So she adjusted the level of her breath, adjusted the way she breathed, and … 
  19. A Basis in Well-being
     … You look at the teaching on the four noble truths—which we take as the Buddha’s most basic teaching, most comprehensive teaching—and what is it but the application of wisdom and discernment to the question of how to be happy? In the time of the Buddha, lots of people were practicing meditation, and in many cases it was for the sake of … 
  20. Worth
     … things like generosity and virtue, persistence, patience, discernment, goodwill, and equanimity. Renunciation, truthfulness, determination. These are all qualities that the heart needs. And they’re things that stick with you, in this life on into the next life. This is where you look for value: your value as a person. Of course, it’s not something anyone else can measure, and it has only … 
  21. Rooted in Desire
     … I did this, and this resulted.” So learning how to ask the right questions at the right time is an important part of gaining discernment. The Buddha said that it’s a sign of people of discernment: how they approach a question, how they frame the question, how they apply it. His observation applies to the discernment related to understanding not only how to … 
  22. Load next page...