Search results for: "Discernment"
- Page 65
- The Middle Way… You want to feed the mind so that it’s willing to listen to what your discernment has to tell you: Yes, you’ve been remiss. Yes, you’ve been sloppy. You’ve been complacent. You’ve been self-indulgent—messages we don’t like to hear. You’re more likely to listen when the mind feels well fed, when it feels nourished. But …
- From Compunction to Release… Right there you’re combining two principles of discernment. One of them is right view, the view that actions do have consequences and that the consequences are based on the quality of the intention underlying them. Then there’s right resolve, which is the desire not to be harmful.* *It’s a very basic emotion. You see somebody you’d like to hit, and …
- The Dhamma Without Price… The practice of merit is the first answer to the Buddha’s question that lies at the beginning of discernment: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What is skillful? What is blameless?” Looking for happiness in generosity, looking for happiness in virtue and universal goodwill: These are blameless ways of looking for happiness. And the Sangha …
- Guardian Meditations… The same with virtue, concentration, discernment: These are things we all have to some extent. It’s simply a matter of learning how to make them all-around. So when you’re tempted to go for the quick but short happiness, remind yourself, “The Buddha says that true happiness is possible, and that it can be gained through human effort.” Do you want to …
- Metta Meditation… There is a happiness that comes from training the mind—a happiness that comes from doing good things, developing qualities of mind like integrity, generosity, virtue, concentration, discernment. These are all good things to work on. The causes are good; the results are good. If you look at the human enterprise from this perspective, it takes on a whole new cast. And particularly if …
- A Good-Natured Attitude… Good-natured discernment, comes a lot more easily. So work on developing your inner resources. Learn how not to be threatened by the fact that you can laugh at yourself. This has a lot to do with being good-natured in your humor about other people. If your humor is aimed solely at making fun of them, then the quality of being good-natured …
- The Wrong Uses of Right… In other words, your discernment has to be all-around. You can’t just hold on to the fact that you’re right. You have to look to the question: Is the way you’re holding on to your rightness causing suffering or not? Always refer back to the four noble truths and look at yourself in terms of those truths. Look at what …
- 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.
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Load next page...
