Search results for: "Discernment"
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- 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.
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- A Path of AggregatesThere’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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- The Power of Intention… That’s how the practice of concentration leads to discernment—the discernment that the mind gets freed.
- Feelings Not of the Flesh… As the Buddha said, there’s no strong concentration without discernment. One of the things you’re going to learn how to discern is how not to fall for the thoughts that come wandering through the mind, telling you that “You’ve had enough just sitting here doing nothing but breathe. Think about this, think about that.” Or, “This is getting boring.” We’re …
- Training the Whole Mind… That’s when you can be said to be a discerning meditator. You can’t gain insight simply by following the rules. Somebody says, “For insight you need to do one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. So you do one, two, three, four, five, six, seven without any thinking, without any reflection on what you’re doing, and yet that doesn’t …
- Humility & Confidence… How else are you going to learn unless you can judge whether one thing is better than another? As the Buddha said, you learn the quality of analysis of qualities, which is the discernment factor for awakening, by comparing things. When the mind acts on this kind of intention, what are the results? When it acts on that kind of intention, what are the …
- Everything Comes Together Right Here… And as you get more and more sensitive to what’s going on, that factor of evaluation that turns into discernment. Here again, in these Zoom meetings that I lead sometimes, every now and then we get someone who comes from a very different tradition moving in. And they like to talk about how when you do concentration practice, you then drop the concentration …
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