Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Becoming Consummate… In other words, these areas were skills that should be mastered. The qualities of the noble ones fall into two main categories: the way you behave and the way you know. The two go together. One of the things the Buddha noticed was how your behavior affects your knowledge, and your knowledge affects your behavior. The kind of knowledge he was talking about requires …
- Saying No to Distraction… The first skill you want to develop is how to say No quickly to a thought. Recognize that a thought is beginning to enter in, and think of shredding it. Sometimes the thought seems to present itself as a little present. You look into the box, and then you fall into the box. In other words, the thought envelops you, and you’re in …
- Control… So in those areas, you have to develop a skillful sense of self and learn how to let go of anything else that would get in the way. You could say that the teaching on not-self begins with the teaching on dana—generosity, giving—because that’s where the Buddha would always start when he was teaching people brand new to the teaching …
- Get Out of the Way… An important skill in the practice is learning how to do things more efficiently, to figure out where you’re expending unnecessary energy. Then the meditation gets a lot easier. This is what practice is all about. If you’ve ever learned how to play a musical instrument, you realize that this is a lot of what practice is in that skill as well …
- Days Fly Past… What does it mean to do something? What does it mean to have an intention? And in particular, which actions and which intentions are most skillful. Which words, which thoughts, which deeds are most skillful? Always look at things in those terms. When I was staying with Ajaan Fuang, and I’d report a particular experience in my meditation, he’d never say, “This …
- Stay… That becomes the next skill to develop in your concentration: learning how to put the directed thought and evaluation aside, and just try to be with the breathing. This creates a different relationship with the breath. Before, the breath was one thing and you were watching it from outside. Now you come to have the sense that your awareness of the breath and the …
- Solidly Here… How long can the mind stay unoccupied like this? It’s a skill. And part of the skill is overcoming the voice that says, “Well what’s next? What’s next?” Nothing next is going to happen until you’ve got this down. Or if it does happen, it’s not going to be very solid. So if you want solid results in the …
- The Power is in Your Hands… In fact, if you’re heedful, which is what the Buddha was trying to encourage, that’s auspicious, because all skillful qualities come from heedfulness. It’s not that we’re innately good or innately bad. We have good characteristics and bad characteristics in the mind, good habits and bad habits. We develop the good ones because we realize that if we don’t …
- Limitations… After all, if you have that inner sense of well-being, you’re much more likely to be able to do the skillful thing in any situation. So the wisest investment—given the fact we have limited time and energy—is in developing good qualities of the mind. They start with mindfulness and alertness, because you can’t see what’s going on in …
- The Uses of the Breath… And because the way we feed is the cause of suffering, you really want to get very familiar with how you fabricate things and learn how to fabricate them in a more skillful way. This is what insight is all about. You fabricate the breath. You fabricate your sense of the body through the breath. You fabricate your mind through your feelings and perceptions …
- Doing Meditation… And there are some times when simply watching—which is what they’re actually talking about—is the most skillful thing you can do in your meditation. Other times, though, you have to make more of an effort. There’s more of a process of putting things together. So, as you’re meditating, try to be very conscious of the fact that you are …
- A Home for the Mind… This is an important skill, because the more you can fully inhabit your body, the more you’re protected from vagrant thoughts, unskillful thoughts, and the energy of other people. Some of us are like sponges. We pick up the energy of the people around us. This can be good or bad, depending on the people. But it’s best if you can create …
- No Preferences… When you don’t waste it on unskillful things, you’ve got extra energy for the skillful ones. So on the days when the situation really does require that you sit for a long period of time to work through a difficult issue, you’ve got the energy to draw on, because you didn’t fritter it away with trivial pursuits. In particular you …
- What You’re Choosing to Do Right Now… The rest of the book had to do with the fact that this is a skill that can be taught, primarily by giving people an enlarged vocabulary to describe what they’re sensing. For example, when you train people to be taste-testers, you give them a large vocabulary: These are the different kinds of tastes there are in the world. They start out …
- Intelligent Effort… preventing unskillful qualities from arising, abandoning any unskillful qualities that have arisen, giving rise to skillful qualities that are not there yet, and then, once they’re there, trying to develop them further. Sometimes we get stuck on a snag. We’ve been doing one kind of right effort, as when we’re trying to develop concentration, it goes well for a while, and …
- Withstanding Pleasure & Pain… This is a very essential skill for living in the world in a way that’s good for you, and good for the world. We see injustice all around us, but we have to realize that the sources of injustice lie inside. There are basically four. There’s desire, aversion, delusion, and fear. And a lot of our desire, aversion, delusion, and fear are …
- A Handful of Leaves… In addition to the four noble truths, though—the truths that are true across the board—there’s the truth that skillful qualities should be developed and unskillful qualities should be abandoned. This truth, too, is categorical. Then, toward the end of his life, he called the monks together and taught them the seven sets of dhammas that are wings to awakening. Those can …
- Virtue… It also develops some important skills, such as mindfulness, alertness, and persistence. You have to keep your precepts in mind, remembering that you’ve promised yourself not to lie, not to speak divisively, not to speak harshly, not engage in idle chatter. And you’ve got to be alert to watch your mouth to see: Are you engaging in any of those kinds of …
- The Broken Gong… Then you can take this skill and apply it to other parts of your life as well. If you find you’re driving yourself crazy over some incident in your family life, at work, whatever, and it echoes, echoes, echoes, echoes in the mind, you can question it: What actually happened, and where right now is the sensation of that event? It’s at …
- Determined to Stay with the Breath… That forces you to learn the skills that are required to stick with that determination, to stay with it. And then you learn how to apply those skills to the meditation as well. Think of the meditation as a promise you make to yourself, in the same way as you take the precepts as a promise to yourself. Have a sense of honor about …
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