Search results for: "Discernment"
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- Immediate Knowledge… Right there you’re getting your beginning lesson in discernment, learning to discern differences in the breath, and seeing which differences in terms of pleasure and pain are related to your intentions, the way you perceive the breath, or the way you decide that you’re going to breathe. So the beginning point for certainty lies right here as you focus on the breath …
- Family Ties… As he said, some parents have no virtue, no generosity, no conviction, and no discernment. And your way to repay them is not just to hang around and do everything they tell you. You try to find some way of inducing them to be generous if you can, more virtuous if you can. The “if you can” here is important. Sometimes you realize you …
- Character… generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, and equanimity. These are all qualities that we can develop in daily life in our duties at work, our duties at home, and whatever other duties we have as we live in the human society. See all these duties as an opportunity to develop something good inside yourself. As one of our chants says, the …
- Dhamma Medicine… That’s discernment, when you realize that you’ve got greed, aversion, and delusion, you’ve got other unskillful qualities in the mind, that tend to take over. They make it so that you can’t see things clearly, you can’t hear things clearly. Your vision and your sense of hearing, smell, taste, your sense of your body all get colored by unskillful …
- Part I : Basic Instructions… Qualities like mindfulness, alertness, concentration, discernment: These are all good things to have when the unexpected happens. So rather than plan specific strategies for how you’re going to deal with this, deal with that, remind yourself that often you have to think up and adjust your strategies in line with the situation, and that’s best done if you’re really alert and …
- The Power of Your Actions… It’s interesting that discernment, of the five strengths, is listed as the last, but it also plays a huge role right here in the second one. After all, as the Buddha said, discernment 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 …
- Self-reliance… people who have conviction in the Buddha’s awakening; people who are generous, virtuous, discerning. And you try to emulate their qualities. You listen to the Dhamma, you try to remember it, think about it so that it makes sense, and then measure your own actions against the Dhamma. And you’re not simply involved in listening, you’re really actively trying to search …
- One Thing Clear Through… He says that when you have universal goodwill—when your mind is unlimited, you’ve trained yourself in virtue and discernment, you’ve trained it so that it’s not overcome by pain, not overcome by pleasure—then whatever past bad actions you’ve done won’t have an impact on the mind. It’s like someone who has a lot of wealth: If …
- A Sense of Yourself… How are you going to apply it to your life? How are you going to apply it to your specific problems? This is where you develop your own discernment, which is the sixth quality. You try things out—see what works, what doesn’t work. And, in the course of trying things out, you get a good sense of cause and effect. The Buddha …
- Persistence… That’s not the kind of concentration that leads to discernment. The kind of concentration that does lead to discernment has some discipline to it. That might be a good word to think about as you’re meditating: discipline. You have to keep the mind disciplined. You can’t go off running after your likes and dislikes or random impulses right now. You have …
- Choosing a Teacher… You’re not going to know a person’s discernment until you hear them discuss issues and see how they treat a particular issue, how they treat different questions: which questions need to be answered categorically, which questions need to be re-analyzed, which questions need to have a counter-question to clear things up before the answer comes, and which questions deserve being …
- Learn from the Ants… So even when he was studying with the teachers who taught very high levels of concentration—the dimension of nothingness, the dimension of neither perception and non-perception—he saw that they’d developed conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. They devoted good qualities of the mind to this, but they rested content with something that wasn’t ultimate. He, however, wasn’t satisfied …
- To Delight in the Path… So you learn to take delight in doing good, being generous, helping other people who are generous, being with admirable friends—people who have conviction, virtue, generosity, and discernment. These things lift not only the mind, but also the heart. Remember, we’re training both the heart and the mind. In Pali, the word *citta *covers both. So the practice is not just a …
- Old Kamma & New… You also want to develop it in discernment so that you can see where the act of identifying with these things is going to weigh you down. And you also want to see that it’s unnecessary. This is where the teachings on inconstancy, stress, and not-self are really useful, even as you’re just getting started in the practice. Anything that comes …
- Mindfulness Defined… It’s meant to lead to concentration, from there to discernment, and from there to release. That’s how its role is always portrayed in the texts. So you do what you can to make the breath a place where you can stay concentrated, where the mind can feel more and more at home. In this way, evaluation is an important part of the …
- Full Attention… Remind yourself that whatever issue may come up in life, you’re going to need mindfulness, you’re going to need alertness, along with good powers of concentration and discernment. So the responsible thing right now is to let go of all your other responsibilities and work on these qualities. The future is very uncertain, but what is certain is that you’re going …
- The Art of Right Speech… And then putting that discernment into practice, he starts first with right speech. Now right speech also is a skill, it’s an art. All too often our attitude is that we want to say something just to get it out of our system, or we bottle it up, either out of fear or a sense of we shouldn’t say it. And if …
- Mindfulness of Death… Finally, there’s discernment—seeing what’s skillful in the mind, what’s unskillful in the mind, and knowing how to talk yourself into doing what’s skillful and out of doing what’s unskillful, regardless of your likes or dislikes. When you reflect on the fact of your own death, remind yourself, “These are the qualities I’ve got to develop in myself …
- The Five Strengths… And there’s discernment as you begin to see cause and effect, exactly what you do that creates unnecessary stress, and what you can do to stop that. You see the real causes are right there in the mind. Your craving and clinging add to the stress. As you develop virtue, concentration, and discernment, they help to loosen up that craving and clinging, so …
- Four Mountains Moving In… So the Buddha asked him, “When Sariputta died, did he take virtue with him?” “No.” “Did he take concentration?” “No.” Discernment?” “No.” “Release?” “No.” All the good things in life are there. The good potentials in life are always here. So even where there’s loss and danger, there are still good things we can do. And it’s important that we stay focused …
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