Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. Noble Priorities
     … You could attack those three kinds of craving by doing other things—in other words, following the path, starting with right view all the way through right concentration under the headings of virtue, concentration, discernment. And through that path it’s possible to put an end to suffering. It’s an inside job. The suffering is inside; the causes are inside; the solution is … 
  3. Being Right
     … You’re being right with discernment. And discernment, as we all know in the Buddha’s teachings, is strategic, realizing that even though things may seem very straightforward in the texts, in actual practice you have to learn how to think strategically, to deal with obstacles that come up, and find your way around them. That’s how discernment becomes your own, a quality … 
  4. The Best Work Around
     … asking discerning questions about our likes, questioning our assumptions. Dogen once described the practice as, “dethinking your thinking.” In other words, it’s not just that you stop thinking, it’s that you question your attitudes, your assumptions about, “This is good and that’s bad.” Well, look at what’s actually appearing in the mind. Is it really what you thought it was … 
  5. Self-Bypassing
     … When the Buddha says that discernment begins with the question: “What having been done by me will lead to my long term harm and suffering? What having been done by me will lead to my long term welfare and happiness?” there’s still an agent there, there’s still a “me” and an “I.” The whole point of this line of questioning is to … 
  6. Instruct, Urge, Rouse, & Encourage Yourself
     … That covers both sides of discernment: your understanding of how things work, and your desire to use that understanding for a good purpose. Right view basically tells you the way things are, how they work. Right resolve says that it’s good to act on this. Which is why Ajaan Lee pointed out that when the Buddha talks about the three qualities that are … 
  7. Learning from Determination
     … The important part is the soldier’s weapons — discernment — supported by the food supplies and other things that go into an army. I remember thinking as I was reading the passage, “Well, what is a soldier?” Then Ajaan Mun said, finally, “The soldier is the determination never to come back and be the laughingstock of the defilements ever again.” So while you are learning … 
  8. Strength of Conviction: 2
     … Whatever sense of self remains is required for the practice of concentration, for the practice of discernment. Here again, there will be that element of conceit that Ananda talks about: “If the noble ones can do this practice, if the awakened ones can do it, I can do it, too.” So you recognize that conceit for the sake of concentration and discernment, but you … 
  9. The Reasonable Path
     … It takes virtue, concentration, and discernment, and puts them in a reasonable context. The Jains often complained to the Buddha that his precepts were sloppier than theirs. But again they took the idea of harmlessness to totally useless extremes. It was logical but it was useless. It didn’t work. The same with concentration. You can get the mind into a dead concentration where … 
  10. Learning Right Speech
    There’s a tendency to think of practicing the Dhamma as meaning what you do when you sit here with your eyes closed, trying to get the mind into concentration, trying to develop discernment. But we have to remember that the path to awakening is not a one-fold path or a two-fold path. It’s a noble eightfold path. And each of … 
  11. Make Yourself Small
     … So it’s not just a process of staring at the one spot and not using any discernment at all. You’ve got to use your discernment in cutting away the obstacles, the distractions, the things that pull you away—whether an emotion, a thought, a memory, or a distraction. If you can simply note that you’ve been distracted or pulled away and … 
  12. Practical Wisdom
     … This is one of the reasons why we develop alertness, mindfulness, concentration, discernment, and how we learn to be persistent and ardent in developing these qualities of heart and mind. That’s because these are the qualities that guarantee the quality of your intentions. There’s a teaching in the commentaries about the cycle of action. First comes the intention and then the result … 
  13. Complexities of Karma
     … Be generous, be virtuous, develop thoughts of goodwill in your mind, and then try to develop as much concentration and mindfulness as you can, ultimately leading to discernment—a discernment that sees when the mind moves in certain ways, it creates suffering, and you don’t have to move that way anymore. When it moves in other ways, it creates the path to the … 
  14. Meticulousness
     … Then you’re likely to see some unexpected things. ** That’s what wisdom and discernment are all about. It’s one of the reasons I translate paññā as “discernment.” It’s the ability to detect things you’ve been missing or you’ve been overlooking. They’ve been there all along in plain sight, it’s just that you’ve been looking right past … 
  15. What Is One
     … You have to supplement it with the food of discernment, which tells you that whatever is going to happen in the future, you don’t really know the details of the danger ahead of you. But you do know that whatever the dangers, expected or unexpected, you’re going to need a lot of discernment, you’re going to need a lot of alertness … 
  16. Lessons of Distraction
     … It’s the method that uses the least discernment and the most force. But sometimes you need it, and you find that it works. One variation on this is to repeat your meditation word very fast in the mind, to consciously jam the circuits. Then, when the mind had enough of that and feels ready to settle down, it’s ready to go back … 
  17. In Harmlessness Is Strength
     … virtue, concentration, and discernment. Or to develop meritorious activities: generosity, virtue, and meditation. In the course of doing that, we develop a very strong sense of self, a healthy sense of self. But as the practice develops, we find that the sense of self becomes more and more just a concept that we use, a tool that we use. As long as it has … 
  18. Things as They Function
     … This is why we have the training in the precepts, training in concentration, training in discernment. The Buddha’s giving us good things to do so that we can see clearly what it is for the mind to do something. As he says, we suffer because of the cravings that lead to becoming. So he has us engage in some skillful becoming, which means … 
  19. Noble Right Concentration
     … It’s in this way that the concentration improves and your discernment develops. Discernment is all about seeing things in terms of cause and effect. Sometimes you hear it defined as seeing the nature of things as they are. But the Buddha was less interested in things as they are than in how they work. After all, you could say that all things change … 
  20. Wisdom & Compassion
     … Yet if you can learn how to bring them together, develop the qualities of wisdom and discernment on the one hand, and goodwill and compassion on the other, and develop them together, that’s when you begin to see the power of the mind in being able to put an end to suffering, doing the most important thing it can do. The Buddha’s … 
  21. A Light in the Darkness
     … We have to watch so that we can give rise to discernment. The discernment here is precisely that: the awareness that comes when you really watch things carefully, when you observe what’s going on in the mind. So you have to set up the right circumstances. Again, it’s not a matter of thinking things through. The proper preparation for the meditation, the … 
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