Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. Not Just a Witness
     … If there was a course of action he thought was worthwhile, if it seemed likely to bear fruit, he would follow it with all his conviction and persistence and mindfulness and concentration and discernment—in other words, putting all his strength into the practice. When he got results—when he was convinced that these were the best results you could get from that practice … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. The Gift of Meditation
     … All of the goodness we do in the practice—in terms of generosity, virtue, concentration, discernment—is the kind of goodness, the kind of happiness that spreads around, that doesn’t have clear boundaries—which is what makes it special. As the Buddha said, when you look after yourself, you’re looking after others; when you look after others, you’re looking after yourself … 
  17. The Buddha Defines Wisdom
     … It’s a very high standard for discernment or wisdom, but we can learn some lessons from it whatever level we’re on in our own practice. One is that wisdom is practical. In no case does the Buddha talk about wisdom being a body of knowledge in the abstract. It’s mainly a matter of skills, plus a set of values: that you … 
  18. Practical Wisdom
     … It can be done, it’s simply a matter of wanting to do it enough, and then being as wise and discerning in acting on that desire. We all want happiness. We search for happiness. Sometimes there are people who say that the more you search for happiness, the more it runs away, so if you give up it’ll come to you. That … 
  19. To Certify Yourself
     … It’s in the ardency that your discernment develops, because ordinarily you could be mindful of anything and it would count as mindfulness. You could watch yourself doing things, no matter what you’re doing—good or bad—and that would count as alertness. But ardency means that you’re trying to do this well. That’s what makes the other qualities good. And … 
  20. The Joy of Growing
     … After all, you want to get it so that it thinks about the things you want to think about, and doesn’t think about the things you don’t want to think about, and you’re going to develop your attitude to be more discerning about what you want to think about based on what you’ve noticed, based on what you’ve observed … 
  21. Respect for What’s Noble
     … This way, when you train these forms of clinging to be actually part of the path, as you develop virtue, concentration, and discernment, you have energy. You have confidence. This is another reason why we respect the Buddha: He basically teaches us to respect ourselves, that this is something we can do. So it’s all of a piece. Sometimes you hear people say … 
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