Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. Perceiving the Breath
     … It involves the least amount of discernment, but sometimes it’s what works. Just clamp down and then when things finally settle down a bit, you can come out and return to the breath. So there’s a wide range of ways that you can deal with the distractions. The best one is the first: Make the breath really interesting. Try to figure out … 
  3. Beyond Inter-eating
     … the strengths of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. These are the qualities that strengthen the mind. In other words, they provide strength and they are strengths in themselves. Conviction is conviction in the principle that the Buddha really was awakened. And one of the major things he woke to was the principle of action, kamma: that our lives are shaped by our actions … 
  4. Death Is All Around
     … Your true treasures are things like conviction in the principle of your actions, a sense of shame at the idea of doing anything that’s not noble, concern for the harm that can come from unskillful actions, virtue, learning, discernment, generosity: These things are your treasures. People can take your body away from you, they can kill you, but they can’t take these … 
  5. Balancing the Bases for Concentration
     … The Buddha once said there’s no discernment without strong concentration, and there is no strong concentration without discernment. In other words, you need to have some understanding of what’s going on in the mind before you can get it to settle down. And the understanding comes from trial and error. So focus on being with the breath. After a while, you may … 
  6. Laying the Infrastructure
     … Get down to the details of the breath, because the more sensitive you are to this one thing, the more you develop the quality of discernment that we’re aiming at. And keep your eyes on the road. In other words, don’t anticipate where you’re going to go with this. Just keep following the steps, step by step, and the causes will … 
  7. Stillness & Clear Seeing
     … So even though discernment is what we’re aiming at as our primary tool in the path, it needs to be supported by all the other elements of the path as well. In particular, it’s supported by right concentration so that it can see clearly. You’re standing still, basically, when your mind is in concentration. And when you’re standing still, you … 
  8. Broad, Tall, & Deep
     … As for making it tall or high, the Buddha compares discernment to going up on a tower and looking down on the world below, seeing all the concerns of human beings as they scurry around. When you’re looking at them from way up high, they all seem so small. If you can learn to look at your own everyday concerns in the same … 
  9. Conceit Defanged
     … For non-returners, that means they’ve perfected virtue; they’ve perfected their concentration, but they’re still working on discernment. The “I” doing that is still the lingering scent. This “I am” can have nine different forms, they say, in which you compare yourself to others. Either the other person is worse than you are, or equal to you, or better than you … 
  10. Mindfulness the Seamstress
     … So if something makes it hard to bear, for the sake of the meditation you’ve just got to learn how to say, “Nope, I’m not going to hold on to that right now.” In this way, holding that perception in mind is an activity of discernment. You’re trying to sort out which parts of your awareness can be, say, with pain … 
  11. Anapanasati Day
     … He says discernment comes from experimenting. He says, suppose you have some silver in your pocket. All you know that it’s silver. But if you take it and melt it, you can make it into the different things. That’s when you really understand silver. This principle applies to knowledge in all fields. Like cooking: You don’t really understand eggs until you … 
  12. Giving to the Meditation
     … You’ve got these qualities of mindfulness, alertness, concentration, discernment. They’re all there in an inchoate form. You’ve got the seeds for these things. The meditation is simply an opportunity to allow them to grow and to flourish, so that the seeds of well being that you already have will have the opportunity to show exactly how far they can go. So … 
  13. How to Think about Death
     … first with the concentration and then with the discernment as you learn how to notice which motions of the mind go toward suffering and which other motions go away. This becomes your foundation, your safe place. So we think about death, we think about the unattractiveness of the body, not to get discouraged, not to be depressed. In fact, for the opposite reason: We … 
  14. Mindful of the Buddha’s Shoulds
     … And you can ask yourself, “Why do I have to be interesting?” You’ll have something to get interested in soon, when you work on discernment, but first get the mind to settle down and have this sense of ease. Allow it to saturate the body. Then the question will come up, “Is this as good as it gets?” And the answer is “No … 
  15. On the Surface of Things
     … This is what discernment is all about: seeing distinctions and seeing connections between those distinct things. They’re not absolutely distinct. If they were totally distinct, there would be no causal connections. Insight is seeing where the connections are: What influences what? Where is the cause, the samudaya, the arising-together on this level? When you see how ephemeral it all is, that’s … 
  16. The Open Committee
     … Is this a desire that really is in your own best interest? Where is it going to lead? Use the powers of your concentration, the powers of your discernment to make sure you’re not swayed by any desires that are really contrary to the Dhamma, contrary to your own true happiness. In this way, you bring some order into the committee. You’ve … 
  17. Fear & Conviction
     … You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but you do know that, whatever happens, you’re going to need more mindfulness, you’re going to need more alertness, more discernment, more concentration. You’re going to need to have a safe place inside. This is why we meditate. So if you find your conviction getting lax, it basically comes … 
  18. Prepare to Die
     … You can develop qualities of mindfulness, alertness, concentration, discernment: These things really will hold you in good stead. A lot of the techniques we’re practicing as we meditate will come in useful as we get sick, and especially useful at death. Even this technique of focusing the mind on one thing and learning how to let go of everything else: That’s going … 
  19. Engaging the Whole Mind
     … In other words, for discernment to arise, you have to engage all the powers of the mind. So it’s not just a matter of technique. The technique is there to give you something to work with. And in the course of working with it, you’re going to have to engage the whole mind. As you’re engaging the whole mind, that’s … 
  20. Nuts & Bolts
     … This is one of the reasons why there’s no one discernment method or one insight method. In fact, the Buddha didn’t give any insight methods at all, aside from asking you to question things: Why do you go for that? What are the results? The questions are very basic, and I think it’s good that we keep things basic. If we … 
  21. Forest Bathing
     … Those instructions come down basically to virtue, concentration, discernment, all based on a principle of generosity. So, stop for a while and think about what that means. Happiness is found through generosity and then perfected through virtue, concentration, and discernment. This is why we meditate. This is how we escape danger. A forest is a good place to do this because as you let … 
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