Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. Get Attached to Jhana
     … It requires work and it has to be maintained, but it’s maintained for a purpose, providing you with a lever to pry yourself from your fascination with sensual thinking and to prepare the mind for deeper discernment. The more you can appreciate it, the more you can indulge in it, to borrow the Buddha’s term, then the more it’s going to … 
  3. Judging Mindfulness & Concentration
     … This takes us into what’s called the second stage of mindfulness practice, where the Buddha talks about discerning origination with regard to the breath, discerning passing away, inside and outside. Origination doesn’t mean just plain old arising; it means causation. You’re trying to discover what causes what. The only way you can do that is by messing with things—in other … 
  4. One Thing at a Time
     … In the beginning, you simply learn how to discern: What are the distinctions between long breathing and short breathing? And, Ajaan Lee would add, you can also try to discern fast, slow; heavy, light; deep, shallow; or in long, out short; in short, out long, to get a sense of what the breath can do for the body. When you have a sense of … 
  5. Worlds to Watch Out For
     … when you develop good qualities of mind—like goodwill, compassion, concentration, mindfulness, discernment—you get good results. When you abandon unskillful ones, you get good results, too. It’s because you actually get results that the Buddha finally found it worth teaching. Everything in his teaching revolves around the issue of choice. And, of course, choice comes together with his teachings on kamma. Now … 
  6. Skillful Fear
     … If you’ve been wandering off into fear, you can come back, not simply by pulling yourself back, but by reminding yourself: “Okay, if you’re going to be afraid of anything, be afraid of not being able to meditate properly, not gaining good concentration that will support your right view and support your virtue.” This way, you use your discernment to take the … 
  7. Slogging Through Difficulties
     … This is how wisdom develops, how discernment develops. It’s not the case that the mind settles down all the time and gets into a nice, blissful state and then gains quick and easy insights. Sometimes the insights have to come through making mistakes, slogging through the difficult parts of the practice. This is where equanimity and patience come in. You may not want … 
  8. Why We Bow Down
     … With right effort, there’s a lot of discernment that goes into right effort. You have to know what’s skillful, what’s unskillful. You have to be convinced that there is such a thing as long-term happiness and that it can be obtained through actions. And you really are motivated to work for the long-term. There’s discernment there—but also … 
  9. Shoot Your Pains with Wisdom
     … You’re shooting discernment. The purpose of all this is not simply to make life livable but also to put yourself in a position where you can really practice. You’re not focusing all your energy on adding to your pains. You’re getting the mind in a position of inner strength where it doesn’t feel the need to go out and straighten … 
  10. A Passion for the Path
     … In every case, our motivation may not be pure as we begin, but as we become more and more self observant, as concentration gets stronger, and our discernment gets more precise, we begin to see that there are things we’re holding onto that are causing us to suffer and if we don’t let them go, there are going to be problems. What … 
  11. Surprise Yourself
     … You discern when the breath is long. You discern when the breath is short. You breathe in and out sensitive to the entire body. You breathe in and out calming bodily fabrication. The word “bodily fabrication” there means the in-and-out breath. The question, of course, is: Why did the Buddha use a technical term there? The answer seems to be that he … 
  12. Boring
     … There was an ajaan in the forest tradition who once complained to Ajaan Lee, saying, “What is there to see? Where are you going to get any discernment out of watching the breath? It’s nothing but in, out, in, out, that’s all. What kind of discernment can you get from that?” Ajaan Lee replied, “Well, if that’s all you see, then … 
  13. Doubt
     … that the cure for doubt is the same thing as food for the discernment factor for awakening, which is analysis of qualities. In other words, to starve your doubt, you have to develop your discernment. It’s not simply a matter of denying the doubt or wishing it away. The cure for doubt, he says, is to look into the mind and apply appropriate … 
  14. Doing the Practice
     … That requires mindfulness, it requires alertness, discernment, persistence, all of which are qualities we can train in, we can develop in the mind. Staying focused on the breath, staying with the body in the present moment, is a good way of developing these qualities. To begin with, it’s very basic. Breath is something you always have as long as you’re alive. The … 
  15. Good Fences All Around You
     … You want this fence to be all around you—in terms of your virtue, your concentration, your discernment. The fence of virtue is really important. As Ajaan MahaBoowa says, “Anything in your mind that would have you break any of the precepts, you have to recognize as a defilement. In fact, anything that goes against the Dhamma: Recognize that as a defilement.”** **A good … 
  16. Pleasure & Pain
     … That’s because one of the basic principles of discernment is that you’re going to need a very steady focus in order to understand anything. And when you try to understand pain, you can’t make it your agenda that you want to make it go away. You simply want to watch it. You’ll find sometimes that your level of focus is … 
  17. Mindfulness Island
     … The first determination is not to neglect discernment. What would it mean to neglect discernment? It would mean to not pay attention to the long-term consequences of your actions. Here again, it’s so easy in this world, where everything is measured in quarterly or day-to-day terms, for you to think in the short term along with everyone else. And although … 
  18. Training Your Intentions
     … Show some discernment. We all have some discernment, it’s just a matter of putting it to use. As you put it to use, it begins to grow. It’s like a muscle that you haven’t used very much—it may be weak, but it’s there. If you exercise it, it gets stronger and stronger. So whatever the issues you’re dealing … 
  19. Right Speech
     … There of course will be tests of your ingenuity and your discernment in doing this, because there will be times when people ask questions and you know that answering those questions is going to give rise to problems. The Buddha himself said that he would not tell the truth in areas where it would give rise to greed, anger, and delusion. That doesn’t … 
  20. Delight in Concentration
     … That’s what it has in common with discernment. If you focus on the concentration, everything gets pulled together right here. So take delight in this skill. Without that delight, it doesn’t get developed. With that delight, you’ve got your motive force to keep going.
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