Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. The Complexity of Pain
     … It’s through the development of virtue, development of discernment, development of mind and body, as he calls it: basically, learning how not to be overcome by pain or overcome by pleasure. That’s part of the key right there. When we allow ourselves to be overcome by pleasure, then there’s an opening to be overcome by pain, too. So, you have to … 
  3. You’re Already Dead
     … Then there’s discernment, the ability to see things arising and passing away in the mind, so that you can understand what’s skillful and what’s not, what needs to be developed, what needs to be abandoned. All these things are treasures. These are the things that stick with you even after you die. Working from the perspective of death, these are the … 
  4. Sophisticated Dhamma
     … virtue, concentration, and discernment. So it’s interesting to think about why the Buddha added respect for concentration. It’s included in the training, but why is it singled out as being the most important of the three? It’s because we tend not to respect it. Some people tell us to have respect for vipassana, or respect for insight, but no respect for … 
  5. Be Heedful & Think
     … Pañña means discernment. And the combination in Thai means intelligence. It goes together with another Pali word, patibhana, that Ajaan Fuang liked to use a lot. In Thai it’s patiphaan, and it means using your ingenuity, using your imagination. When you come up against an obstacle, how can you get around it? Is it an obstacle you have to go through? Is it … 
  6. Serial Clinging Is Still Clinging
     … You have to remember that discernment is always strategic. The Buddha’s not just describing the way things are for the sake of the description. He’s telling you, “Think in these ways, up to this point, and then you’re going to have to abandon those ways.” But in the meantime, hold on and be consistent. Now, the only clinging that the Buddha … 
  7. Right & Wrong Decisions
     … mindfulness, alertness, discernment, truthfulness. Meditation helps develop many of those qualities as you develop skill in dealing with the breath, develop skill in learning how to keep the mind here in the present moment with the breath. Even when other things in life are uncertain, you can know for sure where the breath feels good, where it doesn’t feel good. That’s something … 
  8. The Flowing Mind
     … As the Buddha said, one of the important aspects of discernment is seeing things as separate. You don’t identify with the flow; you see it as something separate, and that’s how you can begin to understand it. So give yourself a good, solid place to stay here as things flow past. The image the Buddha gives is, again, of a river flowing … 
  9. Refuge
     … here. It’s just a matter of your making the choice that this is what you want to do. Virtue hasn’t been close off. Concentration hasn’t been closed off. Discernment hasn’t been closed off. They’re all here; they’re all open. It’s just a question of your giving them priority. You decide if you really do want to find … 
  10. For What It’s Worth
     … You need the stillness, but you also need the quality of discernment, watching yourself in action so that you can judge what’s worth doing and what’s not. So you have stillness, mindfulness, alertness: These are the things that make you a reliable judge. After all, a lot of the insights, when they come along, don’t come with a certification that this … 
  11. Warm Your Heart
     … After all, acts of merit—generosity, virtue, developing universal goodwill—are the first answer to the question that the Buddha says lies at the beginning of discernment, wisdom: “What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” Think about the wisdom there: One, you see that happiness is going to depend on your actions. Two, long-term is possible … 
  12. Purity of Heart
     … We strengthen the mind in our conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. When these qualities are developed, the mind reaches the point where it doesn’t have to depend on any kind of food at all for its happiness. They say that arahants have understood food, and they’re totally independent of nutriment, and, as a result, you can’t trace their path, in … 
  13. The Right Medicine
     … This is concentration developed through discernment or concentration developed through what they call vimansa, which can be translated as your powers of analysis, ingenuity, basically the active side of the intellect. So concentration isn’t always just a matter of forcing things into stillness. Sometimes, to develop it, you have to examine it. This requires a certain amount of balance. If you analyze it … 
  14. Concentration Develops Right View
     … That’s why the path is gradual, as you gradually develop your powers of discernment, based on training the mind to be quiet. The image they give in Thailand is of being a hunter: If the hunter makes a lot of noise, moves around, shifting his spot again and again, the animals all run away. If the hunter wants the animals to come to … 
  15. Lift Your Mind
     … The Buddha’s image for discernment is a person who climbs a tower and looks down on the people below. Here, “looking down” doesn’t mean despising them or having disdain for them, but just seeing what’s going on with a sense of being separate, seeing the larger patterns that are hard to see when you’re down on the same level with … 
  16. Skills Needed at Death
     … It requires a lot of mindfulness, a lot of discernment, but these are precisely the things we develop as we point the mind at the breath and keep it there. At the moment of death, you will have to leave the breath, but you will have learned a lot about the mind in the meantime. That should be enough to keep you headed in … 
  17. Look after Yourself Happily
     … And two, it does require a certain amount of insight and discernment in order to protect your concentration. Once the mind gets still, then you can see the other currents of the mind and see where they’re flowing. It’s like being in a train station. Sometimes you sit in a train and you look over and see there’s another train moving … 
  18. A Memorial to Your Life
     … It’s basically virtue, concentration, and discernment. We hear so much about how craving is a bad thing in the Buddha’s eyes, but there is the desire that’s part of right effort, and here it’s one of the bases of success. The trick, of course, is to desire the right things and to focus your desire properly on the causes, not … 
  19. Hindrances Based on Delusion
     … The only way you’re going to undercut these hindrances is through developing this kind of discernment. So watch over your meditation. See if it’s heading off into too much energy or too little energy. The cure for too much energy, the Buddha said, is getting things concentrated, getting them serene or tranquil and developing a sense of equanimity. But to get the … 
  20. A Promise to Yourself
     … As you can imagine, discernment is also a promise you make to yourself. You could sit there and just bliss out in the concentration and decide, “Well, this is good enough for me.” But then you have to remember what the Buddha said about fabricated happiness. The fact that you’re sitting here with the mind quiet, nothing happening, is not going to last … 
  21. A World Apart
     … What you need most at times like that are powers of alertness, mindfulness, discernment, and concentration. These are precisely the skills you’re developing as you stay with the breath and work with the breath so that it becomes a good place to stay. So how does the breath feel right now? Does it feel like something you can stay with comfortably, or are … 
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