Search results for: "Discernment"
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- A Questioning Attitude… This is particularly true if we think that we’ve found a technique that’s going to guarantee discernment. For example, the idea that simply by developing mindfulness, being perfectly equanimous, noting whatever comes up, is automatically going to guarantee discernment: You can get very good at maintaining a state of equanimity, and of course you can really get attached to that equanimity to …
- A Sense of Yourself… All of these things keep coming back to discernment: realizing what’s important in life and also learning how to motivate yourself, learning how to use your discernment to take something that seems hard and make it easier. Ajaan Lee’s teachings on the breath are a really good example of this. He had a lot of illnesses in his life and he learned …
- Determined on Goodwill… What it means is that you have to learn how to use your discernment. In fact, in one of the canonical descriptions of *adhitthana *or determination, discernment comes first. You use your discernment both in your choice of the goal you want to attain and in the means by which you’re going to go about it—how you can get there—which means …
- Factors for Stream EntryThere’s a passage where the Buddha describes three ways of gaining discernment. You gain discernment through listening, through thinking, and through meditating. I saw a TV show recently, a French TV show on the Dhamma, and they spent the entire fifteen minutes just getting those three points across. But the important factor is that not just any kind of listening or any thinking …
- Unlimited Compassion, Limited Resources… So you need a combination of concentration and discernment. The discernment is what allows you to see which of those attitudes is appropriate for which cases. The concentration gives you the strength, the wisdom gives you the insight into your own motivations about why you might want to help somebody else, whether you can really trust those motivations or not. The combination of concentration …
- Instructions for a New Monk… That idea really impairs your ability to develop discernment, which is the fruit of concentration. The same with discernment: You can have some discernment without strong concentration. You can read the books and can apply the teachings to your life and gain some benefit from that. But it’s all very limited. Because there are many levels in the mind, and many levels of …
- You Can Do Better… One is conviction; the other is discernment. These are the things that pull your practice along. It’s easy to see how conviction would play that role. Belief that the teachings are true pulls you to practice. It’s interesting that discernment is also pulling you to practice. It’s the power that gets the whole thing going. In other words, you think about …
- A Slave to Craving… It can’t compare with results that come from learning how to develop the mind in concentration and discernment. You see through your attachments, your misguided ideas, realizing that you can’t base true happiness on things that are inconstant, stressful, and not self. Then finally: The mind, when fostered with discernment, is released from all its effluents, in other words, all the things …
- The Middleness of the Path… This is a lot of what the training in discernment is about: working from the blatant layers to the more subtle ones by trying to stay on the path. The Buddha called it a middle way, and getting that sense of middleness, or balance, is a lot of our training in discernment. If you’ve ever looked at a balance, you see that the …
- Beyond Gratitude… the potential for virtue, the potential for concentration, the potential for discernment. They’re all here in one form or another. So you start out by depending on whatever virtue you have, whatever concentration, whatever discernment you do have already. Then learn how to make it grow so that it’s all-around. Ajaan Chah says that Ajaan Mun used to talk about making …
- Vows… That’s part of the discernment that forms this factor in determination. Sometimes we’re taught not to have goals in the meditation. Usually that’s on meditation retreats. You’re in a high-pressure environment, you have a limited amount of time, and so you push, push, push. Without any discernment you can do yourself harm. So in a short-term setting like …
- King Asoka’s Vow… Think about Ajaan Lee’s comment that if you have discernment, then all you need is a machete and you can set yourself up in life. He was referring to the different noble treasures, pointing out that of the noble treasures, discernment is most important. So your mindfulness, to be really useful, does require discernment. It’s the same with alertness. Alertness is not …
- Intelligence of the HeartA lot of Thai ajaans talk about using your mindfulness and your discernment to understand things. Now, it’s good to know that the combination mindfulness-discernment, when it’s put together as a compound in Thai, means intelligence. So the ajaans are saying that you have to use your intelligence. It’s also good to think about why that combination would mean intelligence …
- The Lightened Mind… As you realize that, you develop the mind higher and higher in discernment, developing your skillfulness in terms of discernment. Then as the Buddha says, you lighten the mind even further by seeing that the discernment itself has its limitations. It, too, has its drawbacks in that it’s fabricated. There’s a line of thought that says the path culminates in discernment or …
- For a Routine That Isn’t Routine… And it goes into detecting, “What are you doing that’s causing suffering? When does that action start? When does it stop?” You’re discerning these differences. When you discern differences, you can begin to discern connections. It’s simply a question of seeing activities you didn’t realize were activities; detecting the fact that they *are *activities, and that they’re part of …
- How to Read Yourself… Maybe right now the strength of concentration is weak, but look to see what else you’ve got in terms of your conviction, your persistence, your mindfulness, your discernment. Ajaan Mun made a lot of the idea of using your discernment to develop your concentration. When Ajaan Lee wrote the book, The Craft of the Heart, which is one of the first books in …
- Staying Normal… So all these qualities—virtue, concentration, discernment, and release—revolve around this normalcy of mind. They work together. Ajaan Lee has a passage in one of his books where he analyzes virtue, and in the course of his analysis, virtue starts turning into concentration and discernment. He analyzes concentration, and it starts turning into virtue and discernment. He analyses discernment, and it turns into …
- Circumspection… Even with the practice of exercising your discernment, as the Buddha says in his comments about the factors for awakening, the analysis of qualities which is the discernment faculty: Sometimes if you use that too much, it gets the mind scattered. If you try to figure things out but just can’t figure them out, maybe it’s time to let the mind rest …
- Trust in Heedfulness… That’s how mindfulness works together with discernment. It’s a common phrase in the teachings of a lot of the Thai ajaans: mindfulness and discernment. There is a term in Thai, satipañña, which literally means mindfulness-discernment, but idiomatically means intelligence. But it’s not just intelligence in the terms of book learning. It’s the intelligence that comes when you see connections …
- The Wisdom of Ardency… A lot of the practice is seeing things that are not expected—which is why, when Ajaan Lee discusses those three qualities of mindfulness, alertness, and ardency, he identifies ardency as the discernment factor in what you’re doing. In other words, you discern that if you’re going to understand anything that the Buddha taught, you’re going to have to do it …
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