Search results for: "Discernment"
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- Values… In the process of developing the path, we’re going to be developing skillful qualities, learning how to abandon the things that get in the way of knowledge and to encourage qualities like mindfulness and alertness that strengthen your knowledge, strengthen your awareness, strengthen your insight and discernment. These things, like the defilements, are not part of the nature of the mind. Ajaan Lee …
- Being Somebody, Going Somewhere… We need them in order to practice the precepts, to develop the mind in concentration, to develop our discernment, because we have to be conscious that everything we do—even just being in the present moment, keeping our thoughts focused on the present moment—is going to take us someplace. Thoughts don’t just sit there. They move, they have an arrow, they have …
- A Unified Committee… The conditions for discernment arising are truths you’re going to have to make happen. You have to learn how to ask the right questions once the mind is gathered together. That’s a type of fabrication. It’s something you have to put together, something you have to make happen. And all of that depends on conviction. So you have to be convinced …
- The Uses of Pleasure… You get more discerning. There’s that passage in Ajaan Lee where he says you want to get to the point where you can think of pleasure and pain as words that people speak in jest. You don’t take them all that seriously. We tend to be very serious about our pleasures. We need to see that the pleasures even of concentration, the …
- Conviction & Truth… How true are you in following the precepts? How true are you in developing concentration, discernment, and all the big and little qualities of the mind that go along with the path? You want to check yourself all-around to see if you are really following the path all-around. Are there some really big blind spots in your practice, or in yourself? You …
- What’s Constant, What’s Not… virtue, concentration, and discernment, based on generosity. If you trust in the principle of causality, this is where your certainty lies. You put good causes into the system, and good things will have to come out. As for how soon they’ll come out, or how strong the good results will be, that’s something you can’t plan ahead of time. But you …
- Conspiracies in the Mind… Wherever you go in life, you’re going to need more mindfulness, more alertness, more discernment, more integrity. So the fact that you’re asked to develop these qualities is not a waste, even if it turned out that there never really was a Buddha, just a bunch of monks sitting around thinking things up for the fun of it. Someone once said, “Whether …
- Keep Things Simple… That’s the sign of a discerning person: You make the most of what you’ve got. It may be a lot or it may be a little, but it’s what you’ve got. It may change from day to day, so be alert to that, be sensitive to that. Accept whatever difficulties there may be in the situation and do the best …
- Practice in Dying Well… If you’ve clearly seen with your discernment the dangers of going to places like that, it’s a lot easier to avoid them. Lots of people have mentioned to me that since the pandemic began, and they have lots more time to themselves, past events have loomed much larger in their minds. There’s not much gratification coming in to the present moment …
- Noble Priorities… You can develop mindfulness, ardency, alertness, concentration, discernment from what you’ve got inside to put an end to the suffering. That may seem like a selfish quest: It’s your own suffering and not anybody else’s. But when you see someone who’s approaching death and they’re in a torment and you can’t help, it’s a huge burden on …
- Hypocrisy… That requires very precise discernment, and it can’t come from a mind that’s used to sweeping things under the rug. So, as meditators, we should be careful in all areas of our lives, in terms of what we eat—not so much a matter of what we think we need, it’s more of how we eat, the attitude we have toward …
- Sensitivity All the Time… the qualities of mindfulness, alertness, discernment — all the good qualities we’re working on here. You want to bring them more and more to bear on what you’re doing in every situation. They get stronger and stronger, and they give you the sensitivity you need to cut through any defilements you encounter. They give you the sensitivity you need to find more stable …
- The World Offers No Shelter… virtue, concentration, and discernment—and even before that, with the bases of merit: generosity, virtue, developing goodwill. Even though these things are not permanent, they can take you to a place that does not get swept away. In the meantime, they provide you with a certain amount of stability—stability that the world outside cannot provide. Not only the world outside, even your own …
- Samatha, Vipassanā, Jhāna… The whole point about getting the mind into concentration to give rise to discernment is not just to check off the boxes, that you’ve got this factor or that factor all taken care of. It’s in trying to master concentration that you’re going to gain a sense of what exactly a perception is, what a thought fabrication is, and so on …
- A Multilingual Mind… where the elements that lead to unskillfulness — lack of mindfulness, lack of discernment, lack of concentration — come in. You begin to catch them. It’s like learning another language. You don’t forget your original language, it’s just that you learn how to function on another level, in a new context. And people who become bilingual begin to notice that they have a …
- Respect for the Training… The training is very basic—virtue, concentration, discernment—and in some cases it’s so basic we tend to overlook it. We want to go to the higher Dhamma, things that are more abstract that seem to be more in line with our level of intelligence. As a result, we tend to miss a lot of the really good lessons that can be learned …
- The Power to Transcend Suffering… I finally realized that pañña actually meant discernment. Everybody’s got some discernment, the ability to make distinctions and weigh them. The Buddha doesn’t ask you to use anything you don’t have. It’s all right here. It’s just learning how to make the best use of what you’ve got. In the beginning, you’re sort of fiddling around with …
- A Full Life… We have the gratification of mastering the skills of the mind—mindfulness, concentration, discernment. We have the happiness of having meaning in our lives. You look at the universe—galaxies forming and dissolving, stars coming and then exploding, sending their matter spewing out into space. Then the matter coalesces again, it forms stars again, and it repeats the process over and over and over …
- Success by Approximation… Even though awakening can happen in a moment, and you’re awakening to something that’s potentially right here in the present moment, you still have to develop your discernment to detect these things, and that takes time. You have to develop your skill. As with any skill, it’s going to go through levels of refinement. And it includes factors that are very …
- Equanimity when You Care… You have to use your discernment to accept that fact and devote your resources and abilities to areas where you can be of help. That’s the equanimity of a doctor. Then there’s the equanimity that the Buddha recommends as the beginning of meditation practice. He says you make your mind like earth. Good and bad things happen to earth—disgusting things are …
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