Search results for: "Discernment"
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- The Interactive Present… It’s not only the case that discernment requires concentration. Concentration also requires discernment — learning how to bypass whatever issues you can bypass and how to deal directly with the ones you have to deal with before you can get the mind to settle down. If there’s rampant lust or anger in the mind, you’ve got to deal with it. You can …
- The Heightened Mind… His image for discernment: You’re in a tower up high, looking down on people below. It’s this enlarged mind that gives you a sense that there’s more to life than just getting things done—you’re developing perfections. This is called renunciation because you’re renouncing sensuality, but actually it’s a trade up. We think of renunciation as a deprivation …
- Totally Secure… One of the definitions of discernment or wisdom is all-around knowing of this process of fabrication. As you start by looking at what you do, and what you say, you see that this is why we have those precepts. What are you doing with your body? What are you creating? What are you creating with your words? It’s interesting to reflect that …
- Insight Is Seeing What’s Worth Doing… As the Buddha said, discernment begins when you ask the question of someone who seems reliable: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” Now you can interpret that on an external level, but you can also interpret it on an internal level. The external level is the practice of merit. Generosity leads to long-term welfare and …
- Inner Refuge Through Inner Strength… The more you meditate, the more you have to depend on your own powers—of judgment, persistence, discernment. And this is what the meditation is for, to teach you how to depend on yourself—how to become your own refuge. We talk about how we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha—both on the internal and external levels. On the …
- Taking the Long View… The qualities you want to look for are conviction in the principle of karma, virtue, generosity, and discernment. Find people who embody these qualities, associate with them, try to pick up their good traits. If there’s something you don’t understand about how to be more virtuous, how to be more generous, you ask. Now, these four qualities are alsothe qualities that the …
- An Admirable Friend — In Memory of Luang Loong… developing mindfulness, concentration, discernment, persistence. Underlying all this is the conviction that this is really useful, this is really a worthwhile project: training the mind, realizing that the mind is the major factor in life, shaping your happiness and sorrow, your pleasure and pain. It needs to be trained so that its actions yield the happiness you want, a happiness that doesn’t harm …
- Moving Between Thought Worlds… Mindfulness, concentration, and discernment form the way out. And those aren’t just vague abstractions. Mindfulness is the ability to remember what you’re doing as you move from one state of mind to another. Alertness is the ability to see, “I’m doing something that’s causing suffering.” And discernment is what sees that it doesn’t have to be that way. There …
- Ideals… He practiced with conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment as best he could. But after having given his all, he realized that the paths these teachers were teaching were deficient. So he tried the path of austerities. He put his life on the line and almost died. After six years he finally realized that this was not going to be the path, either. But …
- Not Crushed by the World… It develops your discernment. Forces you to think strategically. All this practice in consistency is going to be really helpful for your meditation practice. It develops the three qualities you bring to mindfulness practice: mindfulness, alertness, and ardency. The consistency helps you turn your mindfulness into concentration. And your ability to think strategically is going to help you deal wisely with the strategies of …
- The Dhamma Eye… You can learn how to live your life in accordance with these principles, and then the mind can settle down in a way that really does lead to discernment. Now, it is possible to get the mind concentrated without virtue, but it’s not an honest concentration. If the concentration is not honest, the discernment is not going to be honest, and if it …
- A Post-goodness World?… Think of the questions that the Buddha’s says lie at the beginning of wisdom and discernment: What is skillful, what is unskillful? What is blameworthy, what is blameless? 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? And first-level answer to those questions …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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