Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. The Elephant Hunter
     … They required conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. So he developed those qualities. When he found that the results were not what he’d hoped for, he moved on. But he committed himself first, then he reflected. That’s what he asks you to do, too. Conviction is basically taking on, as a working hypothesis, the teachings that you are responsible for your actions … 
  3. A Sense of Space Inside
     … Even more so as you start developing discernment around all this: You begin to see, “Oh, these are the steps by which the mind creates its sense of self and creates its sense of the world. And this is the suffering or the stress that results. Do I really want to go there?” When you realize you have the alternative, you don’t have … 
  4. The Mind When Trained Brings Happiness
     … You’re going to be less of a burden on them and you’ll be developing good qualities that you can share with them, qualities like generosity, virtue, and the discernment that you develop from training the mind. True happiness is something that is within our capabilities. So we have to look carefully at where we’re looking for our happiness because there are … 
  5. Tenacity
     … It requires a lot of ingenuity and a lot of discernment to notice where you’re causing yourself suffering, and how the avoidance of one form of clinging often leads you to go and cling to something else. The path lies in learning how to take that habit to your advantage, as when you leave one clinging go to another one that’s more … 
  6. Good Humor
     … And then tune everything else, all the other faculties — conviction, mindfulness, concentration, discernment — to the level of energy you can manage.” It’s like tuning a guitar. First you tune one string and then you tune the other strings to the first one. In meditating, your first string is the amount of energy at your disposal. You want to put enough pressure on yourself … 
  7. Grief & Regret
     … Ananda takes the news to the Buddha, and as he’s telling the Buddha that Sariputta’s passed away, he says, “It’s as if all the directions got dark, I lost my bearings, hearing of Sariputta’s death.” And the Buddha asked him, "Well, when Sariputta died, did he take virtue with him? Did he take concentration? Did he take discernment? Did he … 
  8. Some Assembly Required
     … Which is why your discernment has to be on top of things. There is a saying that you can’t use your old insights for very long. They’re like food: delicious the first day it’s cooked, and maybe you can make good leftovers out of it after a while, but there comes a point where you can’t keep it any longer … 
  9. Learning by Doing
     … Then there’s the wisdom or the discernment that you develop as you stay with the breath, figuring out which ways of breathing are good, which ways are not. Which places to focus in the body are easy to stay with and which ones are not. If there’s an imbalance in the body—too much pressure, say, in the head—how do you … 
  10. Intelligent Design
     … Fourth and fifth are concentration and discernment. The discernment there is to help find ways over the obstacles that we all inevitably find on the path, and the concentration is to give your mind the food it needs to keep its energy up. The texts talk about persistence as a requisite for concentration, but the relationship goes the other way as well. Do your … 
  11. Categorical Truths
     … And then, the fourth noble truth is the noble eightfold path, which boils down to virtue, concentration, and discernment. These are all noble truths because they carry duties that, when you fulfill them, will lead to the deathless: something that doesn’t age, doesn’t grow ill, doesn’t die; something that stands outside of space and time. All this is categorical. Now, when … 
  12. At the Door of the Cage
     … Ordinarily, we’d like to leapfrog over the concentration to get to the discernment, because we’re very busy people, after all. We’ve got a lot to do in our lives, so we want to get to the main point of this Buddhism thing and then go on to something else. But that’s not how the practice works. You have to put … 
  13. Intelligent Restraint
     … As the Buddha said, you hold things in check with mindfulness and then you cut things off at the source with discernment. So try to exercise both mindfulness and discernment. In Thai, when they put those two words together—sati and pañña—it means intelligence. You’re intelligent in the way you manage your senses and the things that come in through the senses … 
  14. The Power of Human Effort
     … If you look at the way he talks about discernment in the beginning levels when he’s talking to his son, teaching about the basic principles of the practice, he says you look into your actions as you’d look into a mirror. You cleanse your mind by cleansing your actions. First you focus on your intentions, what you expect to gain out of … 
  15. Fear
     … That’s the strength the comes with discernment. You see that the battle of clinging to the body, the battle of clinging to the aggregates is one that’s not worth fighting. When you can cut away the battles that are not worth fighting, that lightens your load considerably. That’s one of the secrets of inner strength: learning how not to waste your … 
  16. Peace of Mind
     … Concentration develops; discernment develops. All these things get stronger with use. And even though it may seem like a simple thing, being focused on the breath, still the qualities you develop around it are important. Just like going down to the gym: They ask you to lift some weights. What does it accomplish, lifting weights? It doesn’t generate electricity. It doesn’t do … 
  17. Becoming Capable of Happiness
     … And you have to want to do this well, realizing that you need to develop the discernment that sees how to hold to them without their forcing you into doing things that will be detrimental. After all, there are times, say, when you’re asked a question about some information and you suspect that the person who’s asking the question might misuse the … 
  18. Focus on Your Intention
     … Then, when you finally peel away your attachment here, and can let go of the discernment that did the peeling, you really are freed. There’s nothing left to hold on to. Otherwise, if you simply note at the very beginning, “Well, yes, my concentration is inconstant because it hasn’t been mastered,” and think that it’s wise or discerning to see its … 
  19. The Breathing Game
     … The skill is to make us more mindful, more alert, more concentrated and discerning. As with any skill, it’s important, one, that you start out with something fairly simple and, two, that you treat it like a game. If you get too serious and too emotional about it from the very beginning, you tie yourself up in knots. So treat the whole thing … 
  20. The Dhamma Protects
     … So patient endurance is an important protection in the path—but it has to be done with wisdom and discernment. I was reading a passage where Ajaan Chah talked about to going to the palace in Bangkok. He was invited for a meal with a couple of other forest ajaans. Apparently there were some political difficulties at the time, between student groups and the … 
  21. The Four Biases
     … This is why concentration is a basis for discernment: You get a sense of stability, a rock-solid sense of imperviousness, where things just don’t seep in. That’s what enables you to live in the world without getting thrown off balance by the world. The people of the world may be slanted, they may be biased, but you don’t have to … 
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