To be determined; to be resolved, "I am going to do something". To be determined to stay with something.
Regarding, "Where can we practice it?", the answer is, Everywhere, go for it! Work hard, don't quit. Everything in your life, every moment of the day, can you be determined to be a better human being? Can you be determined to develop your Generosity more? Can you be Determined to develop your Morality more? Can you be determined to develop all the different Paramis more?
Determination definitely ties in to all the other 9 Paramis, because unless you're determined, you're not going to grow. You have no wish to grow. Determination and Resolution are similar. What happens every New Year's Eve around the world? Millions of people, maybe even billions of people make a New Year's Resolution. At that moment in their life, they are determined they want to change something. They want something to be better in their life, whatever it is, they're determined to change. How many people succeed? Not everyone, and probably less that half of them. I don't know statistically, but I do know a lot of people don't succeed. Someone who smokes tobacco says "I think I'd better quit, I know it gives me cancer". They make a resolution to quit. How many keep it? So many people can't keep it. Some do and some don't. So Determination is a quality we need. We need to be stubborn with our wise directions. We need to be determined.
When we are determined, everything gets easier, because a determined mind brings up more energy. We just have more energy, because we want to do something.
I'm talking about being determined to do something good in our life. What would spark this Determination? What sparks us to make a Resolution to change? We're right back on the Compassionate motivation. We want to change because we see Dukkha is happening in our life, i.e. "What I'm doing in this way is not helping me, and it's not helping others." The Compassion opens up; we don't want this any more. From that Compassion we make a Determination, "I'm going to change; I'm going to improve my life."
So Compassion is the key to push forth Determination. And, Determination is the key to push forth our Effort. They work together, pushing on each other, and then we grow more and more, hopefully, as a good human being.
As to suitable meditation techniques to develop Determination, Determination and Energy have a specific one they often talk about developing, Samvega. Samvega is a feeling of urgency. It's a Pali word that means you have a feeling of urgency; you want to do something, you want to get on with it. Somebody who gets told they're going to die in 2 weeks from cancer, they often want to do stuff real quick; to resolve old things, or whatever. They have a real feeling of urgency because death is coming in a couple of weeks, they know it's for real.
Can you motivate yourself, with Death reflection, to be more determined and get your energy going? Every one of you has this dream, this thought: "after the retreat I'll do such and such". Are you sure the retreat's going to end first, or will you end first?" There's a little saying, "We don't know which will happen first, tomorrow, or our next life". Can we use Death Reflection to get our Energy and Determination going? It's a very specific technique. Can we stop thinking that we will always live in the future?
Now, this Center here is one of probably the safest places on the planet to be. It's not likely anyone's going to pull out a gun and shoot anyone, or plant a terrorist bomb here at this Wat, and so many other difficulties that are out there. It's very safe here. We have a friend who was in a meditation center, he was washing dishes with some other people and they were just chatting away. It was not a retreat, but it was a meditation center, nice and peaceful. He was washing dishes with this other person, and as they were washing dishes, the fellow falls down dead! The guy he's working with just simply drops over dead. Heart failure. Anywhere, any time, any place, anybody; you have to get that into your mind. You are not guaranteed tomorrow.
So use that thought; use Death reflection to get yourself motivated, to be more determined to do more with your life.
Some of you have done the 20-day retreat, many of you have not. Day 20, the final talk of the retreat, the title of the talk is, "Do more". During that talk I basically push everybody by saying, now that they've learned more, "Do more". Bring up the Determination to do more with your life to be of benefit to yourself and others.