Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. Discernment Through Ardency & Evaluation
     … This is why of the three qualities, Ajaan Lee points to ardency as being the one that gives rise to discernment. This fits in with that question the Buddha said lies at the basis of discernment: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term suffering? What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and benefit?” Discernment lies … 
  3. Noble Wealth
     … As Ajaan Lee said, of the various noble treasures, discernment is the most valuable because discernment is what realizes where those potentials lie and how you can develop them. Like right now: focusing on the breath. It’s a small thing, focusing on the breath. How would you imagine that this would be the potential for developing discernment? Well, it comes from focusing on … 
  4. Toward Release
     … He says, “Discern long breathing. Discern short breathing.” It’s interesting that, in his sixteen steps for breath meditation, he uses the verb “to discern” only in the very first two steps: discerning long breathing, discerning short breathing. How are you going to know if a breath is long or short? You have to make comparisons: Is this breath longer than the last one … 
  5. To Discern Suffering
    The chant just now talked about people who don’t discern suffering: You wonder who that might be. Everybody knows that they’re suffering. You can know it, you can sense it—but that doesn’t mean you discern it. To discern it means that you understand it. The word dukkha we translate as suffering can also mean stress or pain. Everybody knows pain … 
  6. Dethinking Thinking
     … You start with right mindfulness, and then the factors in the list show how you use discernment and effort to develop right mindfulness into right concentration. So you think about that, and then you try to put these things into practice. The Canon lists three kinds of discernment: the discernment that comes from listening, which would include reading; the discernment that comes from thinking … 
  7. Mindfulness + Discernment = Intelligence
    The Thai word for intelligence is a combination of two Pali words, the words for mindfulness and discernment: satipañña. And the ajaans like to talk a lot about applying your satipañña, your intelligence, to the meditation. The question is, what kind of intelligence are they talking about? Here it’s good to look at the Canon. When the Buddha talks about how mindfulness leads … 
  8. Write It Down in Your Heart
    There’s a sutta where the Buddha talks about three kinds of discernment: what he calls “overturned discernment,” “lap discernment,” and “wide-open discernment.” He’s referring to the way people listen to Dhamma talks. A person of overturned discernment, he says, is like a pot that’s been turned upside down. You pour water on the pot, but the pot’s not going … 
  9. For Your Good the Good of Others
     … It’s not the case that you get your concentration perfect and then you start thinking about discernment. To get the concentration going requires some discernment. When you realize that this is better than the mind’s normal preoccupations, that involves some discernment right there, as does seeing that you don’t have to go following every thought that comes up randomly in the … 
  10. Respect for the Triple Training
     … We want the discernment that allows us to see into our minds. So, the way we show respect for discernment is to make sure that the causes for discernment are in place. As for other agendas you may have as you go through the day, look carefully at them. A lot of our agendas have to do with conceit—wanting to be respected by … 
  11. Choose Your Battles
     … That kind of discernment takes time, which is one of the reasons why the practice takes time. After all, the deathless is always there, but our ability to detect it requires that our discernment get sharper and sharper. And discernment doesn’t grow in leaps and bounds. It gets sharpened each time you use it, bit by bit by bit by bit, until that … 
  12. Timeless
     … You’ve got to work on your concentration, work on your mindfulness, work on your discernment—to bring your discernment in line with the word the Buddha calls penetrating. He talks about the faculty of discernment is penetrating discernment into how things arise and pass away, but it’s not simply a matter of watching them arise and pass away. You also have to … 
  13. To Have a Purpose
     … So, when you have these four qualities of discernment, truth, relinquishment, and calm, then you’ve got all the perfections covered right there. Discernment covers not only the perfection of discernment, but also the perfection of goodwill, because that’s what the Buddha’s discernment or his wisdom is all about: how to find a happiness that’s totally harmless, totally secure. When you … 
  14. Doubt vs. Discernment
     … This, of course, fits in with the fact that the discernment factors in the path are not covered just by right view. There’s also right resolve. Once you understand what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, then you resolve to do what’s skillful. If you’re not sure, you resolve to find out. There’s a passage where the Buddha discusses … 
  15. Change
     … The first one, as I said, is an issue of discernment. The second one is an issue of mindfulness. You have to remember what’s worthwhile in the mind so that you can resist the sudden temptation to change directions. This is why mindfulness and discernment are so basic to the Buddha’s teaching. In the beginning, you align your discernment with the conviction … 
  16. Normalcy
     … Virtue fosters concentration, concentration fosters discernment, but then discernment comes and protects your virtue, protects your concentration. Your concentration protects your virtue. They’re all working together to keep the mind at this state of normalcy, so that when difficult things in life come up—in other words, when the ordinary things of life come up—you can see them as ordinary, and the … 
  17. Catch It in the Act
    One of the basic tenets in the Buddha’s teaching is the principle that discernment nurtured by concentration has great rewards, great benefits. When we hear that, we think we have to get a lot of concentration and only then can we work on discernment or wisdom. But that’s not the case. All the basic elements of the path—virtue, concentration, and discernment … 
  18. The Mind Like Water
     … So we’re trying to figure out how we can get together those factors for exertion and use them to support discernment. As you’ll notice out of the five—conviction, good health, honesty, persistence, and discernment itself—four of them are actually aspects of discernment. This connects with the fact that in the practice of mindfulness, ardency is the discernment factor. So discernment … 
  19. Capable
     … When your wisdom and discernment are independent in this way, that’s when you have full capability within yourself. No matter where you go, you’re safe, you’re fine. Ajaan Lee, in a discussion of the seven noble treasures, once said that of the seven, the most important is discernment. He explained, “If you have discernment, the other ones are there in the … 
  20. Turtle Meditation
     … One of the basic principles is that following the precepts helps your concentration, and your concentration helps strengthen your discernment. But the influences go in the other way as well. The more discernment you bring to your concentration, the stronger it’s going to be. The more concentration and discernment you bring to your precepts, the less harmful your actions are going to be … 
  21. A Home for the Mind
     … The chant we had just now, about discerning suffering, sounds a little strange. You might think, “Of course we discern suffering. I can tell when I’m suffering.” Well, it’s one thing to be aware of suffering, and it’s another to discern it. To discern it means you understand it: what it is, where it’s coming from, what you can do … 
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