Search results for: "Persistence"
- Persistence & Discernment
- The Persistent Gardener
- The Joy of Persistence
- Start the Year Right Here… In particular, in the meditation, persistence means sticking with it, sticking with it, keep coming back, because it’s the ability to build a consistent and persistent awareness and persistent mindfulness that will make all the difference in the mind. Mindfulness is the third quality that gives strength to the mind. In other words, we focus here on the breath. Everybody can know the …
- Meditation as a Skill… The same with persistence: If you think about persistence in the abstract, it seems kind of dry. You stick with something over and over and over again. You do something over and over again. After a while, it’s going to get boring if you don’t find a way to make it more interesting. This applies to all skills. If you practice—say …
- Effective Self-Discipline… This is why it’s interesting to see what precedes persistence in the lists—for, after all, the lists are often meant to be sequential. You develop a certain quality first, and then it makes it easier for you to be persistent. In one of the lists, the quality that precedes persistence is desire. You want the results—and don’t be ashamed of …
- Bases for Success… Three of the bases for success are tied up in right effort, in which you generate desire, you arouse your persistence, and you uphold your intent. Desire, persistence, and intent: These are three of the base for success, or three of the elements in the bases for success. They’re also three qualities that are supposed to be found in every state of concentration …
- Delight in Persistence… That’s the Buddha’s shorthand for the path as a whole, and for right effort or persistence in particular. The strength of persistence is something we have to develop, and it’s good to learn how to enjoy the process. After all, the Buddha said there are different ways of taking delight that actually are conducive to the practice. One of them is …
- Potentials for Energy… Similarly with persistence: The sutta doesn’t say where the potential for persistence lies, but there are other passages in the Canon that do. It’s good to look into those passages, because during a heat wave like this we tend to be depleted. It’s good to remember what the Buddha has to say about the potentials within you for energy. That seems …
- Strength of Persistence… This point applies especially to the question of right effort or persistence. You look at what’s required by the path, and if all you can see are the dangers, all you can talk to yourself about are the dangers or the difficulties or the hardships or the things you’re going to miss as you practice, you’re going to make yourself miserable …
- Defeatism? - Anything But… That kind of persistence is going to pay off. But simple persistence on its own is not enough. You can’t take nibbana by storm. You need the remaining two bases for power, too, such as being intent. You focus really carefully on what you’re doing and what results you’re getting. You pay very careful attention. This is how the Buddha was …
- Resisting the Germs of Defilement… And then based on that, you know what to do in terms of your persistence, which is the third factor for awakening: how to develop skillful qualities, how to abandon unskillful ones—and wanting to do it. An important part of persistence is to learn how to motivate yourself. You’ve seen the harm that can come from certain thoughts, certain ideas, certain urges …
- Look after Your Baby… You have to strengthen your persistence, your mindfulness, your concentration, and your discernment. 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 …
- Shelter… All the hard-working perfections—determination, patience, truth, persistence: These are the things that see you through. Then there are the qualities that work both ways, leading to success both inside and outside—leading to concentration within the mind and leading to success in whatever task you take on outside. These are the qualities of the bases of success. There are four. The first …
- Good Heart, Good Mind… You exercise qualities of persistence, endurance, determination that give strength to your desire for true happiness. What this means is that a good heart is not simply a well-meaning heart, but it’s a heart that’s determined to see that its good intentions get turned into good realities. So bring whatever quality of discernment, persistence, truth that you need in order to …
- Strong & Heedful… conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. Conviction is conviction in the principle of karma. In other words, believing that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the intentions you act on. That conviction helps get rid of the delusion that somehow you can act in sloppy ways, or act in careless ways, or even act in evil ways, and not …
- Feeding on Right Resolve… It requires that you analyze what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, and when you see that something’s unskillful, you bring in the persistence to abandon it. If it’s skillful, you bring in the persistence to develop it, so that you can give rise to sense of *pīti, *as it’s called in Pali, which can be translated as rapture, refreshment …
- Conviction & Focus… 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 shame—a healthy sense of shame— compunction, persistence, and discernment. The two lists have conviction, persistence, and discernment in common. Those are the core strengths. It’s …
- Engaging the Whole Mind… Once you have the desire to do this, the next step is persistence. To be persistent, you have to apply mindfulness and alertness as well. In other words, you have to keep what you’re doing here in mind, keep the breath in mind, and be alert to how the breath is going, and alert to the mind when it wanders off. Persistence means …
- Heeding the Deva Messengers… That’s why strength of persistence develops into strength of mindfulness, and mindfulness involves three qualities. In addition to ardency, which is the same thing as persistence, there’s also alertness—where you see what you’re doing, the results of what you’re doing—and then mindfulness, to remind you of how this whole process works. Because it’s so easy, as we …
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