AN 4.147 What is meant by discernment? Also is the simile lacking accuracy for practice?

Q & A
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AN 4.147. What is meant by the last ‘time’ discernment?

Also, The simile shows water going in one direction and once the water goes through one body of water- it goes through another without going back to the previous one. However practice seems to involve an interconnection and revisiting all 4 ‘times’: listening to the teaching, a time for discussing the teaching, a time for serenity, and a time for discernment

“Mendicants, when these four times are rightly developed and progressed, they gradually lead to the ending of defilements. What four? A time for listening to the teaching, a time for discussing the teaching, a time for serenity, and a time for discernment. It’s like when it rains heavily on a mountain top, and the water flows downhill to fill the hollows, crevices, and creeks. As they become full, they fill up the pools. The pools fill up the lakes, the lakes fill up the streams, and the streams fill up the rivers. And as the rivers become full, they fill up the ocean. In the same way, when these four times are rightly developed and progressed, they gradually lead to the ending of defilements.”

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You might enjoy turning on the Pali. Theses are the three times:

Kālena dhammassavanaṁ, kālena dhammasākacchā, kālena sammasanā, kālena vipassanā—

So discernment is the translation of vipassana.

I think it’s always important to keep in mind that similes offer a narrow illustration of a phenomenon and you can’t attribute more meaning to them than they intend. I believe the idea is more that each step requires the previous one, not that you can’t go back and develop things deeper (i.e. the water doesn’t flow back up the mountain). After all, it doesn’t rain just once on a mountain. (And there I go adding in more meaning!)

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haha :slight_smile: brilliant- thanks I needed that :slight_smile:

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I’ll always remember a relative telling me about a bible study they were leaving and they were talking about the “You are the salt of the earth…” passage. One guy was like, “Well, you know my doctor told me that salt was bad, so maybe this is a bad thing for us to be the salt of the earth?” :man_facepalming:

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I am getting the impression that some people take things more literally than others so similes may work for some more than others. I tend to be analytically minded and my favourite topics were always math and science which I’d ace and literature, poetry etc I’d nearly fail. Maybe one has to deliberately stop one’s self from over analysing a simile and just let it give an impression and stop at that.

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