Search results for: "Discernment"
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- Seeds of Becoming… That’s like a person who gets into a state of concentration and then doesn’t want to develop any discernment, just likes the blanking out, or the stillness, and so holds on to that and gets oblivious to other things. It’s like a person who drives the road from the Valley Center to Escondido every day, and after a while doesn’t …
- Understanding Happiness… But if you look inside, you being to realize, “Okay, if I develop concentration, if I develop discernment, these qualities enable me to live in the world in a way that minimizes the suffering: less suffering for myself, less suffering for the people around me.” At the same time, you begin to find a source of happiness inside that’s special, that’s something …
- Practicing Your Scales… And it has the advantage that it develops your powers of perception, your powers of discernment while you do it. So just as when you learn how to play the scales well, you’re learning a lot of the other skills you are going to need to play music well, in the same way when you learn how to keep the mind with one …
- Beneficial Thinking… that the best use of your discernment is to put an end to suffering, and this involves looking at all the forms of suffering, even the ones that you tend to like. There’s a story in the Canon of a woman who had gone through an extremely long pregnancy and finally gave birth to a child after a very long labor. In the …
- Knowing the Body from Within… Now, words are useful to help you to discern and distinguish some of the things you might be experiencing here. It’s like people who are trained to be professional tasters. Part of their training lies in learning how to notice very carefully what their taste buds are telling them, but an equally large part is learning a vocabulary that helps them make precise …
- The Power of Present Kamma… virtue, discernment, an ability not to be overcome by pleasure, an ability not to be overcome by pain, and having an unlimited mind, which means developing the four brahmaviharas. Now all of these abilities are things that we have to fabricate in the present moment. The word fabrication, *sankhara, *doesn’t mean we just make them up out of thin air. We have to …
- Conviction & Persistence… The second point is that we have to develop the conviction that helps with this—and then the mindfulness and the concentration and the discernment that we need in order to keep that consistency going. Conviction is what gives us the motivation that this is important: that, one, it is possible, and two, it really makes a difference. This is an essential part of …
- Faith in Karma… And so you have to become more and more mindful, more and more alert, more discerning. You have to gain more concentration, so that you can see the mind more clearly. And given the sense of well-being that comes from concentration—the Buddha compares it to food—you’re in a better position to say No to unskillful intentions. So we practice equanimity …
- Breath Meditation: Four Sets of Tools… But you do know that when something unexpected comes up, you’re going to need mindfulness, you’re going to need alertness, you’re going to need your powers of discernment. That’s what you’re developing as you meditate. So by meditating, you’re not avoiding your future problems. You’re actually giving yourself the skills you’ll need to deal with them …
- Heedful of Death… You develop your discernment so that you can bring all these qualities not only to issues of the breath, but also to other issues in life as well. This is one of the advantages of getting the mind still like this, balanced in the present moment. It’s in a more impartial space. You can drop your regular narratives for a while and just …
- The Buddha’s Revolution… You free yourself when you act in line with discernment. That’s why the Buddha put a principle of causality at the center of his shortest description of awakening: “When this is, that is. When this isn’t, that isn’t. From the arising of this, comes the arising of that. From the cessation of this, comes the cessation of that.” It’s a …
- A Greater Happiness… have to abandon to find that long-term welfare and happiness? What do I have to do?” One of the things to do is learning to develop mindfulness and alertness, concentration, discernment in the mind, which is what we’re working on here. But the principle applies in all areas of our lives. It’s important to remember that, because often we get short …
- The Good Fight… So you learn to get very discerning. You develop a good sense of judgment. As you fight off the worlds that are not conducive to the path and maintain the worlds that are, you get a better and better sense of how the mind is creating these desires and the worlds that go around them and the identities that go around them. You begin …
- Delight… You’re observing the precepts, finding pleasure in getting the mind concentrated, using your discernment to get past your defilements. You’re practicing non-affliction even as you’re headed toward the ultimate state of non-affliction. The same with non-objectification: Objectification is when you start with the idea, “I am the thinker,” and then from there you identify yourself as a being …
- As Days & Nights Fly Past… for how quick it can be. You think you’re going in one direction; all of a sudden you’re going someplace else. So what do you need to develop? Mindfulness. Discernment. These are the two things that will protect you. In addition to craving for sensuality, there’s craving for becoming, which is taking on an identity in a world of experience. Here …
- You Can Make a Difference… You learn to be virtuous, develop discernment, and train your mind so that it’s not overcome by pleasure or by pain. That skill of not being overcome by pleasure or pain relates directly to the practice of concentration. We do try to give rise to a sense of pleasure here, but we don’t want our minds to be overcome by it, and …
- Self-Reliance… You’re developing the faculty of the mind that turns discernment or wisdom into something that really is yours. Otherwise, it’s just something you’ve heard from other people, or something you’ve thought through. But when you put things to the test like this and learn to judge the results, that’s when your insights really become genuine. You’ve seen for …
- Cross-questioning… He said, “In the same way, I tell people to follow the practice of virtue, concentration, and discernment. Some people follow it and they get the results. Some people don’t follow it and they don’t get the results. I’m just the one who points out the way.” What the Buddha is doing here is giving the man an analogy to make …
- Inner Wealth Management… If your friends are admirable, they teach you about conviction, they teach you about discernment, generosity, virtue. They themselves are good examples in these areas. When you hang around people like this, you use your wealth wisely. You invest it not only in your pleasure in this lifetime, but also in your well-being in future lifetimes. Now, those are the principles that are …
- Encouraging Perceptions… You need to learn how to undermine its power so that it doesn’t get in the way of the strengthening exercises that we do as we practice, as we meditate, as we develop mindfulness, alertness, concentration, and discernment. All these things are meant to help us comprehend suffering so that we can understand how it comes, how it goes, and realize where the …
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