Search results for: "Discernment"
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- Dhamma in Vinaya… What other agendas do they have right now? This is where Ajaan MahaBoowa talks about using your discernment to foster concentration. Think about the drawbacks of that kind of thinking, or whatever the other agendas are, until you realize you don’t really want to go there. It’s not in your best interest. The Buddha describes this with a perception. He says to …
- Own Your Actions… This is why the ajaans in general warn against going to not-self too quickly or without any discernment. And Ajaan Suwat’s distinction is one of the important distinctions to make: What are you doing right now as opposed to what’s coming in at you? Because the suffering you’re feeling right now, whatever stress or strain or sense of burden or …
- Merit: Actively Happy… It’s the realization that certain things are within your control, and you can turn those things to a really good and noble kind of happiness, a happiness that prepares you for your concentration practice and for discernment practice. It’s nothing to be looked down on, the practice of merit. It’s a type of happiness that forms the foundation for everything else …
- Attachment to Precepts… When you reach the deathless, you realize that holding the precepts was very helpful, but you also needed to use your own discernment to get there, and the goal itself is something else entirely. That’s why the Buddha gave that riddle when the farmer offered his daughter to him. After the Buddha rejected the daughter, the farmer asked him, “What is this goal …
- Truths of the Will… What are the perfections? Generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, energy, tolerance or endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, and equanimity. Sometimes when conditions are difficult, you’ve got to work on the equanimity and the endurance. Other times when opportunities are good, you have to work more on the energy, not to let good opportunities pass you by. When you keep these qualities in mind, you find …
- Insight Is a Judgment Call… I’ve got to work on that.” This enables you to step back from your thoughts, both through concentration and through discernment. In every case, it’s a value judgment. Insight is always a judgment call, and the practice is designed to improve your values, improve your sense of judgment, so that you can finally judge where you’re causing yourself unnecessary suffering and …
- Faith in Present Intentions… We develop virtue, concentration, discernment so the mind is not overcome by pain or by pleasure. When you’ve developed those qualities of mind, it actually can have an effect on past bad actions. They can’t turn the results of bad actions into something good, but they can minimize the bad. The important thing is what we do with our minds right now …
- Right Livelihood… There’s discernment, which is like a slippery wall that the enemy can’t climb up. Learning is like a range of weapons to fight off the enemy. Mindfulness is like the gatekeeper who remembers who to let in and who not to let in. And jhana, he said, is like stores of food. The first jhana is like water and grass. When you …
- Attachment to Views… Remember the four noble dhammas? Noble virtue, noble concentration, noble discernment, and noble release. The first three are for the sake of the last. The release is the essence of the teaching. It’s the core, the heartwood of the teaching. That’s where this is all aimed. Everything else is right or wrong as it helps in that direction. This is why when …
- The Mind Comes First… generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truthfulness, determination, goodwill, equanimity. Try to develop these qualities as you go through life because you can take them with you. And they’ll provide a good place to go. They do offer some shelter. When you can’t depend on the world, you have to learn how to depend on the mind. So you’ve got to …
- The Wounded Warrior… This provides a basis for discernment to arise: the ability to look at those thoughts that were wounding and hurtful, the issues in the outside world that have you all upset, and to see them simply as thoughts arising and passing away. You have the choice: Do you want to go into that world, or not? If you feel obliged to go into that …
- Treating the Diseases of the Mind… Which means that the discernment and wisdom that you bring to the process will have to develop over time. There will be mistakes. There will be setbacks. But basically you’re training yourself to be a doctor, too, starting with your own diseases. You don’t want to get involved with other people’s diseases until you’ve cured your own. You may look …
- Seeing the Stillness… So it all comes down to discernment, seeing what really should be let go, what order things are let go in, and what you have to depend on in the meantime. Once those distinctions are clear, then the path falls into place.
- Questioning Everything… That’s why we work on developing powers of mindfulness and alertness and concentration as a basis for the discernment that really puts an end to suffering. You even question the process of questioning because you begin to realize that some questions are worth asking and some are not. Again, you’re learning to see everything in terms of cause and effect. And you …
- What Am I Becoming?… We know that clinging is the cause of suffering, but clinging also plays a part in the path, and learning how to figure out which kind of clinging is good for you, and which kind of clinging is not, is a useful exercise in developing discernment on the path. There are four kinds of clinging in all. The first one is sensual clinging and …
- All About Change… strengths like conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment. They may be weak now, but as you exercise them, they do get stronger. We were talking the other day about comparing exercising the mind to exercising a muscle. There are some parallels. For one, there’s a lot of repetition. But if it’s nothing but repetition, the muscle gets worn out, and the same with …
- Get Out of Yourself… As the Buddha said, the essence of discernment is seeing things as separate. An important part of seeing them as separate is seeing them as separate from you. In other words, there are these events in the mind, but you don’t have to identify with them. You can study them from an outside perspective. So it’s important as we meditate that we …
- Up for the Challenge… again.” Think of Ajaan Mun’s very last Dhamma talk, where he compares the practice to going into battle, where different aspects of the practice correspond to different aspects of battles: Discernment is the weapons. Concentration is the food. Then, there’s the soldier. The soldier is the determination not to come back and be the laughing-stock of the defilements ever again. You …
- Make the Most of What You’ve Got… He said if there’s anything that needs to be perfected in your behavior, your concentration, or your discernment, you bring it into being. When something good has come into being, you try to make sure it doesn’t fall away. You try to make sure that it continues and develops. This is different from what we normally hear about meditation. For most of …
- Generating Energy… You’re going to need mindfulness, you’re going to need alertness, you’re going to need as much concentration and discernment as you can muster. And when are you going to develop those qualities if you don’t develop them now? Right now is an ideal opportunity. You’re sitting here meditating. It’s quiet around you. One of the contemplations the Buddha …
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