Search results for: "Discernment"

1. Page 66
2. Play AudioPractice at Home
    … Figuring that one out when you’re dealing with the back and forth of lay life is a really good test of your discernment. Two further states of mind get developed that way. One is a mind of goodwill, and the other is a mind of sympathy. They’re not quite the same. Goodwill is a basic wish for happiness for all beings—for … 
3. Play AudioThe Role of the Observer
    … As the Buddha said, it’s only through discernment that we cut through these things. Mindfulness is like a dam. It holds things in check for a while. The ability to watch something, hold yourself back, not engage in it: That holds things in check, but it doesn’t solve the problem. The solution to the problem comes from insight. And insight is often … 
4. Play AudioSingle-minded
    … You can’t say, “The higher levels are going to be superfluous, so why bother with them? I’ll just hang out here.” It requires a lot of discernment in order to get an awakening from the first jhana. Sometimes you need a lot more quiet in the mind in order to gain the kind of insight that would be radical. In some of … 
5. Play AudioDon’t Believe Everything You Feel
    … The phrase we chanted just now—chandam janeti, generating desire to abandon what’s unskillful and to develop what’s skillful—is a sign of wisdom and discernment. When there are things you feel like doing that you know are going to be harmful, you’re able to talk yourself out of doing them. As for things you know are good for you, but … 
6. Play AudioIssues
    … Which means that you have to look at the question of controversies and show some discernment: Which ones do you get involved with to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong? Which ones do you try to cut through with the up-and-down axis? This applies not only to controversies outside, but also—and especially—to controversies inside your own mind … 
7. Play AudioCentered on Concentration
    … And it’s interesting that of a three main aspects of the training—training in virtue, training in concentration, training in discernment—the one that the Buddha singled out to the stress in those verses we chanted just now is respect for concentration, the ability get the mind centered in the body, with a sense of ease, even with a sense of fullness, refreshment … 
8. Play AudioBeing a Buddhist
    … When you practice concentration to develop your discernment, you realize that the concentration—even though it’s a better pleasure, a more stable pleasure than you can gain from sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, or thinking about things—is still fabricated. And remember how good fabricated things can be: They can fall apart. You want something that’s not fabricated, something that’s … 
9. Play AudioConceit
    … And learn to develop your discernment. Watch out for those fangs of ignorance: the “I am this” or “I am that” or “I’m not used to this,” “I can’t stand this,” “This is hard for me.” Drop the “I,” the “me,” and things get a lot easier. So even though it may be hard, you can do it. The things that are … 
10. Play AudioArising & Passing Away
     … The questions you bring to someone who’s good at clear seeing are: “How are fabrications to be viewed? How are they to be seen with clear insight?” This is where the Buddha’s definition of discernment comes in. He says that discernment means seeing things arising and passing away in a way that’s penetrating and leads to the right ending of suffering … 
11. Play AudioThe 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 … 
12. Play AudioFrom 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 … 
13. Play AudioThe 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 … 
14. Play AudioGuardian 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 … 
15. Play AudioA 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 … 
16. Play AudioThe 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 … 
17. Play AudioMetta 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 … 
18. Play AudioThe 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 … 
19. Play AudioScramble 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 … 
20. Play AudioSpeaking 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 … 
21. Play AudioResistance
     … 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.
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