Search results for: "Skillfulness"

  1. Page 104
  2. Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice
     … When you do this, you’re learning the basic skill that will take you all the way, at the very least, to stream entry, because it’s all about seeing and developing dispassion for the activities of the mind. The same holds true with the concentration that comes from contemplating the body. At first, you’re focused on your image of the body. But … 
  3. Inner Critics
     … On the other hand, it means being skillful in learning how to move you in that direction. So we do hold high standards here. As the Buddha once said, the secret to his awakening was two things. One was not resting content with skillful qualities. If he hadn’t truly reached an end of suffering, he wasn’t going to let himself rest. And … 
  4. What’s Worth Doing?
     … But the wise person who has developed good qualities, developed good skills, can share them. So the amount of stress and suffering that goes into following the path is really worth it. Just make sure you don’t get waylaid, particularly with sensuality. There are four kinds of clinging: clinging to sensuality, to habits and practices, to views, and to ideas of the self … 
  5. Some Assembly Required
     … You’ve got the raw material coming in from the past, but your skill in putting things together right now is what’s going to make a difference. If it didn’t make a difference, there wouldn’t be the four noble truths, or, if someone did talk about the four noble truths, they wouldn’t make any difference. This is one of the … 
  6. The Happiness & Suffering of Others
     … If their actions were based on right view, done with skillful intentions, then they were going to benefit from those actions. But if they were based on wrong view and unskillful intentions, they were going to suffer. It was from that much larger perspective that he was able to turn around and look back at his own suffering in the present moment: looking for … 
  7. Taking Stock
     … Of course, you’ll find, as you look in your mind, there are a lot of other potentials as well, a lot of less skillful potentials. You’ve probably had some practice in developing those, too. But it’s important that you realize you do have the choice: You don’t have to just go with old habits, good or bad. You want to … 
  8. Changing Your Default Settings
     … One of the reasons why we meditate is to give us some new skills in this area. Your intention now is to stay with the breath, to stay with one thing continually. And you can add to that the intention that you want to make this as pleasant an experience as possible. That means you’re going to be focusing on the feeling that … 
  9. Steering the Raft
     … What it’s good for is as a tool to develop skillful qualities in the mind—as we practice generosity, as we practice virtue, as we meditate. So you’re using this tool. You’re using this raft. Be very clear about the fact that the raft is something just slapped together out of inconstant things, but if you steer it properly, it’ll … 
  10. Solving Real Problems
     … The Buddha’s teachings are full of examples of skillful ways to shape these fabrications. His sixteen steps for breath meditation, of course, deal with bodily fabrication. You get sensitive to how long the breath is, how short the breath is, all the variations of the breath. Then you learn to breathe in and out aware of the whole body, so that you can … 
  11. An Equanimity You Can Feed On
     … It needs to be backed up by the skills that come from learning how to breathe well, learning how to breathe in a way that really feels nourishing for the body and nourishing for the mind. Sometimes you hear people warning you away from the pleasures of jhana practice, saying that you’re going to get stuck there because the pleasure is so great … 
  12. Intelligent Restraint
     … That way, when things come in that would aggravate you, you remember that you have to treat them in a skillful way, and you have the strength to treat them in a skillful way. Take, for instance, the Buddha’s instructions on dealing with unpleasant words. All too often someone says something and we immediately react: “How could that person say that?” We get … 
  13. Issues of Control
     … But again, this is a skill you learn—observing what the mind needs, observing what the body needs, and learning how to provide for those needs. And you are exerting some control here. Sometimes we’re told that the lesson of the meditation is that you have no control—but that would be depressing. As you sit there watching whatever comes up, sometimes some … 
  14. The Power of Human Effort
     … One was lack of contentment with skillful qualities, and the other was relentless effort. In other words, the Buddha never let himself rest content with how well his mind was—unless it was really, really good. If there was any smidgeon of stress or suffering or anything less than ideal in the state of his mind, he wanted to figure out how to get … 
  15. A True Person
     … If you’ve got a good teacher—I can’t say that I’m 100% skilled in this particular area, but I’m learning—these are important skills to master. We tend to forget that there’s a social dimension to the practice. All the time we think of the practice as sitting here with our eyes closed, or doing walking meditation. But there … 
  16. Meditators at Work
     … This is a skill you’re learning. Learn how to be captivated by the skill. There was a study one time of people who were really good at sports, as opposed to people who are just good. We’re talking about the real geniuses, the physical geniuses in the sport. The question was, what made them different from the ordinary good athletes? And they … 
  17. Focus on Your Intention
     … But as you get into the state of concentration, you can step back and say, “I can change the way I breathe so that I’m not faced with the simple choice either of exploding or bottling up this uncomfortable energy in the body.” There’s a more skillful alternative. Just dissolve the tightness and tension in that way of breathing. So it’s … 
  18. Sitting & Walking
     … They’re both good for each other—and they develop different skills. Sitting meditation is more for deep concentration. Walking meditation is more for discernment. Ajaan Suwat would often mention that he got his best insights while doing walking meditation. But you have to know how to do it well. There are a few rules for walking meditation that are different from sitting meditation … 
  19. Mind Control
     … The main skill in the practice is learning that sense of time and place, what works and what doesn’t work when and where. You learn this through trial and error. This is why it’s a skill. The Buddha didn’t just put you in a pressure cooker and say, “Okay, when the pressure gets enough, and you have a neurotic breakthrough, that … 
  20. Recovering Your Balance
     … So the skill of recovery is one of the most important skills you’re going to have as a meditator: noticing a mistake and then correcting for it right away. It’s when you refuse to notice a mistake that you fall.
  21. From Anxiety to Confidence
     … It gets you to do what’s skillful. You read those stories about people meditating, getting discouraged, thinking they’re going to give up, and the Buddha appears right in front of them. On the one hand, they probably felt very embarrassed. But on the other hand, they thought about how kindly his action was. He went to all that trouble to search them … 
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