Search results for: "Discernment"
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- Analyzing Anger… You take delight in developing your conviction, your persistence, your mindfulness, your concentration, and your discernment. But then when they’ve done their work, you have to see that they, too, are not the goal. They’re the path. So the very final step is to use this five-factor analysis and apply that to the path, too. That’s when you’re really …
- Tranquility & Insight Through Jhāna… You start out with things that are obvious problems and you work your way up to the more subtle ones until finally there’s nothing left but the path itself—states of concentration, the activity of discernment—and you apply the same five-step program to the path as well. That’s when you’re really free. So, when you start with something obvious …
- Look After Yourself with Ease… conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment. These are the inner qualities that make you more independent, more self-reliant. So that’s what it means to look after yourself with ease: learn the skills you need to prepare for dangers in this lifetime, and the dangers that come at death. So even though you’re suffering hardships, your mind doesn’t have to suffer. You’re …
- Groundwork… Evaluation together with directed thought here are the discernment factors of concentration practice. The Buddha identifies them with a high level of what he calls right resolve. In ordinary right resolve, you resolve not to indulge in thoughts of sensual pleasures, not to indulge in thoughts of ill will, not to indulge in thoughts of harmfulness. Then as the mind begins to settle down …
- Worldly Effort… The Buddha says we should look right here, developing virtue, concentration, and discernment. It seems an unlikely place, looking for refuge in our own actions, but he says that’s the only place you can do it. Our actions seem awfully ephemeral, but he says everything else is based on action. But the path is a special type of action. It’s the action …
- Bless 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 …
- Time 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 …
- Random 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.
- Acceptance… 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 …
- Fabricating 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 …
- Peace 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 …
- Dethinking 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 …
- Practice 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 …
- The 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 …
- Battling 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 …
- The 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 …
- Empathetic 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 …
- Subduing 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 …
- Pain & 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 …
- An 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 …
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