Search results for: "Discernment"
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- 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 …
- The Body Doesn’t Care… This is precisely why the path is effective because it’s basically factors of letting go together with factors that develop qualities of alertness, awareness, concentration, and discernment so that you can really see and appreciate what’s happening—to verify for yourself what’s happening as you let go. It’s not simply letting go, letting go, and that’s going to be …
- Choiceful Awareness… We’ve heard about all the wonderful things that happen when you gain discernment and insight arises, and so we want to be right there, right now, without building the foundation, without mastering the skills that are needed for that insight really to have an impact on the mind, to have the really desired effect—which is to train the mind not to create …
- Admirable in the Beginning, Middle, & End… There’s virtue, there’s concentration, and there’s discernment, all of which are good things to develop. That’s the beginning, just learning about the theory. Then there’s the actual practice, and that’s admirable too. As you put these principles into practice, you learn a lot about yourself. You change your environment and you find that you have potentials within yourself …
- The Wear & Tear of Life… And the Buddha said, “Well, when Sariputta died, did he take virtue away with him? Did he take concentration away with him? Discernment? Release?” All the really valuable things in the world are still here. That’s what you’ve got to remember. Regardless of aging, illness, death, and separation, the good things in life are still available, if you take advantage of them …
- Think Calmly about Death… The right attitude basically comes from developing virtue, concentration, and discernment—and particularly concentration around the brahmaviharas, the sublime attitudes. Learn how to make your mind spacious. Have goodwill for all beings. There was the time when the Buddha had a wound in his foot. Devadatta had tried to kill him by rolling a rock off of a mountain, and a long splinter of …
- Over the Pass… It’s interesting that in the three main divisions of the path—virtue, concentration, and discernment—everything under virtue is about abstaining. And yet, the path requires that you develop certain qualities of mind that we would call virtues in English: things like integrity, heedfulness, honesty. The Buddha says those are prerequisites for the path. So they’re there, it’s simply that they …
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