Search results for: "Wisdom"

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  2. Wisdom Through Training
     … This is why the training, why the development of these qualities of the mind is where real discernment, real wisdom comes in. Anybody can read, anybody can think, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to real knowledge. It’s when you take what you’ve learned and you put it into practice: That’s when you gain knowledge from the practice, as with any … 
  3. Comfortable With the Truth
     … You want to learn from the wisdom of others. And the best way to do that is to be open. Then you take what you’ve learned from your own experience and from the wisdom of others, and try, try again. Keep trying. Because if you don’t keep trying, then things start backsliding. And this large area of ignorance in the mind just … 
  4. The Courage to Set Yourself Free
     … When you decide to overcome fear, it has to be with goodwill and wisdom aimed at your long-term welfare and happiness. So it does require courage to practice, but courage tempered with wisdom. That’s what real courage is. It’s not just foolhardiness. What you want is the courage that comes from seeing that this is for your long-term good, and … 
  5. The Tricks of Denial
     … That’s looking at wisdom and forgetting the four noble truths. Because when issues arise, you want to see what’s the cause, what’s behind them. That’s seeing the connection between cause and effect—and that’s real wisdom. That’s real discernment. So in this case, you want to see, when something’s arising that pulls the mind in, what’s … 
  6. Good at Thinking
     … That’s, “Why are you suffering? Why is there suffering?” Wisdom, the Buddha says, comes from learning to ask the question, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” Now, this may seem selfish, focusing on your own happiness, but true happiness, long-term happiness, can’t rely on the suffering of other people. If it did, they … 
  7. Conceit
     … Learn to use your wisdom. As Ajaan Chah once said, if you could gain Awakening simply by endurance, chickens would have attained Awakening a long time ago — they can sit for really long hours. You have to use your wisdom. When something seems burdensome, why is it burdensome? Exactly what is it placing a burden on? And why do you want to identify with … 
  8. Strength Training
     … And as you approach it, it’s a good idea to reflect back on what skills you’ve already mastered in life, to see what lessons, what wisdom, you already have that you’ve already picked up from those skills that you can apply to the meditation. If your basic skill is strength training, there are a lot of parallels. The Buddha talks of … 
  9. Bless Yourself
     … Part of the Buddha’s wisdom was realizing that he could take you from wherever you are and, if you followed his instructions, he could get you to where he was. This is what ties all the practices together: not that they’re coming from the same place, in the sense of the same starting point, but they do go to the same ending … 
  10. The Best Use of Your Time
     … This is one of the basic definitions of wisdom, realizing that things you do and say and think have consequences, and that sometimes things that you like to do or say or think can have unfortunate consequences, and things that you don’t like to do or say or think can actually have good consequences. Wisdom lies in your ability to go for the … 
  11. Step Back
     … Choose that person wisely, someone whose wisdom you trust. Try to get a sense of where they’re coming from, how they’d step back from their problems as well, so that ultimately you don’t have to go and ask. As soon as the question pops up in your mind, you have a good idea: What would the Buddha do? What would the … 
  12. Using Your Many Minds
     … This also means that you’re not going to wait until your powers of concentration are fully developed before you start developing the potential for discernment and wisdom in your practice. The two—concentration and discernment—go hand in hand. The more quiet you get the mind, the more clearly you can see things. The more clearly you see things, the more skill you … 
  13. Understanding Goodwill & Equanimity
     … It requires more wisdom, more understanding. Learning how to separate the pain, if it’s a physical pain, from your awareness and to separate the pain from your sense of the body: That’s when you can free the mind, again, through understanding. So you use less willpower in terms of generating equanimity there, and more understanding to cut through the connections that would … 
  14. Catch It in the Act
     … When we hear that, we think we have to get a lot of concentration and only then can we work on discernment or wisdom. But that’s not the case. All the basic elements of the path—virtue, concentration, and discernment—are things you already have to some extent. So if your virtue is weak, you can develop some concentration, not as much as … 
  15. Looking for Trouble
     … Now, the Buddha’s not saying not to look at things or not to listen, he’s just saying to look with wisdom, listen with wisdom. When you see something that would ordinarily give rise to fear, try look at it in a way that doesn’t give rise to fear; something that would give rise to anxiety, learn to look in a way … 
  16. Protection in all Directions
     … There’s another place where the Buddha said that the beginning of wisdom is when you go to a contemplative or brahman—and in this case, he’s not talking about any old contemplative or any old brahman, he’s talking about noble disciples—and you ask those people “What’s skillful? What’s unskillful? What, when I do it, will lead to my … 
  17. Endurance & Equanimity
     … Is it wise conceit? The Buddha does recognize that there is such a thing, but all too often our conceit has nothing to do with wisdom at all. It’s just the simple desire to get back. That’s certainly not a Dhamma desire. So you develop restraint and then you learn how to maintain it. That’s the patience, the endurance. No matter … 
  18. Assumptions
     … Which means that wisdom is not just knowing about things. It’s the kind of knowledge that comes with skill, as you learn to manipulate your experience in a deft way. So keep that in mind: We’re here working on a skill. We’re not going to obliterate anything. We’re just taking what we’ve got and reconfiguring it. This mind that … 
  19. Goodwill Is Respect
     … So how do you avoid divulging the information without lying at the same time? I was reading a Mahayana piece saying basically that wisdom around the precepts means knowing when to observe the precepts and when not to observe them. That’s not genuine wisdom. That’s just the common worldly attitude: You hold by your principles when it’s convenient, and you drop … 
  20. From Heedfulness to Purity
     … When the Buddha was talking about the root of what is skillful in the mind, he didn’t say that it comes from any innate goodness, innate compassion, or innate wisdom, aside from the wisdom of heedfulness: seeing that there is danger out there and there’s danger in here, and that your actions are going to make a difference as to whether you … 
  21. Your Gyroscope
     … When you meet with praise and criticism, you can develop the wisdom of looking at what other people say, looking at their intentions, and looking at yourself. After all, sometimes criticism is very useful. As the Buddha once said, if someone points out your faults, you should regard that person as having pointed out a treasure. In other words, if the faults really are … 
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