Search results for: "Discernment"
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- The Resolve to Let Go… That principle is an important part of getting the mind into deeper states of concentration, and it’s also an important part of discernment. Because a lot of discernment is learning to let go of your unwillingness to examine things you’ve been holding on to. We hold on to our sensual desire, we hold on to our ill will, we hold onto our …
- How to Listen to the Dhamma… Then, from concentration, as the mind is really centered, you can develop more discernment that leads to release. There are lots of cases in the Canon of people gaining the Dhamma eye as they listen to the talk by the Buddha, and it’s expressed the same way again and again: “Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation.” Taken on its …
- The Noble Truth of Suffering… You get the mind concentrated; you develop your powers of discernment. These are the things you’re going to need. To make them reliable, you base them on right action, right speech, right livelihood, so that you can become a reliable judge. As he says, the Dhamma is nourished by commitment and reflection. So you really have to give yourself to it. And then …
- A Foundation for Restraint… So this involves not only concentration but also some discernment: reminding yourself that this tendency of the mind to look for trouble is what’s causing all the trouble. You have to think about the implications of that until you have a sense of dispassion toward it. The breath helps with that contemplation, giving you not just a place to stay, but a comfortable …
- The Brahmaviharas Are Not a Complete Practice … We’re here both to gain the sense of well-being that comes from concentration and to use that concentration to give rise to more mindfulness, more alertness, and more discernment. That’s the part that’s missing in the brahmaviharas: the discernment. Breath meditation helps in that direction by teaching you about the mind’s fabrications. When the Buddha gives instructions, he starts …
- Appreciating Dispassion… Someone once asked the Buddha, “What is virtue for?” “Virtue,” he says, “is for the sake of concentration.” “What’s concentration for?” “Concentration is for the sake of discernment.” “What’s discernment for?” “For the sake of release.” “What’s release for?” “For the sake of nibbāna.” “What is nibbāna for?” That’s when the Buddha said, “You can’t keep going with these …
- Don’t Underestimate Merit… And think about the Buddha’s definition of discernment. It comes from the question: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” Your sense of what qualifies as long-term and your sense of what qualifies as happiness get more and more demanding as your practice progresses, as your wisdom grows. And part of the demands they make …
- Observing the Mind at the Breath… The effectiveness here is important, because that’s where a lot of discernment gets developed, too, in trying to gain a sense of your own mind—when it needs harsh treatment, when it needs soft treatment, when it needs a little energizing from the breath, when it needs to be calmed down by the breath. You learn these things as you’re working with …
- Equanimity… It requires discernment to decide how much you’re going to try to help somebody before you say, “I can’t. This person is beyond my help, I’ve got to chalk it up to karma.” That’s going to depend on your own powers of observation and your own connection with the person. It’s interesting that the passage that’s used to …
- A Path Rooted in Desire… That resolve is part of discernment. We tend to think of wisdom and discernment as observations about things. But for the Buddha, wisdom involves resolving on doing what’s skillful. It’s an act of will—something you want to cultivate. Based on that act of will, you try to bring your speech, your actions, and your livelihood in line with the principle of …
- Ānāpānasati Day… As you breathe in and out, you discern when the breath is long; you discern when it’s short. Then you train yourself to breathe in and out sensitive to the whole body. And then you train yourself to calm what the Buddha calls bodily fabrication, in other words, the in-and-out breathing. Why he calls it that, he doesn’t say, but …
- The Power of Action… So you think about the precepts, you think about his teachings on concentration and discernment, and you want to be in tune with those. You want to be in tune also with the stories you hear of the monks and the nuns and other people who have been successful in the practice. They give you an idea: This is how it’s done, this …
- Humility… This is a lot of what discernment is: seeing the processes of the mind as they give rise to greed, anger, and delusion, or to mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. Even though these things have abstract names, they’re specific events. Choices are made each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out. Look for the specific choice, look for the specific movement of …
- Passion for Dispassion… Other people find concentration easy, not so much of an issue, but then they get interested more in the discernment side: figuring out where their attachments are, why they’re attached, what they can do to pry lose those attachments. But the important thing is you learn how to be passionate for the path. The Buddha talks about six things that you can take …
- Wisdom for Dummies… At the same time, you get more and more sensitive to one of the big principles in the workings of cause and effect, the principle that informs all the basic principles of wisdom and discernment: the fact that some causes have an effect over time, some have an effect immediately, and some have both. When you’re facing any experience in the present moment …
- Into Position… The poem goes on to talk about the triple training, and yet concentration is part of the triple training; the other parts are heightened virtue and heightened discernment. You may wonder why the Buddha has to mention concentration twice. Well, it’s because it’s easy to overlook. It’s very quiet. It doesn’t have any brand-new ideas, although it does provide …
- Joy in Getting It Right… That attitude may be based on a misreading of the Satipatthana Sutta, where it talks about seeing feelings arising and passing away, discerning a feeling of pleasure, discerning a feeling of pain, neither pleasure nor pain, seeing mind states arising and passing away, a restricted mind, an unrestricted mind, concentrated, unconcentrated. It makes it sound as if you just watch whatever’s going to …
- The Riddle Tree… This is how discernment fosters concentration. The typical pattern, of course, is that concentration fosters discernment. But as the Buddha said at one point, to get the mind to settle down to good strong concentration you need both tranquility and insight. Sometimes you’ll depend more on one side than on the other. And it will vary from day to day, from session to …
- A Concentration Diet… This is why, when the Buddha talked about the practice as being like having a fortress in a frontier and he compared various aspects of the practice to different things in a fortress—like mindfulness being the gatekeeper, persistence being the soldiers, discernment being the wall—he compared concentration to the stores of food kept in the fortress. When you get the mind to …
- Acceptance & Equanimity… This fits in with the Buddha’s image for discernment, that it’s like being in a tower, looking down on people below you. There’s something about that insight that places you above the things that are inconstant stressful, not-self, because you’ve learned to find a sense of well-being that comes from not insisting that everything be the way you …
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