Search results for: "Discernment"
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- A Friend to the World… And this friend is discerning. Here we’re talking about someone who’s more than just an ordinary, everyday good person but someone who can really see into the causes of suffering and their end. Now, the ideal way to have friendship with this sort of person is to engage this person in discussion about these qualities, and to try to emulate them. So …
- WYSIWYG… As he said to Ajaan Lee, “What is there to see? What is there to get any discernment from? It’s just in, out, in, out.” And as Ajaan Lee replied, “If that’s all you see, then that’s all there is.” In other words, what you’re looking for and the type of interest you take in the breath are going to …
- Finding the Openings… And this is why we develop discernment, so that we offer less resistance to the wind. All the things you hold on to as you or yours, either physical things or the concepts you have about yourself: They offer resistance to the wind. They set up huge sails, so that you can get very easily blown around by change. But when the mind is …
- An Even Keel… Again, this is where your perspective, your discernment, comes in: when you realize that when things happen, you can’t always tell right away what their long-term outcome is going to be. So before you pass judgment, you want to watch. And watch again and watch again, until you’re really sure. So many times in the meditation we come up with our …
- Noble Conversation… Some of them have to do with meditation—the practice of concentration, discernment, release, and knowledge and vision of release—and people like to talk about their ideas about the advanced stages. But some more basic topics are actually more helpful to get you started and get you on the right foot from the very beginning—and to keep you on track. The list …
- When You Practice on Your Own… Then there are the people who find discernment easy and concentration hard, and those who find concentration easy but discernment hard. In cases like that, the Buddha would have you work on developing the area you find hard. This goes against the grain with a lot of people. People who tend to be very intellectual and find it easy to think things through, to …
- People Suffer from Their Thinking… Then the question is, how can you best prepare your mind? The best thing you can do is to train the mind to have more mindfulness, more discernment, more alertness, so that if death does come, the mind doesn’t have to suffer. He has you think the same way every morning at sunrise: This may be your last sunrise. Are you ready to …
- Three Stages in the Practice… Try to have the discernment that the Buddha compares to a well-plastered fortress wall. The enemy tries to climb up the wall but can’t because the plaster’s so smooth. You don’t want to leave any toeholds or handholds for anything to come into the mind right now—which means that as soon as you see the mind latching onto something …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Bodywork for the Mind… In the same way, the Buddha said, “Take your level of energy as your guide, and then tune the rest of your faculties—i.e., conviction, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment—to your level of energy.” Apparently, lutes in those days had five strings. It’s the same way you tune a guitar. You tune one string, and then you tune the remaining strings to …
- 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 …
- It’s Up to You… It means not only having admirable friends—people who have conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment—but also hoping to emulate them. We saw this today in the kaṭhina: gifts from everywhere, from the Queen Mother on down—people giving things, people giving their time, giving their energy, giving their skills. It’s inspiring and it gives us energy to develop those same qualities within ourselves …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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