Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. You’re Doing Something Wrong
     … But it’s worth the time invested, because directed thought and evaluation are where concentration and discernment practice overlap. It’s the discernment element in your concentration. It’s what keeps everything balanced. Of course, one of the first things you have to evaluate is how much evaluation you need. There are times when you’re really tired and the mind really should rest … 
  3. A Clear, Calm Lake
     … You develop discernment. You develop goodwill and compassion. These things are always useful. So no matter what the particular danger, or what the particular unexpected event that comes up, you’ve got a series of tools that will be useful in all situations. Mindfulness helps to remember whatever lessons you’ve learned from the past. It goes together with concentration: You try to calm … 
  4. The True Cause of Suffering
     … These are five qualities of mind that get in the way, that block the mind’s ability to settle down in concentration and to gain discernment, to gain insight, and to gain release. So you have to know the antidotes for them. The first big block is sensual passion, our desire for sensual pleasures, our fascination with sensual pleasures. It’s a block because … 
  5. Adjusting the Flame
     … You want to be able to discern suffering, as the chant said just now. It sounds strange. We all know that there’s suffering, but the problem is that we don’t really discern it: what it is, where it’s coming from, in all its gradations from stress up to big suffering. You have to put the mind in the right state so … 
  6. Hunting & Foraging
     … That’s the source of discernment. They’re basically the same thing, being ardent and using your evaluation. That’s how you gain the discernment and the insight you want.
  7. To Be Debt Free
     … to become more mindful, more alert, more discerning in what’s going on inside your own mind, more discerning in seeing what your actions actually are, seeing your intentions for what they are, and seeing the results of acting on those intentions. This is how you put the Dhamma to the test. This means that to find the truth, you have to be true … 
  8. The Right Piece in the Right Puzzle
     … Then, based on that, the question that’s the starting point for wisdom or discernment is: What is skillful, what is unskillful? The Buddha further refines that: What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? And, what when I do it will lead to my long-term harm and suffering? Those are the questions that the anatta teaching … 
  9. The Evening News
     … The determination for discernment is to see things as fabrications, to see the process of fabrication right here right now and not let yourself get waylaid by the worlds that are getting fabricated, that tend to pull you off, pull you away. This is why you have to also have the determination to truth: to see truly what’s going on right here right … 
  10. Duties in the Present
     … At the same time, as you get more and more clear about having a consistent intention in the mind, this develops discernment. Discernment is focused on understanding the most important part of the present moment, which is the intention that’s shaping how you experience things right now. When you’re meditating, you’re setting a very clear intention in the mind that you … 
  11. Introduction: Meditation as a Skill
     … Once you’ve strengthened your mindfulness, strengthened your alertness, and your powers of discernment this way, you’ll find that you can use them in many different situations, whatever the task. Once I was talking with a potter in Thailand, watching him throw a pot. He was telling me the most important thing was to keep his mind upright as he threw the pot … 
  12. Rhythms of the Mind
     … our sensitivity to what we’re doing, because that’s how discernment comes. You begin to see things that you’re doing that are unnecessary. Well, if they’re unnecessary, then it’s unnecessary stress. So whatever intention you had to do those things, you just let it go. If you find that you let it go and the concentration falls apart, okay, that … 
  13. Wise Choices
     … In other words, you can take something negative or deficient and use it to train your mind in discernment. After all, that’s the first noble truth is about. Where there’s suffering, you can learn from it. But you’re not just thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool before you can swim. The Buddha has you work on developing a … 
  14. Your Sketches vs. the Buddha’s
     … You look at the suttas, and some suttas say that mindfulness comes before discernment. Others say that discernment comes before mindfulness. There’s a little bit of variation here and there, but both variations are right. So when we’re looking at the Canon, we’re looking at the Buddha’s sketchbook. Try to find a sketch that seems to correspond best to what … 
  15. A Path of Aggregates
    There’s a strange phrase in the chant we had just now: “those who don’t discern suffering.” You would think that everybody can discern suffering. But from the Buddha’s point of view, he was the first to really discern it. When he explains suffering, the noble truth of suffering, he starts out with common examples of suffering: aging, illness, and death; sorrow … 
  16. The Three Perceptions as Tools
     … That’s an area where, for the time being, you don’t apply the perception of not-self to your virtue, concentration, or discernment. Particularly with concentration: Some people see their concentration come and go, and they decide that that’s insight—concentration is inconstant, stressful, not-self, out of your control. But that’s a misapplication of the perception. After all, we’re … 
  17. Matters of Life & Death
     … This is why we meditate with so much emphasis on developing mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. Mindfulness is not being aware. It’s keeping certain things in mind, especially keeping in mind the idea that you really have to develop skillful qualities if you want to be safe. The Buddha talks about the self as being its own refuge. You have to make yourself into … 
  18. Your Territory
     … As the Buddha said, discernment comes from seeing things as something separate: The thought is separate from your awareness; sensations of the body are separate from your awareness. But for the time being, you want those sensations of the body and the awareness to meld together, so that you can counteract any tendency to want to go into the thoughts—because the thoughts tend … 
  19. Grace & Dignity
     … All the good things we want to do in the world are best done from a mind that’s centered, clear, discerning, alert, and observant. You know they say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The road to nirvana, though, is paved with skillful intentions, which means that you look at your good intentions and you ask yourself, “When I … 
  20. Wandering On, Shooting Arrows
     … Based on conviction comes joy, and from joy there comes concentration, from concentration comes discernment, through discernment you finally get to release, and then to the vijjā—the knowledge—that cuts through everything. So, it’s that switch to conviction that makes the difference. Ordinarily, the Buddha says, when we encounter suffering, there are two responses. One is bewilderment: “How does this happen? Why … 
  21. The Power of Intention
     … That’s how the practice of concentration leads to discernment—the discernment that the mind gets freed.
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