Search results for: "Discernment"
- Page 39
- Persuasion… It’s the other two that require some discernment. In fact, the Buddha said this is the measure of your discernment—your ability to use your powers of persuasion to make yourself want to do the things that you ordinarily don’t like to do but will give good long-term results, and to not want to do the things that you like but …
- The Easy Way Out… And this is an important element in learning how to develop your own discernment. You can take other people’s beautiful concepts—emptiness sounds wonderful, Oneness sounds wonderful, interconnectedness all sounds wonderful—but they’re just words, ideas, perceptions. You’ve got to learn how to question perceptions as part of the practice—and you need to develop your own sensitivity if you’re …
- Ironclad Technique vs. No Technique… In neither way can you really develop discernment. As the Buddha said, the Dhamma is to be nourished within you by committing yourself and then reflecting. When he teaches that principle to Rahula, he teaches him to look at his actions: to look first at his intentions, then at his actions as he’s doing them, and then when they’re done—to see …
- A Post by the Ocean… If you can develop more mindfulness, more alertness, more concentration, more discernment in the mind, you’ll be better prepared for handling things as they come up, even if you don’t know ahead of time what they will be. If you’ve got these qualities developed in the mind, you’ll be in a better position to handle anything, whatever comes your way …
- Question & Probe… It’s only through those questions supported by concentration that you’re going to develop the discernment that takes you to release. Discernment isn’t something you just copy from what you’ve heard in the books. It comes from probing and questioning. And the concentration is what gives you the foundation that allows you to probe without fear.
- Squeezing Goodness Out of the Aggregates… where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are in terms of learning, virtue, generosity, conviction, discernment, and particularly your ingenuity. So you try to develop these things. Try to get a sense of what you’ve got here in terms of these aggregates, and what you can do with them. Like the aggregate of form: What can you do with the different elements or …
- Working Ourselves Free… This means you need discernment to recognize them for what they are and also to see which parts of the mind are your fifth column, the ones that are all too ready to play along with distractions. In other words, for concentration to give rise to insight, it has to be as consistent and continuous as possible. That’s the work. That’s the …
- A Game of Chess… In the course of doing so, you develop your discernment—so in that sense, the back and forth is necessary. Discernment isn’t just a matter of cloning what you read in the books. It’s more tactical. For example, with the khandhas—the five clinging-aggregates: We read in the Buddha’s second sermon, on the not-self characteristic, that as you contemplate …
- Test Everything… This is why conviction is one of the strengths on the path, because the only way you’re going to test the Buddha’s teachings on mindfulness, alertness, concentration, and discernment is if you put a lot of effort into them, a lot of time, make a lot of sacrifices. That’s why mundane right view includes, as one of its propositions, that there …
- 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 …
- Mind the Gap… As the Buddha said, the things you need for a happy rebirth are conviction, virtue, generosity, and discernment. In some cases, he expands that list to the seven treasures: those four plus learning, shame, and compunction. These are the things that protect you. There are many stories of King Pasenadi coming to see the Buddha. Here was someone who lived his life looking for …
- 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 …
- Load next page...
