Search results for: "Discernment"
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- What Should & Shouldn’t Be Done… qualities of alertness, mindfulness, concentration, discernment.” So that’s what we’re doing as we’re sitting here right now: trying to develop our mindfulness and alertness and concentration and discernment so that we can become reliable judges as to what should and shouldn’t be done, and which results of our actions are satisfactory and which ones are not. Just make sure that …
- The Buddha’s Cure… That requires discernment, wisdom. The Buddha says discernment begins with the question, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” You want to use that as a standard for judging all the different desires and emotions that come up. If you go with this desire, this emotion, or do what it’s telling you to do, will that …
- Strengthening Your Goodness… This is the work of right effort together with discernment. When the Buddha was teaching mindfulness of breathing to his son, he started out with some discernment exercises, in particular, focusing on inconstancy—and that includes stress and not-self—to give karate chops to your unskillful thoughts. Whatever they propose, you can say that the pleasure that comes from engaging in lust or …
- An Island of Concentration… You try to stay with the breath as it comes in, goes out, and discern when it’s long, when it’s short, and try to figure out if long breathing feels better or short breathing feels better. That’s because the Buddha also tells you to breathe in ways that give rise to a sense of refreshment, a sense of pleasure, and those …
- Guarding the Truth… This is why guarding the truth also has to watch out for what the Buddha calls “neglecting discernment” or “being heedless of discernment.” Part of your mind can see what’s actually going on and can tell where it’s going to lead, but it chooses to ignore—again, because of its intentions, what it wants. But when you can see these things and …
- Sober Up… When the mind is steadily in the present moment, that’s when discernment can arise. The pleasure of the breath as you work with it is not just an inducement to help you stay with the breath. It’s an important part of taking you further on the path. It gives you something to feed on while you’re following the path, so that …
- Cornered… What are the limits of well-being that fabrication can create, and where do those limits constrict you? In other words, what is the area within those limits where you can create well-being, and then where do you find you’re running up against a brick wall? This is how you develop your discernment. Discernment means seeing distinctions. It’s easy to say …
- Precarious Knowledge… In other words, you realize the knowledge you have about virtue, concentration, discernment, what to do when you meditate, is not something you’re going to be able to hold on to forever. So you try to get the most use out of it while you can. There is the opportunity right now. This is why the present moment is so important, not that …
- Genuine Goodness… That’s where the practice of concentration turns into a way of developing discernment: As you try to figure out what ways to bring the mind to stillness, you begin to see how things work in the mind. A lot of things in your life that seemed very solid and set begin to seem a little bit more fluid. Certain problems you had in …
- Challenges… That requires concentration, discernment, alertness, mindfulness, lots of good, strong mental qualities. Then you become like a healthy person who can go anywhere, eat any kind of food, sleep on any kind of bed. That gives you a greater sense of freedom. Even though it may not be absolute freedom, it gives you a much wider range of things you can handle. But even …
- A Mind Like Earth… Concentration can foster discernment, and in some cases, the discernment seems to follow naturally. But in other cases, you have to actively think about things, think things through, analyze them. So again, the concentration is a basis, the steadiness is a basis, but there is more work to be done on top of that. It’s good work. Think about all the many lifetimes …
- Constant, Easeful, Self… Now, it may seem strange that he put these at the beginning of the meditation because these perceptions, these contemplations, are contemplations of discernment. The implication, though, is that even as you’re practicing concentration, you’ve got to apply some discernment to what you’re doing; to understand what you’re doing and to understand how to get past distractions to your practice …
- Good Work… This is what discernment is: catching the mind in the act of doing those things and falling for those things—at the same time seeing the possibility that you don’t have to fall. When your alertness and mindfulness are quick enough, you can see this and stop the process. You keep digging in and digging in to see: “Why does the mind keep …
- How to Change… Your discernment is the soldier’s weapon. Concentration, mindfulness: These are the food and other supporting factors for the soldier. Learn to think of yourself in those terms. If you’ve been victimized in the past, you don’t have to stay in the role of victim. You can show yourself and others that you can rise above that. Think in those terms. That …
- Many I’s, Many Eyes… This is how discernment works. One part of the mind is acting and other parts of the mind are watching, so that you’re very clear about what’s being done, why it was done, and what it leads to. So even though having a committee may be difficult in the beginning because they’re all pulling in different directions, if you learn how …
- Attention & Intention… This grows from conviction into the two discernment factors in the noble eightfold path: right view and right resolve. Conviction is essentially mundane right view. Noble right view pays attention to the questions of what suffering is, what’s causing suffering, and what you can do to put an end to that suffering. Right view is not just a collection of some interesting facts …
- Helping Others Is a Battle… You feed your discernment by noticing what’s happening in the mind, sorting your thoughts out into two sorts: skillful and unskillful. The skillful ones come from thoughts of renunciation, thoughts of goodwill, thoughts of compassion. The unskillful ones come from thoughts of sensuality, ill-will, harmfulness. Even the Buddha, when he was on his path, noticed that his thoughts fell into those two …
- Chronic Pain… Your approach may work today, but then tomorrow you’ve got another perception, so you have to keep probing around, keep asking questions, because the ability to separate the mind out from the pain, even though it’s based on concentration, is an activity of discernment. You have to figure out: “What is it that I’m doing that’s making the pain pain …
- Choices Now & at Death… The concentration can give rise to discernment. Discernment will help you see through all the processes by which desire creates things, and you get to the point where you can go beyond. Whereas if you wander off, you’ll end up just coming back to the same old desires that you’ve been mucking around in for who knows how long. Staying on the …
- What It All Comes From… Concentration leads to discernment. And discernment, in turn, leads to release. So, you have to have the proper response to your suffering, which is that you’re confident there’s a way out—and that you, as a conscious agent, can succeed in following that way. We see this in the two main emotions that are talked about most in the Theravada tradition: samvega …
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