Non-verbal Discernment
September 11, 2021
There’s a passage where the Buddha says that if you want to master jhana and get really good at right concentration, you need both tranquility and insight. In other words, you don’t just force the mind down. If you want the mind to be willing to settle down, you have to understand its causes and effects—what works, what doesn’t work—remembering that the insights you use don’t necessarily have to be verbalized. After all, think about it: Insight has to do with value judgments—what’s worth doing, what’s not worth doing; what gets good results, what doesn’t get good results. Sometimes you know these things without having to verbalize too much.