Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. Strength for Your Goodness
     … That’s what the work of discernment is. You’ve got discernment, mindfulness, and concentration all working together, based on the conviction that the good things you do in your mind, the strengths you develop in your mind, will make a difference. And the good you do is not going to be washed away by other people’s actions, other people’s words. When … 
  3. Actualizing Your Potentials
     … The beginning of wisdom or the beginning of discernment lies in this ability to get a sense of what’s really important and what’s not. Back in the time of the Buddha, there was a list of the hot issues of the day: Is the world eternal or is it not eternal? Is it finite or is it infinite? Is the life force … 
  4. Practicing on Your Own
     … That’s what gives rise to the discernment. And of course the discerning answer is that the time hasn’t come to let go of the peel yet. If you took off the peel now, the banana would just be mush in your hands. You hold onto the peel until you don’t need it anymore. And it’s the same with right view … 
  5. Persistence: Lift Your Heart
     … I want something better.” Now, there’s some discernment in that desire, and you want to foster it so as to lift up the mind. The Buddha gives the image of discernment as a person climbing up into a tower, with a much larger view of things than people on the ground—i.e., your ordinary petty concerns. The pettiness of your defilements begins … 
  6. Insight in Concentration
     … People often think that you first do concentration, then, when you really get good at concentration, discernment comes. Well, a lot of discernment comes in the course of trying to keep the mind here in the present moment, because after a while different ideas will come up in the mind: You’re tired of the breath. You feel rested already. “That’s enough. Let … 
  7. Admit Your Stupidity
     … The qualities are conviction, virtue, generosity, and discernment. Of course, the discernment there becomes the internal quality, what the Buddha calls appropriate attention. It’s a matter of asking the right questions, questions that help you understand where you’re creating unnecessary suffering and how you can put an end to that. That, for the Buddha, was the big issue in life, the big … 
  8. Seriously Happy
     … The Buddha’s recommendation is that you find someone who really knows—those who really know, of course, are those who have attained awakening—and you go and you ask them, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” The question in and of itself, as the Buddha said, is the beginning of discernment. It shows some discernment … 
  9. Taking Your Own Medicine
     … It needs discernment as well. And where do insight and discernment come from? From the powers of mindfulness and alertness you develop while you’re concentrating. Learn how to use them properly, applying them to things inside and out, so that the strength and the health you develop by sitting here don’t go to waste.
  10. Holding On to the Path
     … You need the wisdom, you need the discernment, to know which is which. This is one of the reasons why you have to hold on to concentration, because it’s only when the mind is really still that it can see things clearly enough to get a really good sense of what’s working and what’s not. You can’t just go by … 
  11. If These Walls Could Talk
     … The Buddha talks about the fact that we’re training the mind in virtue, concentration, discernment, or what he calls heightened virtue, heightened mind, heightened discernment. Even though to some extent the Buddha is our trainer, he’s not here right now. You have to internalize his instructions, internalize his values. Which means that part of your mind is the trainer, and part of … 
  12. Restraint
     … The Thai equivalent, khwaam rawb khawb, is Ajaan Lee’s definition of one of the bases for success, the one that has to do with using your powers of discernment. And that’s a lot of what discernment is. It’s not just a matter of seeing distinctions or seeing connections between things; it’s also seeing the ramifications of what you do. You … 
  13. Observant & Ingenious
     … That way, you develop your own discernment—because that’s what discernment is. It’s not just seeing things that you’re supposed to see. It’s also being more active in employing your ingenuity. There was a monk in the Canon who explained a point of Dhamma to one of his relatives. He then went to see the Buddha and asked if he … 
  14. The Real Thing
     … So that’s the kind of discernment we’re talking about here. It’s not discernment that goes spinning off into great big constructions. It’s a matter of learning how to look at what’s right here. “This is suffering. This is the cessation of suffering. This is the cause of suffering.” You’re looking at things directly. Now, that requires that the … 
  15. The Wisdom of Self-regulation
     … A lot of discernment has to go into that. It helps to have good examples of people who live by the teachings and not get all tied-up in knots, to show you somewhat how it’s done, but you also have to learn how to sort things out on your own. So for the time being as you’re sitting here meditating, any … 
  16. Non-Reactive Judgment
     … When your precepts are sloppy, then your concentration gets sloppy and your discernment gets dishonest. So you have to start training the critic. The training in meditation begins with some very basic instructions: the passage where the Buddha tells Rahula, “Try to make your mind like earth. Bad things are dumped on the earth, but the earth doesn’t react.” You can extend that … 
  17. Limitations
     … generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, and equanimity. That’s the traditional list of good qualities that you can develop as you go through life in the world. You aim at developing those qualities as much as you can. As for the effect you leave behind in the world, you do your best, realizing that there will be limitations. But the … 
  18. The Politics of Arising & Passing Away
     … In particular, we do it to gain discernment which, in one of the passages, is defined as right discernment into arising and passing away. As the mind gets more and more centered, you begin to see things just coming up. If you don’t run with them, they dissolve. Then more come up and, again, if you don’t run with them, they dissolve … 
  19. Wisdom Through Training
     … You need these qualities of mindfulness, alertness, concentration, and discernment at all times, because the possibility for the mind to create suffering is there at all times as well. In the course of the day, someone may say something or do something that can set you off, and if you’re not careful, you can create a lot of harm, simply by giving in … 
  20. Radiating Goodness
     … That’s why we work on developing a sense of well-being with the breath, along with the qualities of mindfulness, alertness, concentration, discernment that go with staying with the breath; the ease and well-being that come when you get a sense of being at home with the breath, understanding the way the breath energy flows in the body and using the breath … 
  21. Tuning-in to the Breath
     … So even though this is just training in concentration, there’s also a lot of discernment involved. As the Buddha once said, both tranquillity and insight are required for getting good strong states of absorption. And he never talked about insight without framing it in terms of kamma, in terms of the skillfulness of what you’re doing. So this practice is what lays … 
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