Search results for: "Discernment"

  1. Page 68
  2. Looking Off to the Side
     … We’ve developed our powers of virtue, concentration, and discernment, which as we circle in on the present moment allow us to see more and more. One of the reasons we focus on the breath is because it’s very close to that element of intention which is so important to understand. The breath is a bodily fabrication, which means that there’s an … 
  3. Not Pained by Pain
     … This, the Buddha said, is how you gain discernment—you see things as separate. The things that the mind used to glom together, glue together, you begin to see really are individual moments, separate events. When you cut them down into individual moments like this, they’re a lot more bearable. You’re not carrying them around. That’s another perception we often have … 
  4. Balancing Effort & Patience
     … just mindfulness, say, or just concentration, or just discernment, but it doesn’t work that way. If there were any optional or unnecessary factors in the path, the Buddha wouldn’t have included them in the path to begin with. There would be no reason for him to include them. As six-factored path would be easier to teach than an eight-factored one … 
  5. Comfort Dhamma
     … You need this sense of comfort because a lot of the discernment teachings are going to be like medicine. They may be a little harsh and hard to take. But they’re a lot easier to take if you’ve got a sense of well-being going in the mind, in the body. The Buddha’s going to be handing us a lot of … 
  6. Right Here, Right Now
     … Stay right here and develop mindfulness right here, develop alertness right here, concentration, discernment: all right here: right here in the heart; right here in the present moment. Because everything we’re going to have to learn is right here. All the things we have to come to understand are right here. The Buddha talked about sankharas, fabrications, as being the main focus of … 
  7. Concentration Isn’t Dumb
     … Ajaan Fuang made a comment one time that the people who find concentration easy find discernment hard because they’re used to not thinking. They’re not very much involved in the world around them. They can just let it go. Which is okay, as long as they can let it go. But then there come times when they are involved. Issues come up … 
  8. Where Your Mind Gravitates
     … It’s a question of discernment. You can’t just browbeat the mind into not having lust or not having anger. You have to understand where it was coming from to begin with—why it was gravitating in that direction, and what the gravitational pull was. When you finally see it—and you see that it was based on some really stupid ideas—that … 
  9. Take Care of Your Tools
    The things we do in the practice—learning to be generous, virtuous, developing concentration, even developing discernment—are all tools, means to an end. One of our problems is that once we understand that they’re tools, we tend not to take very good care of them. We think, “It’s just a tool. I’m using it for the sake of something else … 
  10. The Demands of Goodwill
     … That’s the duty of wisdom or discernment. So goodwill can play a large role in the practice, but it’s not everything. One of the people in the course commented, “Well, I guess you could say that goodwill is a complete practice but it needs some other things as well.” Everybody in the room laughed. It’s like saying that rice is a … 
  11. Expert’s Mind
     … And in exploring that issue for yourself, you gain a lot in terms of discernment as well. You’re not simply memorizing what’s in books, but then, at the same time, you’re not just making wild leaps without any sense of background or help from anybody else at all. It’s learning how to use the lessons from the past and to … 
  12. Learning from Sensual Desire
     … That’s what the Buddha means when he says that discernment is what sees through them: It outwits them. So both the heart and the mind are needed to train both the heart and the mind. It’s only when the training is total like this, dealing with all your mental functions—all of your thinking functions, all of your willing functions—that the … 
  13. Comparing Mind
     … Certain causes lead to certain results, and a large part of discernment lies in seeing the connection between causes and results—and having a sense of which ones are better. As you learn to ask yourself these questions, it gets you out of the dullness of a concentration that’s just sitting there getting drowsier and duller and drowsier and duller. You have to … 
  14. Single-minded Determination
     … Not only is a lot of effort wasted in creating that happiness, but sometimes in order to maintain it you also start doing things that go against the precepts, that go against the principles of morality, concentration, and discernment, so that your conditioned happiness causes suffering not only in passing away but also in leading to all kinds of bad things down the road … 
  15. The Light of the World
     … As he said, wisdom or discernment begins with a series of questions: “What when I do it will lead to my long-term harm and pain? What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What’s unskillful, what’s blameworthy? What’s skillful, what’s blameless?” What’s wise about the questions about long-term welfare and happiness … 
  16. Delight in the Path
     … virtue, concentration, discernment. Another exclamation was, It’s as if the Buddha had taken a lamp into the dark so that those with eyes could see forms. In other words, if you realize that what the Buddha is showing you is something really valuable, you can make use of it. In the past it was dark: What was going on in your mind was … 
  17. This Fathom-Long Body
     … But if you can learn to be discerning and say, “Okay, this is the mental side and that’s the physical side. And just because those hormones are there, keeping your heart rate up, doesn’t mean that the emotion is always there. It comes and goes, comes and goes. But because those hormones are still in your blood, it’s going to take … 
  18. Magha Puja: Showing Respect with the Practice
     … This is where you find your true refuge, in developing their qualities in your mind—qualities of mindfulness, qualities of alertness, ardency, patience, endurance, concentration, discernment. As these qualities get stronger and stronger in the mind, you find that you really can take refuge in them. They provide you with a solid foundation. They lift your mind above its ordinary concerns, lift it above … 
  19. The Identity Crutch
     … As Ajaan Lee once said, a person with discernment can take anything and use it skillfully. So before you start throwing things away willy-nilly see if they have any uses left to them. Think of the Buddha’s image of a bird. The bird’s wings are a burden. They have some weight to them. When the bird’s just sitting around not … 
  20. Defilements as Not-self
     … But as Ajaan Suwat said, when you gain some discernment, it’s like lighting a candle in a dark place—say, in a cave that’s been dark for who knows how long. The darkness doesn’t have any right to say, “This little tiny light has no right to come in and chase us away; we’ve been here before for a much … 
  21. Do. Maintain. Use.
     … Here we measure gain in terms of mindfulness, alertness, ardency, concentration, discernment. Those are very different things. All too often, if you win at the game outside, you’re going to lose at the game inside. You have to ask yourself which game, which set of rules, really has your best interest in mind? It’s pretty amazing that the Buddha taught totally out … 
  22. Load next page...