Search results for: "Discernment"
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- A Thread into Awareness… This can be done only through the kind of discernment that comes with strong concentration. In Ajaan Lee’s image, it’s like heating a rock. When the rock is hot enough, whatever tin is in there is going to melt, come out on its own. You don’t have to go through and separate the tin atoms from the other atoms in the …
- Learning by Doing… One of the definitions of discernment or wisdom is penetrative knowledge of arising and passing away. A lot of people focus on “arising and passing away.” They say, “This means that you just watch things coming and going.” But there is that adjective, “penetrative.” It means understanding that there are good things arising and bad things arising. And when things arise, some of them …
- Heightened Skillfulness… When we think about skillfulness, we think about that question the Buddha has you ask to develop discernment: “What when I do it will be for my long-term welfare and happiness?” Now, the “long-term” could be long-term in samsāra, but here you go beyond that to a higher level of skill: long-term in the sense of not changing at all …
- Freedom Undefined… When you learn how to practice, developing concentration and discernment to see through those clingings, then the whole need to identify yourself, limit yourself, measure yourself. goes by the wayside. As you follow the path, the sufferings caused by the need to define yourself grow lighter and lighter. Even more so when all the clinging is gone: That’s it — no need to be …
- The Right Time at the Right Place… It provides a good basis for our discernment, not only because it’s quiet, with a sense of well-being, but also because, to get the mind to settle down like this, you’re going to have to get to know the mind. Right here in the state of concentration, you’ve got the form of the body, you’ve got feelings of pleasure …
- Technique & Attitudes… This is why the Buddha said that concentration requires discernment. You need some insight into the workings of the mind before the mind will really settle down. At the same time, insight requires concentration. The more still the mind becomes, the better you’re able to judge how your tactics are working. This is the test for everything as you meditate: How is it …
- Dhamma Books & the Actuality… As the Buddha says, there are three ways of gaining discernment. One is through listening, another is through thinking things through, and the third is through developing. And it’s only the third that’s really liberating. The first two simply get you oriented properly so that you realize that you really do have to train the mind. If you’re going to look …
- New Feeding Habits for the Mind… If you’re observing the precepts, practicing concentration, and developing discernment into what the mind needs to feed on, what it doesn’t need to feed on, what kind of feeding is good for it, what kind of feeding is bad for it, and then feed it in such a way that ultimately it gets so strong that it doesn’t have to feed …
- Recollection of Hell… Even the development of discernment in right view is a kind of perception. You apply the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self to the aggregates. First, as you’re sitting here trying to create a sense of ease for the breath to get the mind concentrated, anything else would count as a distraction. Whatever’s a distraction, try to see it as stressful …
- Your Secret Foundation… You look in the Canon and you see that the most detailed meditation instructions are focused on the breath, the breath as a basis for establishing mindfulness, gaining concentration, discernment, release. Why is this all focused on the breath? For a lot of reasons. When you’re with the breath, you can see a lot of things in the body and the mind. It …
- Goodwill All Around… Try to develop its concentration in that way, to develop its discernment into what’s going on in the mind: what you choose to do, what you choose not to do. And you gain insight also into this whole question of what does it mean to intend, what is an intention, what is this karma we are doing all the time? Once you see …
- In Accordance with the Dhamma… And it’s in seeing this statement of fact that you get the clear vision you need for discernment. So as Ajaan Fuang used to say, goodwill has to have equanimity or else it burns out. It becomes a cause for suffering. So remember that equanimity is the alternative to goodwill. Not that it replaces it. It just puts things into perspective. It’s …
- A Thread Out of the Maze… All has to depend on is your powers of observation, your mindfulness, your alertness, your powers of concentration, and the subtlety of your discernment. Why is this important? The choices we make in life depend on how we feel in the present moment. You could think of this as a selfish indulgence, sitting here breathing in a comfortable way, while the rest of the …
- To Comprehend Suffering… This is why discernment is often compared to a knife, cutting through different things, allowing you to analyze your sensation of the body in different ways, to separate things that were glued together. As you’re watching the pains coming and going, you begin to see that they’re affected by your perceptions, the labels you put on things. One of the major labels …
- Safety in Awareness… Years back, I was reading a passage in Ajaan Maha Boowa—and this was way back toward the very beginning of my practice—and he was talking about developing insight, developing discernment. As you focus on the different aggregates and as you began to see past them, he said, then you turn on this knowing awareness in the mind. He said that you decide …
- To Be Sure… It’s also learning how to self-correct, to listen to yourself and ask yourself: “Okay, where’s the mistake in my reasoning here? Where’s the mistake in the narrative that I’m telling here? What can I do to counteract that?” That’s where you really see discernment in action. It’s like learning how to be a tightrope walker. People good …
- Protest Your Virtue & Right View… Then there are the seven treasures, and again you’ve got right view both in conviction and in discernment. Virtue comes in together with a sense of shame and a sense of compunction. The Buddha also says that these are the bases for getting the mind into right mindfulness, and of course from right mindfulness we go to right concentration. So in various ways …
- Clear of Defilement… Even when he talks about mindfulness as being the one quality that’s always skillful, it has to be used in conjunction with other qualities—alertness, discernment, right effort—if it’s going to be right mindfulness. The concentration is the heart of the practice, but it’s a concentration that has to include right effort and right mindfulness in order for it to …
- Meaning & Purpose… Are they really worth it? Are they for your long-term welfare and happiness, or just short-term? This is where you start applying your wisdom and discernment—for the purpose of finding a happiness that really is reliable. And you begin to appreciate more and more the path that the Buddha set out. It meets your purposes. All of us have as a …
- The Craft of the Heart… So you’ve got to develop these two faculties together, to make them wise and discerning. If you just observe, nothing happens. If you just do, do, do, do, do without really stepping back to observe what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing, you can get yourself in strange situations, strange mental states. So for safety’s sake, and …
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