Search results for: "Discernment"
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- Discernment in Concentration… This is the kind of concentration that leads naturally to discernment because there’s discernment in the concentration itself. The stillness of the mind requires that you think about it and observe: What are you doing? And how are you doing it? You’re doing it through the aggregates. Remember, the aggregates are activities. When the Buddha defines them, he defines them as verbs …
- The Strength of Conviction… It’s not the case that you get the mind really concentrated and* then* start thinking about discernment. You have to use your discernment in the process of developing the concentration in the first place. This is how discernment gets developed. Once it’s developed, then you can use it to lift things, to move things around, to pierce through obstacles. And this is …
- Don’t Be Afraid of Jhana… When you’re immersed in sensual pleasures, it’s very hard to gain discernment. But when you’re staying with this kind of pleasure, discernment arises more easily. In fact, this is where discernment arises, in this power of concentration that allows the mind to settle down, be still, and have a sense of well-being. If the mind lacks a sense of well …
- The Brahmaviharas on the Path… One of the results of the first stage of awakening is that you’ve completed all the work you have to do in terms of virtue, but you still have work to do in terms of concentration and discernment. That doesn’t mean, however, you didn’t work on concentration and discernment to get there. You needed them both. After all, they’re there …
- Factors for Awakening… That’s a way of showing how mindfulness and discernment working together can bring the mind to concentration. The Buddha actually has lots of different ways of describing the order in which these things happen. Mindfulness always precedes concentration, but sometimes discernment comes first, then mindfulness, then concentration; sometimes mindfulness, then concentration, then discernment, depending on whether he’s talking in terms of the …
- The Seven Treasures… The seventh treasure is discernment, wisdom. This is probably the most important of all seven. As Ajaan Lee once said, if you have wisdom and discernment, then even if you’re born poor, if all you have is a machete to your name, you can still establish yourself in the world. And on the other side, if you’ve got all the advantages of …
- Restraint… Using your discernment, you realize that the mind needs to feed, and if you simply forbid it to feed, it’s going to go sneaking off, getting its food out of garbage cans and out of trash bins. So feed it well. In this case, you’re using not only restraint, but also your discernment. As the Buddha said, if you’re going to …
- Exercising Discernment… When things aren’t going well in your meditation, you can ask yourself, okay, which factors are not as healthy as they could be, as strong as they could be? And what you can to encourage them to be stronger? This is an important part of developing discernment in the path. Discernment isn’t something you can manufacture simply by following a set of …
- Pleasing to the Noble Ones… training in heightened virtue, heightened mind—or heightened concentration—and heightened discernment. They’re listed in that order to give you a sense of the order in which they’re mastered. When you reach stream-entry, you’ve mastered virtue. You have some mastery of concentration and some mastery of discernment. It’s not as if you start doing concentration only after stream-entry …
- Determination… The first is discernment, in other words, being discerning in your goals, choosing good goals for yourself, and then being discerning in how you’re going to go about attaining those goals. That’s the first quality. The second quality is truthfulness. Once you’ve made up your mind to do something, you really stick with it. The third quality is generosity. There are …
- Setbacks… virtue, concentration and discernment. They feed off one another. The standard explanation is that virtue nurtures concentration, concentration nurtures discernment, discernment leads to release. But the actual Pali explanation of this is that, “Concentration nurtured with virtue leads to great rewards. Discernment nurtured with concentration leads to great rewards. When the mind is nurtured with discernment, then it’s released from the effluents.” In …
- Train Your Hunger (The Sea Squirt)… We’ve got to train our hunger to be more discerning as to what’s worth going after. We train it through virtue, concentration, and discernment. This will take time. It’s like trying to wean yourself off of sugar: It takes a while to grow used to not constantly getting, or going for, the quick hit of sugar. But once you’ve managed …
- Firm in Your Intent… And then concentration leads to discernment. Here again, the concentration has to be there in the discernment. You’re trying to look to see what the mind is doing that’s causing suffering, which is why you have to stick with the duties of the four noble truths. Wherever you recognize the clinging you’re engaging in, you try to comprehend it. Exactly how …
- Taking Charge… This is how concentration fosters discernment. And, in turn, the discernment fosters your concentration. You begin to notice that the way the mind is concentrated is not as effortless as it could be, it’s not as refined, it’s not as solid as it could be. You work on adjusting those causes, adjusting your choices: where you focus, how you focus, how you …
- Alone at Death, but Not Lonely… You need mindfulness, you need alertness, you need ardency, you need concentration, you need discernment—particularly mindfulness and discernment. They put these two concepts together a lot in Thailand. There’s a Thai compound word: satipañña. When you take the compound apart, it means mindfulness-discernment; when you put it together, it means intelligence. It’s the opposite of ignorance—or at least these …
- Right Resolve, Right Concentration… It’s the same with discernment and concentration. The simple fact that you’re bringing the mind out of its unskillful ways and into concentration: That’s already the beginning of discernment. Then, as you sit here alert and quiet, you’re primed to see even more subtle discernments when they appear.
- Noble Treasures… Finally, there’s discernment. As Ajaan Lee says, this is probably the most important treasure on the list, because he says you could be lacking in other things, but as long as you have discernment— of course, here he means discernment that’s nurtured by proper conviction and virtue and all the others—you can set yourself up in life, even if you lack …
- Suffering Comes from What You’re Doing… The Buddha defines discernment in several ways. One is as penetrating discernment into arising and passing away. Which means first you have to see things arise and pass away in the mind—but you don’t just sit there. You try to make some things arise. In other words, you try to make mindfulness arise, you try to make concentration arise, so that you …
- Determined on Goodwill… The first one is wisdom or discernment, paññā. As he said, don’t neglect discernment. How do you neglect discernment? By neglecting the long term. Discernment begins by thinking in the long term: What are the long-term consequences of your actions going to be? Then you stick with the things that will lead to good long-term results. So think of what you …
- A Mind Larger than the World… Use your discernment for that. That’s where discernment and goodwill come together. You could use your discernment for all kinds of goals, but if you make your goal true happiness, it means you have to have goodwill for yourself. If you want your happiness to last, you have to have goodwill for others, too, because if your happiness depends on their suffering, they …
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