Search results for: "Discernment"
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- Where Perceptions Can Take You… Ajaan Chah talks about how he got started on really understanding what discernment was all about when he began to realize how arbitrary perceptions can be, and how useful it was to call them into question. There’s a passage in the Canon where Ven. Ananda comes to see Ven. Sariputta and asks him, “Why is it that some people gain liberation, and others …
- A Connoisseur of Happiness… He compares the practice as a whole to building and maintaining a fortress on a frontier. Mindfulness is the gatekeeper who knows whom to let in and whom to keep out. Discernment is the well-plastered wall that the enemy can’t climb because they can’t gain a foothold on the plaster. Persistence is your army of soldiers. And jhana is your storehouse …
- Training the Mind to Train the Mind… As your concentration gets stronger, your discernment gets more refined. The more still you can make the concentration, the subtler the things you’ll be able to see. And if you’re tempted to take on a particular issue, you can watch yourself to see what happens. If you realize that you’re not handling it well, you can pull out. You’ll have …
- A Rite of Passage… As you keep doing it, your discernment grows as well. Remind yourself that you’re motivated by compassion, both for yourself and for others, and that you’re happy to have found a path that allows you to find true happiness without having to harm anyone at all. A lot of Western psychology is built on the idea that, on the one hand, you …
- It’s up to You… And it’s up to you to use your own discernment in applying it. It’s in this way that it’s each person for him or herself. Even though the Buddha said that the whole of the holy life is admirable friendship, admirable friendship doesn’t mean the Buddha’s going to do this for us, because he can’t. Still, he can …
- The Kamma of Concentration… So the bathman has to use discernment in working the water through the dough, in the same way the Buddha says you work the sense of ease and well-being, the sense of rapture, as it develops in your concentration, though the body. Because in the next step, you want to be able to just sit there immersed in the well-being, as if …
- Skillful Judgment… That’s another aspect of the discernment that comes from observing yourself. For example, you give yourself x hours of sleep and all you can think about when you wake up is that you’re going to go back to sleep right again. For a while you have to test that to see if it’s just your old habit or if it really …
- The Uses of Fear… So heedfulness reminds us of the dangers but also says, “If you’re careful, if you’re mindful, if you’re alert, if you’re discerning, you can gain release from those dangers.” That’s why we’re here meditating, learning how to train the mind so that it can recognize greed, anger, and delusion when they come. A large part of the problem …
- The Dhamma Eye… to develop concentration, develop discernment, develop mindfulness, your ability to keep something in mind, and to develop alertness, your ability to notice what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing. The more you work on these things, the closer you get to the end of suffering, the closer you get to experience what the Buddha said is deathless. All the …
- Justice vs. Skillfulness… This is indicated in the set of questions that the Buddha says lies at the beginning of discernment: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What is skillful? What is blameless?” Those are the questions on the positive side. Then on the negative side: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term harm and …
- Adbusting the Mind… So choose very discerning eyes, the eyes of the noble ones, as your standard. So remember, these are tricks of the defilements. This is how advertising agencies make their living: by figuring out people’s defilements. Years back, I read a student profile in the alumni magazine from the college I went to. The student was talking about how he was planning to do …
- Dhamma Warrior… What are your strengths, what are your weaknesses, what are you capable of? If you’re in a group of people, what’s your position in the group? What’s the appropriate behavior for someone in that position? What work do you still need to do in training in virtue, concentration, discernment? In other words, be very realistic about where you are, not getting …
- Conviction & Confidence… Trying to figure them out is a good exercise for your discernment. Before teaching breath meditation, he’d encourage you to develop an attitude of patience. He said to be as nonreactive as the earth. People throw disgusting things on the earth, and the earth doesn’t shrink back in horror. It just sits right there. The same with the other great elements. You …
- Safety… And this is where you find your safety—in the mind—because, based on this island, you can start gaining discernment into what the mind is doing on a more subtle level that’s leading to stress, leading to harm. And you can stop it. When you keep digging down and you find something that’s uncaused inside, that’s when you’re safe …
- Making Yourself Worthy of Trust… You tell yourself, “Whatever happens in the world, good or bad, I’m going to have to be mindful, alert, and discerning. Where am I going to get those qualities if I don’t meditate?” Even when good things happen, you have to be mindful around them, so that you don’t get carried away and careless. When unskillful thoughts come up in the …
- Enlightenment is Not a Hot Dog… The technique can point you there, but what you’re going to see depends on your own powers of discernment, your own sensitivity, and the imagination, the ingenuity that you bring to it. So you find that you look at the baskets you weave and say, I don’t like those baskets. I want something better. You go back and figure out what the …
- Stop Squirming… This is why discernment is such an important part of the practice. It’s learning to see these distinctions. Which kind of pain or suffering is the first arrow? Which kind is the second arrow? How does it come? How does it go? Watching its coming and going, we’re not here just to say, “Oh, it’s coming and going, that’s it …
- Perceptions of Self & Not-Self… But as you get better and better at the concentration, better and better at discernment, there comes a point where you begin to see that these perceptions of self are no longer needed. That’s when you apply the perception of not-self even to elements of the path. Both perceptions are strategies for the sake of putting an end to suffering when you …
- Creating Your Environment… The qualities that will allow for us to develop more mindfulness, more alertness, more discernment so that we can actually bring to mind to a state of release: These qualities are there for us to develop. It can be done. It’s not impossible. All too often, we place limitations on ourselves. Even though other people place some limitations, the really dangerous ones are …
- The Buddha’s Questions… When you learn how to read your mind in this way, developing both that sense of heedfulness and greater skill in how you manage your practice of virtue, concentration, and discernment, then you finally get to those questions that he asked the five brethren: “Is form constant?” They say, “It’s inconstant.” “If it’s inconstant, is it pleasant or stressful?” “Well, if you …
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