Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. Therapeutic Seclusion
     … When the Buddha talks about the discernment of arising and passing away, he calls it “penetrative”. That’s what we want to have: penetrative knowledge. To be penetrative, your knowledge has to see what’s causing the arising and what the varieties are. Some things that arise and pass away are good things that should arise and should not pass away. You can cultivate … 
  3. Concentration as a Skill
     … But as Ajaan Lee said, the discernment is not the big problem. Virtue is not the big problem. When you’re working on the path, concentration is the one that’s the big problem. He said it’s like building a bridge across a river. The pilings on this bank and the pilings on that bank are not the problem, but the pilings right … 
  4. Stop Weaving
     … So we use these skills that we develop in meditation—the concentration and the discernment—so that whatever suffering or stress comes up in your lives, it stops right there. There’s no need to pass it on, no need to add one last word. Let it stop in midsentence. Let the basket stop halfway down, because it wasn’t a good basket to … 
  5. Memory & Motivation
     … happen in the future, but you do know that whatever unexpected things come up, you’re going to need mindfulness, you’re going to need alertness, you’re going to need discernment to deal with them. You’re going to need a strong determination to do what’s skillful. Well, those are the qualities we’re working on developing right now. So what we … 
  6. Cleaning Out the Stables
     … But you’ve still got work to do in terms of concentration and discernment, and you need a lingering sense of “I am” to do the work, because without that sense of your capabilities, without the sense that you’re going to benefit, you can’t do anything. To get rid of the unnecessary selves, you have to realize how deeply embedded they are … 
  7. The Steadiness of Your Gaze
     … It’s the basis for allowing discernment to arise — because you’re right here, and when you’re right here watching what’s happening, you can’t help but see. The problem is we’re all too often not here. Our gaze has been diverted. Our attention has slipped off someplace else. So keep zeroing in on the breath, zeroing in on the breath … 
  8. Goodwill Permeates the Dhamma
     … The Buddha lays out some principles out for us in terms of generosity, virtue, and meditation, or virtue, concentration, and discernment. But for a lot of things, we’re going to have to depend on our own powers of observation: looking at our actions, looking at our intentions, being very honest with ourselves about our intentions. Don’t do anything that you anticipate would … 
  9. True for What Purpose?
     … The same with discernment: As the Buddha said, you could focus on how pleasant feelings and perceptions can be, or how much fun it is to engage in thought fabrication. As he admitted, these things do have their pleasures, but focusing on them in that way just gives rise to more passion, aversion, and delusion. Instead, you could focus on their drawbacks: that no … 
  10. To Depend on Yourself
     … So those two discernment factors help each other along. As you exercise them together, they get stronger and stronger. So as Ajaan Suwat used to say, if you don’t believe anybody, at least believe the Buddha, because his intentions are totally compassionate. There are lots of people in the world who want to tell us how to live our lives. The question again … 
  11. The Buddha’s Rules of Order
     … Of all the different rules of order, this is the one that involves the least discernment and the most force of will. You’ll find that it’ll work only for a little while, but at least it gives you some space in the mind where you can get back to the breath. One you can think of the word buddho. You can even … 
  12. Push Yourself
     … This is how discernment develops. In the meantime, you have to go on conviction. It’s not the case that in every day and in every way, the practice is going to get better and better, easier and easier. There will be ups and downs. There will be long fallow periods. How you handle those fallow periods is what tests your mettle as a … 
  13. Joy & Discontent
     … re going to have to let go, about what choices you’ll be need to be prepared to make, about how to develop the mindfulness you need, how to develop the discernment you’ll need, so that as the time comes to leave this body, and options are open to you, you want to choose the right options. At the very least, choose a … 
  14. Near to the Buddha
     … When you learn to develop qualities of mindfulness, alertness, ardency, concentration, discernment around the breath, then every time you breathe, there they are, right nearby. In this way, you become a real friend to yourself. The reason we fall for bad friends outside is because we’re not really friendly to ourselves, we can’t really depend on ourselves. We think we can find … 
  15. A Message for the Universe
     … She could settle down, get her mind quiet really quickly, very firmly, but it was concentration without discernment. She actually needed somebody there to remind her to come out, her mind was so blank when it got into concentration, so unthinking. She once complained to Ajaan Fuang, saying, “I don’t see how my meditation is helping me in my daily life. Sometimes my … 
  16. The Mind’s Ostinato
     … You develop the habits of right action, right speech, right livelihood, the practice of jhana, the practice of discernment. You commit yourself to these things, and then you watch your actions. This is how the Dhamma is known. I’ve told you the story of the scholar who complained one time that he couldn’t understand what happened to the Buddha on the night … 
  17. Lifting the Mind
     … You can watch the concentration and ask yourself, “Is there anything in this state of concentration that still could be more refined? Is there any stress here? Any sense of being burdened? What are you doing that’s causing that sense of being burdened to come and go?” It’s in the coming and going that you actually notice it or discern it. If … 
  18. Four Roles to Play
     … You have to use your discernment to figure out what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, and how to encourage what’s skillful and discourage what’s not. So concentration always requires all four. The difference among the different types of concentration is mainly a matter of emphasis. It’s important, though, that you remember you’re here to understand how things work … 
  19. Doubting the Buddha
     … So instead of getting involved with the agendas of a particular thought world, you can just see it as an instance of stress, and develop your powers of concentration, mindfulness, and discernment as ways of putting an end to that stress. It can be disorienting, because we put so much meaning and importance into our thoughts. But when you can learn to pull yourself … 
  20. Brahmaviharas at the Breath
     … Heedfulness is what helps you develop the skillful ones—the realization that your choices are important, that life is short, our time here to meditate is short, our time with one another is short, and so you want to be as careful, as vigilant, and as discerning as possible in how you learn to get the most out of our short time here.
  21. You Can’t Eat the Buddha
     … conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. These are qualities we all have to some extent, but we’ve got to learn how to strengthen them, and they in turn make the mind stronger. So our food here isn’t bread and wine. Our food is concentration. The Buddha compared the different levels of concentration to different types of food. The first jhana, he said … 
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