Search results for: "Discernment"

1. Page 74
2. Play AudioBless Yourself
    … The Buddha also gives other lists of the treasures you can maintain that include virtue and the discernment of right view, along with other qualities that maintain these two: things like conviction, a sense of shame, a sense of compunction, learning, and generosity. The sense of conviction, of course, means being convinced that the Buddha really did awaken to the truth, and he taught … 
3. Play AudioTime Well Spent
    … It’s in following the imperative that you actually develop discernment. So as you practice, try to look at everything as an opportunity for training the mind. When you’re doing chores around the monastery, it’s an opportunity to train a lot of good qualities, such as persistence, endurance, and determination. You make up your mind you’re going to do a project … 
4. Play AudioRandom Word Generators
    … This is one of the ways in which getting the mind into concentration also develops your discernment. The two go hand in hand.
5. Play AudioAcceptance
    … You learn how to get the mind into concentration, how you get the mind to become more mindful, more discerning: all these skills that we work on as we meditate. So when we find that the mind is not getting concentrated, we don’t just sit there and accept it. We say, “Okay, what’s wrong?” We try to figure things out. If the … 
6. Play AudioFabricating against Defilement
    … But once you get the hang of it, it’s pleasant work as you’re developing mindfulness, alertness, concentration, discernment. These are good qualities to have in the mind. They do depend on desire but it’s good desire. The Buddha didn’t say that all desire was bad. After all, the ability to generate the desire to engage in skillful effort is an … 
7. Play AudioPeace Requires Character
    … It’s the kind of discernment that really serves a purpose. Then, of course, there’s compassion. You want to make sure that in your search for happiness, in your eating habits, that you don’t cause harm. And purity is making sure that you actually follow through with that. As the Buddha said, you know a person’s purity by watching the dealings … 
8. Play AudioDethinking Thinking
    … And they’re useful not only for concentration, they’re also useful for discernment. Look at what the ajaans say about their practice. When you’re working with pain, the big issue is perception. When you’re working with lust or pride around the body and trying to see the unattractiveness of the body, the issue is the perception. Why is it that you … 
9. Play AudioPractice All Day
    … whatever little talking you have to do to yourself to remind you to stay there, whatever perception you hold in mind to make sure you do it skillfully—that you develop discernment. That’s all part of the meditation: The directed thought keeps you in line; the mindfulness keeps you in line. It’s only in this way that you can expect to make … 
10. Play AudioThe Uses of the Breath
     … You’ve got to have the mind feeding off the breath, feeding off its concentration, feeding off its mindfulness and discernment so that you can have the strength then to step back from things. Otherwise, if the mind is starved, it’s like scientists running an experiment. You’ve got monkeys in the experimental room, and the scientists been given a grant to buy … 
11. Play AudioBattling Darkness
     … The qualities of insight, discernment, wisdom are like a sword. They cut through all the confusion, they cut through all the connections that keep those defilements together, that keep them strong. As you get to know the movements of your mind, you begin to see that there are lots of little events in the mind that you tie together. You connect this one with … 
12. Play AudioThe Four Precepts
     … At the same time, when you’re working in a purely internal way on the mind, trying to develop mindfulness, alertness, concentration, and discernment, you’re not the only one who benefits. When you show more restraint in your actions, other people are freed from a lot of harm that could otherwise come from you. When you don’t act on greed, anger, and … 
13. Play AudioEmpathetic Joy
     … That old idea that you have to just put up with whatever’s there if you want to really gain discernment—and you hear this far, far too often—really has nothing to do with what the Buddha taught. He teaches you how to take advantage of whatever the potentials for pleasure and rapture there are. The problem is that if you think that … 
14. Play AudioSubduing Greed & Distress
     … As the Buddha said, if your mind is expansive, if you’ve developed discernment around how to not be overcome by pleasure and not be overcome by pain, and you can extend thoughts of goodwill to everybody, then the impact of past bad actions is going to be a lot less. This is why the brahmaviharas are another way of dealing with greed and … 
15. Play AudioPain & Patience
     … But still, you can make it easier for yourself, if you’re discerning. If simple patience on its own could take people to awakening, as Ajaan Chah once pointed out, all the chickens in the world would have been awakened before human beings, because they can sit very patiently on their eggs for long hours. There’s patience in sitting with pain, either physical … 
16. Play AudioAn Exercise in Freedom
     … The mind is capable of developing mindfulness, alertness, conviction, persistence, concentration, discernment, goodwill—all kinds of good qualities. The more you exercise these qualities, the greater your range of freedom, the greater your range of choice. But the Buddha starts with basics. He starts with a basic problem that’s totally self-evident, that there is suffering and we don’t like it. There … 
17. Play AudioConsistently on the Path
     … Develop your ingenuity so that you can gain the rewards of discernment. When you can perceive the path as something enjoyable, that makes it a lot easier for you and for the people around you. So remember these three things that have to circle around the path to keep it going: right view, right mindfulness—mindfulness as a governing principle—and right effort in … 
18. Play AudioHeedfulness
     … A large part of discernment is just this: sorting out what’s skillful in the mind, what’s unskillful, and then doing what you can to give rise to the skillful and to abandon the unskillful. If you deny that anything unskillful is there, how are you going to abandon it? If you’re not willing to judge what’s skillful and unskillful, you … 
19. Play AudioTwo Kinds of Middle
     … You tune your conviction, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment to the level of effort you can manage. In that way your practice stays in tune. In this case, the middle is a midpoint on a continuum. You can slide up or down the continuum and it’s not all that difficult. The question of how much you push, how much you pull back: There are … 
20. Play AudioWithstanding Pleasure & Pain
     … As the Buddha says, if you’re developed in body, developed in mind, developed in virtue and discernment, and you make your mind unlimited—in other words, with the brahmavihāras—the results of past karma can come, but they don’t have to have an impact on the mind. In fact, in some cases, you scarcely feel them at all. In other cases, where … 
21. Play AudioThe Best Place to Practice
     … But even then, before you can get out of that situation, you do want to work with your mind, to discover the areas where you can develop virtue, concentration, and discernment to minimize the harm you’re doing to yourself and to other people. But otherwise, when you find the mind gazing far off, wanting to go practice over the ocean—and maybe someday … 
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