Search results for: "Wisdom"
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- A Taste of Freedom… Wisdom comes from trying to get an answer to the question, “What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” The wisdom there lies, one, in the fact that you ask the question to begin with. Some people go through life without asking any questions at all. They accept that this is the way things are, so that’s …
- Instructions for a New Monk… The first is wisdom or discernment, his ability to realize what needed to be done, his ability to gauge what he had learned about how to find the ultimate happiness and realizing, when it was not enough, that he had to go on beyond that. At the end of his period of austerities, he had the wisdom to realize that there must be some …
- For Your Good the Good of Others… When I was staying with Ajaan Fuang, there was one point where he said, “Use your pañña.” That was back in the days when I thought pañña was best translated as wisdom. I said, “I don’t have any pañña, that’s why I’m here trying to meditate.” He said, “No, everybody already has pañña to some extent.” It made me realize, okay …
- Strong Through Mindfulness… You borrow the Buddha’s wisdom to begin with and use that as a template for figuring out how to produce some wisdom of your own. That’s when you have an island in the flood. That’s the Buddha’s image for the world: It’s a flood, a river overflowing its banks, and it can pull you along. He has lots of …
- Responsible Happiness… We develop wisdom, we develop compassion, purity in our minds, by looking for happiness in skillful ways. The wisdom comes from realizing that happiness isn’t just going to come floating our way. It’s going to have to come from our actions. Also, long-term is possible, and long-term is better than short-term. It’s basic common sense, but a lot …
- Smart vs. Wise… So one of the signs of wisdom certainly is not how you can take advantage of other people or how you can squeeze the most money out of the system. That’s very short-sighted. Wisdom is learning how to take the long view and find ways of encouraging yourself to stick with things, to stick with the path even when it gets difficult …
- The Wisdom of Incongruity… Are you that kind of meditator? If you are, do want to keep on being that kind of meditator? Or can you see the wisdom of being more willing to listen to the Dhamma before things really dig into your bones? Learn how to think about things in terms of these analogies instead of your normal ones, and they give you a new perspective …
- Training Your Desires … That’s when wisdom begins. We realize that we can’t get everything we want the way we want it. We have to learn to choose what we really want more than anything else and focus on that. As the Buddha says, if you see that a greater happiness comes from letting go of a lesser happiness—and if you’re wise—you’re …
- Peace Requires Character… You have the wisdom of being able to psych yourself up so you want to drop those tendencies. As for things you don’t particularly like to do but actually would be good for you and for others, you learn how to talk yourself into doing them. This is where the rubber hits the road in the path. It’s the kind of discernment …
- Your Hair Is on Fire… In other words, bring some wisdom to the way you deal with the distractions. We often think of meditation as something we do to make ourselves happy, to make ourselves wise. But you have to bring some happiness to the meditation. You have to bring some wisdom to the meditation so that these qualities can get developed. In the case of Rahula, the Buddha …
- Determined to be Happy… This is where you have to bring your heart and your head together—in other words, thinking about what would be worthwhile, but also asking yourself, “What do you really want?” And how do you train your heart so that it’s in line what you really want? When the Buddha talks about wisdom or discernment, it’s a combination of right view and …
- The Meaning of Happiness… If you want happiness that’s true, he said, you have to develop qualities of wisdom, compassion, and purity. These are all noble qualities in the mind. Without them, there is no true happiness. Wisdom starts by seeing that pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, come from your actions. They’re not just a matter of things floating by. So you’ve got to …
- Peace of Mind… And it puts you in a position where you have the wisdom to tell which is which. You don’t have to wait for someone else to grant you that wisdom. You can develop that on your own. These are the skills. This is how they’re mastered: by developing this inner center, learning how to stay in touch it as much as you …
- Looking After Yourself… We tend to want to hear about wisdom on much higher levels, but the Buddha kept talking about really basic things. Even his definitions of wisdom are really basic. Even something as basic as knowing what’s your business and what’s not your business: That right there takes a lot of discernment. Knowing that if there’s something you like to do but …
- Don’t Be Afraid of Mistakes… Wisdom Develops Concentration or Wisdom Fosters Concentration. He was saying that an important part of the practice is when you learn how not to trust the mind. I, however, had just gone through a period when I was too distrustful of what was going on in my mind, and as a result wasn’t able to get the mind into concentration. I’d get …
- In Accordance with the Dhamma… In this way, instead of letting your anger take over when you’re not satisfied with the things that are happening, when people are not acting in ways that are wise and conducive to true happiness, you try to get your wisdom to take over, because when you look at the expressions for goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, you notice that first three …
- Concentration Nurtured by Virtue… That’s a factor of wisdom right there. So if you want your actions to be in line with wisdom, they have to be harmless as well. Because when we’re developing both concentration and discernment, it’s a matter of seeing how the mind creates unnecessary problems for itself: harm on a very subtle level, so subtle that when you first encounter these …
- Emulating the Truth… This is how we also develop the wisdom faculty in the factors of awakening, the factor that’s called analysis of qualities, dhamma-vicaya: looking at what’s skillful in our actions, and what’s not skillful, and seeing that they’re clearing different. It’s important to realize that we overcome doubt not simply by forcing ourselves to believe something, but by looking …
- The Buddha’s Cure… That requires discernment, wisdom. The Buddha says discernment begins with the question, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” You want to use that as a standard for judging all the different desires and emotions that come up. If you go with this desire, this emotion, or do what it’s telling you to do, will that …
- Skillful Thinking… Those are the ones that test your wisdom, your practical intelligence. Can you talk yourself into doing the things you don’t like to do but give good results? Can you talk yourself out of doing things that you like to do but give bad results? In other words, wisdom is strategic. The Buddha recommends that, to get started on that, you go ask …
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