Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Undefeatism… We develop skillful qualities in the mind. Yet sometimes the teachings on inconstancy seem to undermine the developing side. You think about developing something in the mind, and something inside you says, “Well, it’s going to be inconstant anyhow. No matter what you do, the results will be inconstant, so why bother?” That’s a wrong use of the teaching. It’s like …
- Strategies for Generosity… Learn to maximize your energy inside and get so you can tap into this energy, this sense of well-being, at any time, to help in your efforts to be skillful. That’s why we work on the meditation as a skill. Then from that perspective look at the areas where you can be generous. You find that even with this increased level of …
- Clear of Defilement… In other words, you try to foster skillful desires in the mind. Because the mind isn’t totally defiled. As the Buddha once said, if the mind were totally defiled, there’d be no way you could develop it. But realizing that it does have its brightness, it does have its moments of clarity, you learn how to take advantage of those moments, so …
- A Pure Happiness… This process is called “appropriate attention,” The word in Pali is yoniso manasikara, which means looking at things in an appropriate way, a helpful way, a way that enables you to strengthen the skillful qualities in the mind and work through the unskillful ones. And a lot of it is just this question of breaking things down. In the Buddha’s discussion of the …
- Meaning & Purpose… We look for happiness in all kinds of ways—some relatively skillful, some not—and he points us to more and more skillful ways of looking for happiness. So, instead of sitting here just following your mind wherever it goes, give it something purposeful to do: Stay with the breath. Know when it’s coming in, know when it’s going out. Notice where …
- Maintenance Work… But if you develop the skill so that you’re really solidly with it, you test that principle of inconstancy. How constant can you make this state of the mind? Ultimately, you get to the point where you realize that you’ve made it as constant as you could ever make it, as reliable as you could ever make it, and yet it still …
- Limitless Thoughts… That’s a basic, basic skill. Alertness means noticing what you’re going, and what’s happening around you. We already have these qualities to a certain extent, but we’ve never fully developed them to see how far they can take us. So as we’re meditating, that’s what we’re doing: developing these two most helpful qualities in our mind. Keep …
- The Four Frames of Reference… In other words, you take the causes for seclusion, the skills that help create that sense of inner seclusion. That’s what you can take back with you. You can’t take the atmosphere or the outer seclusion of the monastery, but you can take these skills that create inner seclusion, which is the most important type of seclusion there is.
- Staying on Track… Sometimes you simply note that something unskillful has come up and you turn the mind to something that’s more skillful. He says, that’s like a carpenter driving a large peg out with a small peg. Or you can reflect on the unskillful consequences of that particular kind of thinking until you develop a sense of shame around it, a sense of disgust …
- Two Types of Dukkha… Ask yourself, “Don’t you have some better skills?” When people are really skilled, they can take any kind of material and make a decent house out of it. When I was staying with Ajaan Fuang, one time he asked me to build a shed, and he told me not to use anything new. I had to take scraps from around the monastery, which …
- Learning from Labor… This is a skill you have to learn by observing on your own: What perceptions of the breath, what perceptions of the body, what perceptions of where you are in the body right now in relationship to the breath, are most conducive to getting the mind to settle down? We talk about watching the breath, and sometimes that’s an unfortunate image. It’s …
- Get Attached to Jhana… So this is a skillful pleasure to get attached to. And don’t be afraid of getting attached. Don’t be afraid of this pleasure. Think of the Buddha after he had spent all those years in self-torture, trying to run away from pleasure, and then realizing that he was going to die without having achieved the state of deathless happiness he wanted …
- Things that Arise & Pass Away… The Buddha teaches all three of them as part of the skillful pursuit of happiness. Wisdom, for instance, begins with a cluster of questions, “What is skillful? What’s blameless? What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” You’re looking for happiness in a blameless way. You want long-term. You realize your actions are going to …
- Let Go Like a Millionaire… So you’ve got to learn how to pass judgment on things in a skillful way. See the allure they have: Why do you like holding onto them? Then look at the drawbacks of holding on. If you see that the good things that come from holding on are actually worth it, okay, you hold on for the time being—but with the realization …
- Mistakes… But it was by looking at his own actions, learning from his own actions, that he was able to develop more and more skillful actions—to the point where he could even understand what it means to act and what it means to find something in the mind that doesn’t act, something that’s not fabricated. It’s only when he really understood …
- The Need for Right View… It starts by developing the right attitude to your actions and your interactions with other people, so that when you tell yourself the story of your life, the underlying framework is this framework of skillful and unskillful kamma, issues of generosity, issues of gratitude. When you can rework your narrative that way, it puts you in a much better position to sit down and …
- Bless Yourself… So what the Buddha wanted to teach was the skill where people could find genuine happiness. That skill starts with his realization that you are free to choose this path. In a world where there’s no purpose, no meaning, you can give yourself a purpose; you can give yourself a meaning. Otherwise—I think it was Kafka who said it—“the purpose of …
- A Passion for the Path… Instead of having a whole set of cutlery and a whole box of tools, you learn that you’ve got one tool that you’re really skillful at and you can use in all sorts of different ways. That means you don’t have to lug the other tools around any more. You can put them aside. But in the beginning, you need the …
- New Eyes… This skill we’re working on has both its private and its public side. Learn to think with gratitude of all the people who’ve helped create the situation where we’re sitting here right now. You’re doing this not only for yourself, but also for them. I’m reading a book on craftsmanship. And the author starts out with a very interesting …
- Opportunities Everywhere… If you let yourself be complacent, all the opportunities to improve the mind, to develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones get lost. And you can’t call them back. At the moment of death, this is probably one of the biggest regrets for a lot of people: all the good that they could have done but they didn’t do. So you want …
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