Search results for: "Discernment"
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- The World of the Body… As for the perfections, starting with generosity and going down the list—generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, good will, and equanimity—whatever we can do to develop these qualities, they give meaning to life, because they’re the things that will be left when we have to leave the body. So this world we have inside: We put it to use …
- Scramble the Image… This is one of the ways in which discernment, strengthened by concentration, digs down into things and finds the root causes. Once you can see that there’s really nothing there in terms of the root cause—in other words, nothing you’d really want to follow when you come right down to it—that’s when you can begin to free yourself from …
- Speaking Truth to Defilement… Because if you want your concentration to lead to discernment, it really does help to be observing the precepts. Years back, when Ajaan Suwat was leading a retreat in Massachusetts, at the very end of the retreat someone asked him a question about carrying meditation into daily life. And he answered with the five precepts. One of the people organizing the retreats was upset …
- Resistance… In the meantime, you’re alerted that you have to work on your tools — mindfulness, concentration, discernment — so that eventually you can dig out those boulders. Then they’ll no longer be in the way.
- The Buddha’s Wisdom… That training, of course, is the noble eightfold path, which can also be expressed in the triple training of heightened virtue; heightened mind, or concentration; and heightened discernment. These are the practices that help you become more sensitive to what’s going on in your mind, to help get rid of that ignorance so that you can see exactly where you’re causing yourself …
- See Your Thoughts as Strange… As the Buddha said, discernment comes down to seeing things as other, as separate. Yet we live in our thought-worlds, we let them envelop us, and for us they’re normal. Your desires, your angers are very much yours. If we could take everybody’s thoughts and put them out in a lineup, you’d probably be able to pick out your thoughts …
- How the Tree Leans… Whereas if you develop the treasures of the mind—virtue, conviction, a healthy sense of shame, a healthy sense of compunction, learning, generosity, discernment: These things lean the mind in the right direction. Even more so, there’s the noble eightfold path. Why do you want the mind to lean? Well, think of a tree. There are trees that are leaning over all the …
- Restraint Leads to Freedom… them in place. The image the Buddha gives is that our emotions are like a stream, and the restraint provided by mindfulness is like a dam that holds them in check. Discernment is then what traces back, “Where does the stream come from?” and stops it at the source. You’re not going to find the source until you’ve first learned some restraint …
- Doing, Maintaining, Using… So this is how the practice of concentration leads to discernment. It teaches you how to eat well, how to feed the mind well, to the point where ultimately it doesn’t have to feed anymore.
- Sensitive in Seven Ways… It’s by finding the middle way in observing all these dimensions that you develop your discernment. The Buddha doesn’t leave you totally adrift in learning these lessons. He points out areas where you have to pay attention and gives you appropriate questions to ask—questions that help you learn the middle way for yourself. That’s what the Dhamma is for. But …
- Meditation as Play… And that’s how you develop the discernment that will allow you to get the mind concentrated and released. So be heedful, but find joy in the heedfulness. When you’re heedful, you’re appreciative of each breath. And the best way to appreciate each breath is to see what you can do with it. Like getting an egg—what can you do with …
- Organizing Your Inner Committee… Try to equip that determination with its weapons of discernment and mindfulness, so that you can develop all the other qualities of the path you need to make that determination a reality.
- Nurturing Your Inner Adult… the faculties of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. The word for faculty, indriya, is related to Indra, the king of the gods, the dominant deva. The implication is that you want these faculties to be dominant in your mind, you want them to have power. They’re your inner adults. So you use the breath to put them on top, to keep them …
- Step Back… This is how wisdom and discernment arise in the practice: through your ability to step back. And along with this, you want to develop the ability to laugh at yourself, because that’s what stepping back often leads to. You suddenly see how stupid it was to assume what you were holding on to so tightly. There’s that phrase in the Greek traditions …
- Distraction & Drowsiness… So learn how to do your evaluation well, because it makes your concentration stronger—and provides a good basis for discernment to arise as well.
- A Load Off the Mind… So even though we have the path laid out to some extent—we know that virtue, concentration, and discernment are important and we know the breath is a good place to stay—still, there’s a lot that we’ve got to learn about how we breathe and how we approach the meditation. Sometimes you find that as soon as you sit down to …
- Endurance Training… Through the well-being of your concentration and through your discernment in learning how to depersonalize things, chop up the stories into little bits. When those little bits start connecting, that’s when they turn into trouble. As you develop these skills, you’re developing mindfulness and alertness, the strengths you need so that you don’t have to keep feeding on the desire …
- Fear & Insecurity… Of course, even discernment will involve the aggregates. You use your perceptions and thought-fabrications to probe and ask questions, to figure things out: Why is it that there in the mind you’re creating suffering when you don’t have to? So that’s where the teachings are aimed: at what you can do. You can create a path that leads to the …
- Self Esteem… So it’s more a question of your discernment in seeing when it’s time to give up a sense of self esteem that’s based on a rickety foundation, one that constantly has to be shored up to the point where people suffer. Most people never learn. They suffer horribly just because they want to retain a little scrap of self respect here …
- Appropriate Attention, Appropriate Intention… The intention turns into concentration, the attention is what develops your discernment. You need both. And they have to be appropriate. There’s no such thing as “bare” attention in the Buddha’s teachings. It’s all colored by your intention. So learn how to keep your intentions properly focused, to figure out why, after all the things the Buddha learned in his awakening …
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