Search results for: "Conviction"

  1. Strength of Conviction: 2
     … You use conviction in four things or in four ways. It gets confirmed at stream-entry, but you’re trying to develop conviction in all four things all the way through, all the way up to stream-entry. The first three factors are conviction in the Buddha, conviction in the Dhamma, conviction in the Sangha. Conviction in the Buddha means specifically conviction in his … 
  2. Questioning Your Conviction
     … So conviction is the very beginning. Conviction in what? Conviction in the Buddha’s awakening. That’s the standard answer. But what does that mean for us? Well, think about the Buddha’s awakening. He found an end to suffering through his own efforts, and he did it by developing qualities that were not exclusive to him. As he said, he had heedfulness, ardency … 
  3. Conviction in the End of Suffering
     … Yet as the Buddha points out, conviction is a kind of wealth. It’s a strength. Often we don’t think of it in those terms. We’ve been through so many instances where we had faith in someone or conviction in some principle, and it turned out not to be true, that we’re afraid of having conviction. It seems to be putting … 
  4. The Five Faculties Confirmed
     … When you escape from conviction, from persistence, from mindfulness, from concentration, from the discernment through that dispassion, that’s when you realize these qualities really do lead to the deathless. You have no more need for conviction, because your conviction has been confirmed. So this is why we practice these faculties. They are means, not an end, and the Buddha’s very clear about … 
  5. Conviction & Confidence
     … So you need the conviction that this is worthwhile and the confidence that it can be done. The word conviction traditionally covers four things. The first three are conviction that the Buddha really was awakened, conviction that his Dhamma is well-taught, and conviction that the Sangha of noble disciples has practiced well—in other words, they have practiced in such a way that … 
  6. The Pain of Conviction
     … This is where conviction comes in. There’s a passage where the Buddha’s discussing the causes that lead to suffering, and then beyond suffering, the next step is conviction, conviction that there’s a way out. It doesn’t end the suffering, but it actually puts a different cast on it. Because conviction itself has both a pleasant and an unpleasant side. The … 
  7. The Elephant Hunter
     … Here the Buddha’s talking about the property of conviction. Conviction isn’t confirmed until you’ve gained awakening. But that means you have to commit yourself to the path first. Even before you’ve seen the footprints and seen the scratch marks, he’s asking that you commit to the path in order to test it, because it seems reasonable and because it … 
  8. Wandering On, Shooting Arrows
     … Then the next step is conviction—conviction in the Buddha’s teachings, conviction in the Buddha’s awakening. Based on conviction comes joy, and from joy there comes concentration, from concentration comes discernment, through discernment you finally get to release, and then to the vijjā—the knowledge—that cuts through everything. So, it’s that switch to conviction that makes the difference. Ordinarily, the … 
  9. Conviction in Charge
     … And from conviction come other strengths as well. There’s the strength of persistence, where you can stir up the energy to keep with it, because conviction that doesn’t result in action is empty conviction. That is, it never gets a chance to be proven. So we’ll say, “Let’s act on it.” And because the Buddha does promise that it will … 
  10. Faith in the Buddha
    As the Buddha tells it, wisdom begins with conviction. Not a generalized conviction, very specific: conviction in his awakening—that what he awakened to was true, that the way he went about it could enable him to see truths like that, and that these truths are relevant for our lives. There’s nothing unreasonable about these propositions. Faith or conviction in the Buddha’s … 
  11. Strength of Conviction: 1
     … Whatever insights we develop have to be based on that conviction if they’re going to be helpful. So it’s good to look at the causes that the Buddha lists for giving rise to discernment, all the way down to conviction and to the causes that give rise to get conviction. He lists four, what he calls the four stream-entry factors. Now … 
  12. Faith as a Virtue
     … Saddha is a word we translate sometimes as faith, sometimes as conviction. The differences in the meaning between faith and conviction seem to be that you have faith that someone or something will do something for you. Conviction is more a matter of being convinced that something has actually happened. So we have conviction in the Buddha’s awakening; we have faith in the … 
  13. Conviction & Truth
     … Do you have the quality of truthfulness within you to be the sort of person who can really gauge the path? Thinking like this helps to nourish your effort, because in the five strengths, conviction leads to persistence, but conviction doesn’t act on its own. There has to be the desire to really know, to take it beyond mere conviction if you’re … 
  14. Conviction & Focus
     … Which is why conviction is listed as one of the strengths. In fact, it’s the first strength. The Buddha gives two lists of strengths all together. There’s the list of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. That’s the standard one in The Wings to Awakening. Then there’s another one, the strengths of a person in training: conviction, a sense of … 
  15. Fear & Conviction
     … That’s what gives us the conviction to stick with the practice even when it gets hard. So learn how to cultivate a healthy, wise sense of fear. Articulate that to yourself. Then articulate to yourself what your other fears are and make a comparison. This helps to get your priorities straight and strengthens your conviction that what really needs to be done is … 
  16. The Strength of Conviction
     … This was why, when the Buddha listed the five strengths with the fifth being discernment—the discernment that leads to the end of suffering—the first item in the list is conviction: conviction that your actions do matter and ultimately, of course, that there is a way out. Having this conviction helps you get around problems in your meditation. If the mind has trouble … 
  17. Look after Your Baby
     … Those strengths are listed in a row—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment—but that doesn’t mean that you start with just the beginning ones. All five have to support one another. So look to see where you’re lacking. Are you lacking conviction in yourself? Are you lacking conviction in the Buddha’s teachings? Are you lacking conviction in your persistence? What does … 
  18. Responsible Conviction
     … This is we can say that our conviction is responsible. In other religions, when they have conviction in the teachings, it’s basically faith that someone else will take care of you. But here the Buddha is saying you have to have conviction that you can learn how to take care of yourself. That’s what it means to be responsible. That’s what … 
  19. Test Everything
     … That’s a matter of conviction. Conviction is something that has to be tested. But it’s your working hypothesis. It’s what gets you going to begin with, and keeps you going—because there are times when the practice hardly unfolds on its own. Someone raised an issue recently saying that the practice is something that just happens naturally. You don’t really … 
  20. Conviction & Confidence
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