Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. Deep Understanding
     … On the level of listening and thinking, you can hear about mindfulness, you can hear about alertness, you can hear about concentration and discernment, but it’s when you actually try to develop these things in the mind you come up against issues you might not have thought of before, things that weren’t in the plan. And you find that as you develop … 
  3. A Skillful Heart
     … This means your goodwill has to be backed up by discernment. There are a lot of people who want to have Dhamma without kamma. And so they say, “We have goodwill for all beings because all beings have Buddha-nature or all beings are intrinsically good.” In a case like that, your goodwill is not really independent. When you run across people who are … 
  4. Equanimity as a Factor of Awakening
     … After all, a lot of the practice of discernment is learning to ask questions. That requires thinking. But what you’re trying to figure out here is which thoughts are the skillful ones and which ones are not. You want to have a basis from which to watch these things. It’s best if that basis is still so that you can see their … 
  5. Monologue on the Breath
     … In this way, you take the part of the mind that tends to cause so much trouble—its constant chatter—and you train it to be a help, because the directed thought eventually turns into concentration, the evaluation turns into discernment. The two of them working together, focused on this one topic, get stronger and stronger, more and more sensitive, until they lead to … 
  6. More than Just Letting Go
     … And as you get to know the ways the mind deals with perceptions, that becomes the basis for discernment as well. So that’s the big problem—the processes of fabrication done in ignorance—and to solve it, you have to fabrication a lot of good qualities with knowledge. You’re developing concentration; you’re developing discernment. Eventually, yes, you will have to put … 
  7. Endurance & Contentment
     … That’s what the Buddha said lies at the essence of discernment: seeing things as separate. You don’t have to identify with them. You can choose your identity; you can choose the voices in the mind that you’re going to side with. So take advantage of that fact. That will make all the difference between whether you’re discontent or content with … 
  8. Living Forward, Understanding Backward
     … Even more so as you develop more concentration and discernment: You began to separate the mind from its objects. In other words, when pain arises, you’re aware of the pain, but you don’t have to identify with the pain, or with the perception that says, “my pain.” You can cut right through it and you find that letting it drop makes a … 
  9. Judgmental vs. Judicious
     … As Ajaan Lee points out, this is the beginning of discernment. You’re learning to develop this faculty by success through approximation: not hoping for a perfect judgment right away, knowing that you probably will make mistakes, but being alert to what you’re doing, what you’re assuming—and what you’re doing based on what you’re assuming—and then what the … 
  10. Booster Stages
     … Then you have to keep watch on how you use those constructive attitudes to get the mind to be stronger, more firmly centered in its conviction, in its persistence, its mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. That’s how this changeable mind of yours can really be trained so that it doesn’t keep destroying itself, so that it can build the path it needs to … 
  11. A Refuge in Quiescence
     … And it may be that you develop some discernment, gaining some insight into what really is skillful and what really is not. This is where you take the points that you’ve learned to adopt as working hypothesis and actually begin to see: what, when you do it, will lead to happiness; what, when you do it, will lead to suffering—not as a … 
  12. Working with Nature
     … This requires patience, discernment—all of which are good qualities to develop in the mind. So learn that proper balance. You want the results, but you can’t keep thinking about the results. You’ve got to focus on the path. There’s a teaching in Dogen where he says that the duty of the path, developing the path, is the same thing as … 
  13. Mental Balance
     … The same holds true with discernment—and, of course, with release, when you don’t have to feed at all anyway. You’re no longer a predator. From that point on, all you have is things to offer to other people: the wisdom you’ve gained, the insights you’ve gained. You’ve got a lot more to share So this is the Buddha … 
  14. The Need for Evaluation
     … Without that process of evaluation, no discernment is going to arise.
  15. The Food of Feelings
     … Conviction can be food for the mind, as can persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. It may seem artificial to create these things, but the Buddha’s analysis of feeling shows that it’s pretty artificial, too—the belief that our feelings are the raw data of experience, the raw data of who we are. In the final analysis, the Buddha said there are potentials … 
  16. Seclusion
     … If you’re in a too great a hurry to do your discernment work—trying to figure this out, figure that out—after a while you find you’ve run out of food. Things get dry. Things gets scattered. So, knowing that the mind has to depend on a source of food, make concentration your food. The sense of ease, the sense of fullness … 
  17. Patience & Hope
     … We’re developing the skills of mindfulness, alertness, and ardency; the skills of concentration and discernment, that will allow us not to be overcome by the results of past actions, and to see our way clear—that regardless of what situation we find ourselves in, we can choose the skillful way out. As the Buddha says, some of us are born in darkness, some … 
  18. Two Kinds of Cross-Questioning
     … That’s how you develop your discernment, the kind of discernment that actually does lead to release. And it’s the release the counts. So keep this in mind. You’re not just trying to force your mind into a mold. You’re learning the skills you need in order to test things for yourself. That’s how your doubts can come to an … 
  19. Freedom Through Painful Practice
     … He said if you can learn to look at the pains of life, look at the sufferings of life, and gain discernment, you can free yourself from them. In that way, they’re your friends. As for your cravings, you have to learn how to dissociate yourself from them and be very leery of what they’re telling you. Otherwise, they, to use Ajaan … 
  20. Heedful of Ruts in the Mind
     … conviction, persistence—persistence is right effort—right mindfulness, right concentration, and the discernment of right view and right resolve. Everything good comes out of heedfulness. So always keep that quality uppermost in your mind.
  21. The Desire to Do Well
     … That’s the fourth iddhipāda, vimamsā, which is sometimes translated as “discrimination,” sometimes as “ingenuity,” sometimes as “circumspection,” sometimes as “powers of analysis.” It’s the discernment factor of the four. Now, in the texts, these qualities are specifically related to concentration, but in practice they actually apply to the whole path. Everything from generosity through virtue through meditation, everything from right view all … 
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