Search results for: "Wisdom"

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  2. Right & Right
     … Remember, one of the Buddha’s definitions of wisdom is basically strategic: the ability to do what you know is going to give good results. If you don’t like to do it, your ability to talk yourself into doing it is strategic. Sometimes you have to humor the defilements get enough of the mind willing to go along and do what you know … 
  3. The Dhamma Protects
     … That’s what wisdom is all about. Which means that we have to train the mind to be patient. When the Buddha gave his synopsis of the teachings at that gathering of 1,250 arahants, he started out with the themes of patience and endurance. Of course, his listeners didn’t need any more patience or endurance themselves, because their minds were already beyond … 
  4. Metta Metacognition
     … That’s a sign of real wisdom. We hear so much about Buddhist wisdom that sounds paradoxical: Emptiness. Not-self. But the Buddha says actually wisdom is pragmatic. If you know your likes are going to get in the way of your long-term happiness, you have to learn how to get past your likes. So these are some of the things you learn … 
  5. Songkran Blessing
     … In short, these blessings can turn into a curse if you don’t have the wisdom to use them properly, which is why you don’t want to be deluded about these things. If you really want a good blessing, you want to have the blessing of wisdom as well, so that you can use your long life to continue doing good in this … 
  6. Life’s First Question
     … When the Buddha defines wisdom, it starts with very simple things: “What when I do will to lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” Those are very simple things, very immediate, very direct. When he defines the measure of your wisdom, the measure of your discernment is your ability to look at something and realize that it’s something you may not like … 
  7. Shoot Your Pains with Wisdom
     … In fact, a lot of the path of the practice is learning how to shoot yourself not with arrows but with pleasure, to shoot yourself with wisdom. One of the ways we fabricate our experience is with the way we breathe, so you can shoot yourself with pleasant breathing. You can change your experience of the body by consciously breathing in ways that feel … 
  8. Heedful, Ardent, & Resolute
     … Heedfulness is a quality of wisdom. As the Buddha said, wisdom begins with the question, “What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” The wisdom there lies in realizing that some forms of happiness are more long-term than others and those are the ones that are worth going for. And that they’ll depend on your actions … 
  9. Look at Yourself
     … Now, there is the wisdom that comes from reading and there’s the wisdom that comes from thinking about things, but the real wisdom, the real discernment—the wisdom of development—comes from getting down to the nuts and bolts, the nitty-gritty of what you’re doing with your breath right now, how the mind is able to stay established and how it … 
  10. Choosing Your Allies
     … Take wisdom, for example. The Buddha said that wisdom starts with a question, “What when I do it will lead to my long term welfare and happiness?” Now, the wisdom here is based on conviction that your actions do make a difference and that long-term is possible, coupled with the realization that long-term is better than short-term. So this questions focuses … 
  11. Wise about Happiness
    When Ajaan Lee analyses the qualities that you bring into mindfulness practice—and by extension to concentration practice—he singles out ardency as the wisdom factor. Which is interesting. It’s the factor that has to do with effort, the effort you put into being mindful, into gaining concentration, trying to see into your defilements. Ardency is what does this. And ardency is wisdom … 
  12. The Big Picture
     … We hear so much about the wisdom of just being in the present, but the Buddha didn’t define wisdom or discernment that way. He said that wisdom or discernment starts with the 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 and suffering?” The wisdom … 
  13. Separate
     … That would come down to wisdom, compassion, and purity—and these are all strengths. The wisdom, there, is to see not that things are so much interconnected—although you can see how things are interconnected, but you’re not looking for that. You’re looking for something that’s independent. The Buddha says that the essence of discernment is to see things as separate … 
  14. Motivation
     … All of this comes under the application of wisdom to your right effort: knowing how to psych yourself out, knowing the tricks of your defilements, and learning how to parry them, how to counteract them. We tend to have a very exalted idea of what Buddhist wisdom is. Well, it starts with these little things: learning how to see the tricks of a particular … 
  15. Mountains Moving In
     … That’s the beginning of wisdom. It takes your desire for happiness and pursues it in a way that leads to wisdom. The same for compassion: You realize that just as you desire happiness, other people desire happiness, too. If your happiness depends on their suffering, it’s not going to last. This may sound calculating, but this calculation really is the basis for … 
  16. Noble Happiness
     … It’s natural wisdom, because it’s a kind of happiness that lasts. If your happiness depends on the misery of other people, they’re going to try to put an end to it. Or if it depends on anything physical or material, anything social, those things all have to end, too. But a happiness that comes from within doesn’t have to end … 
  17. Games the Mind Plays
     … One of the strangest is that by getting the mind open and empty, your natural wisdom will come to the surface. And it is true that there are times when something that’s been hidden inside you—kept down by your social conditioning or whatever unhealthy ideas you’ve picked up from the people around you—will have a chance to come to the … 
  18. Visakha Puja
     … So notice how these three qualities—wisdom, compassion and purity—are based on our desire for true happiness. The Buddha doesn’t say that it’s wrong to want to be happy. He doesn’t say that it’s selfish. He says that if you act on that desire wisely, with purity, and with compassion, you’ll find a true happiness that’s totally … 
  19. Skill
     … That’s the real test of your wisdom, not only sensing that, but also once you know it, learning to overcome your likes and dislikes. Even if something you like to do seems pleasant in the beginning, but you know it’s going to give long-term pain, how do you talk yourself into not doing it? That’s a function of wisdom. Or … 
  20. Heedful of Death
    Heedful of Death February 11, 2011 Greek philosophers used to say that thinking about death is the beginning of wisdom. It’s what makes you stop and think about life, and to seriously examine your life. But just thinking about death on its own is not enough to give rise to wisdom. Some people arrive at the attitude of “Eat, drink, and be merry … 
  21. You Are Not a Textbook
     … the discernment factor, the wisdom factor. The translator was saying in the footnote, “This is the wisdom factor, and yet it’s defined as to be sensitive to what is skillful and what is unskillful in the mind.” I was puzzled by the “and yet.” Apparently the translator was thinking that insight or discernment means seeing things in terms of the three characteristics. But … 
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