Search results for: "Discernment"

  1. Page 57
  2. Time & Place
     … That way, our discernment will grow, get more refined and more specific, sharper and sharper. So, even though you might say that all feelings are painful and actions lead to feelings, you can’t say that all actions lead to pain. That’s a case where the three characteristics don’t apply. They may be true—as we chanted just now, they’re true … 
  3. Good Friends Inside
     … We’ve got to learn how to be discerning in who we associate with inside our mind. So for the time being, your friends are the ones that point you to the breath, who encourage you to stay with the breath, who remind you of all the good things that come from staying with the breath. When you’re actually able to stay with … 
  4. Don’t Stop with Acceptance
     … How are you in terms of conviction? How are you in terms of virtue, relinquishment, learning, discernment, ingenuity? The need for ingenuity is one of the reasons why it’s good to read a lot of the Forest ajaans, because they’re very ingenious in how they approach things. Ajaan Maha Boowa makes the point that there are a lot of times when you … 
  5. A Strong Mind
     … You don’t necessarily have to think about, say, mindfulness or alertness or discernment or concentration. But those things develop as you stay focused on the breath. When you wander off, you’ve got to know how to come back to the breath. You have to know how to be sensitive to the breath in the present moment. It’s really not that hard … 
  6. Suffering Is a Feeding Addiction
     … This is how concentration helps your discernment. It helps you to know in time, to see in time, to be up on what’s going on in the mind. Then you can use right view: knowledge about what’s a cause of stress and what’s part of the path to the end of stress. You can apply it to whatever’s coming up … 
  7. Clinging-Aggregates in Context
     … That’s how concentration alerts you to the fact that you need to use more discernment to figure out how you can find something that’s not fabricated. It delivers you to the threshold. Discernment does its work, and then, it too—because it’s made out of aggregates—has to be let go as well. It’s in this way, by developing the … 
  8. Friends & Enemies
     … That’s how we develop our discernment. Then we want to remember those lessons, because our real enemy lies in our lapses of mindfulness and lapses of discernment. Several people have noted that the Buddha image we’re going to be blessing this year is called the Destruction of Enemies. People have asked which enemies we have in mind, and the answer is the … 
  9. Victory over Death
     … That, the Buddha said, is the beginning of wisdom, or discernment: the question, “What when I do it will lead to long-term welfare and happiness?” “What when I do it when I do it will lead to long-term harm and suffering?” You’re taking your desire for happiness for granted and you’re using your wisdom to develop it, to provide for … 
  10. The Noble Truths Come First
     … anything that would pull you away from the practice of virtue, the practice of concentration, or the practice of discernment. You see those distractions as inconstant, stressful, not-self. These perceptions are there to develop a sense of dispassion for them. It’s only when the path has really completed its work—in other words, it’s fully developed—that you then let that … 
  11. Respect for Emptiness
     … It’s interesting that of the factors of the path — virtue, concentration, and discernment — the Buddha singled out concentration as something worthy of respect. At one point he called it the heart of the path. And yet the reason he needs to remind us to respect it is because we tend to overlook it, to step on it. Those little moments of stillness in … 
  12. An End to Suffering
     … This is where discernment comes in. A lot of the meditation lies in figuring out what’s going wrong. You’ve got some guidance from the Buddha. But, as he said, you’ve got to do the work yourself. And it’s through the desire to figure things out that discernment grows. How are your perceptions shaping the way you do things? How do … 
  13. Using Your Many Minds
     … This also means that you’re not going to wait until your powers of concentration are fully developed before you start developing the potential for discernment and wisdom in your practice. The two—concentration and discernment—go hand in hand. The more quiet you get the mind, the more clearly you can see things. The more clearly you see things, the more skill you … 
  14. The Big Picture
     … We hear so much about the wisdom of just being in the present, but the Buddha didn’t define wisdom or discernment that way. He said that wisdom or discernment starts with the question: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term harm and suffering?” The wisdom … 
  15. Equanimity & Karma
     … one, the ability to develop unlimited goodwill and equanimity; two, working on your virtue so that you don’t have to criticize yourself over the unvirtuous things you’ve done or said; three, working on your discernment so that you can see these distinctions in karma; and then four, training your mind so that it’s not overcome by pleasure or overcome by pain … 
  16. Antidotes for Clinging
     … You’ve got to develop your discernment from many angles, develop discernment with many facets. Essentially every approach involves seeing things in terms of being inconstant, stressful, and not-self, but those principles get applied in different ways for each type of clinging. So try to keep this list of medicines in mind and apply them as appropriate. That way you put yourself in … 
  17. Abandoning & Developing
     … But you do know that whatever happens, you’re going to need more mindfulness, more alertness, more discernment. So the best way of preparing for future dangers is actually to get the mind into concentration. Develop your mindfulness and alertness and discernment. If it so happens that things get really bad, you’ll have the resources you need inside, because if you try to … 
  18. As They’ve Come to Be
     … A lot of the discernment comes from fending off the distractions, so don’t be too irritated by them. Learn to understand the process of how you step out of them, because that will teach you how to step out of other things as well. Even with the path: There are passages where the Buddha talks about applying the same five-step program to … 
  19. The Shape of a Circle
     … You have to want discernment in order to gain it. You have to want to go all the way to the end of the path in order to reach it. You are dealing with a kind of desire here, so you could say that the contemplation flows out of the desire. Or in Ajaan Chah’s image, it’s like a branch that comes … 
  20. Not Getting What You Want
     … There are sixteen steps in all, and only the first two are simply discerning differences in the breath. Once you discern them, you train yourself to breathe in a way that feels good throughout the body. You’re aware of the whole body, you calm the breath, you give rise to a sense of pleasure, a sense of refreshment—let it fill the body … 
  21. For Your Benefit Here & Now
     … Your concentration leads to discernment and your discernment leads to more concentration. They work together. Just be careful, though, when you’re going for the pleasure, that you don’t abandon the breath. This is something that’s all too easy, especially when there are people out there telling you that that’s what you’ve got to do. I was talking to someone … 
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