Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. The Path Converges Right Here
     … You start out with the desire to abandon unskillful thoughts that have arisen, to prevent any unskillful ones that haven’t arisen yet from arising, to give rise to skillful mental states, and to maintain skillful states and to develop them. Notice the desire there. It’s a good thing. This is the kind of desire you want to foster, because otherwise your desires … 
  3. Practicing from Gratitude
     … Your sense of well-being here makes it a lot easier for you to act in skillful ways. You’re not so hungry for things that are going to cause trouble. The Buddha often talks about the sense of nourishment and fullness that comes from sticking with the breath like this as food for the mind, food for your effort, for that desire that … 
  4. Doing the Practice
     … We have to train the mind so that it’s skilled in giving the orders, so that it can see what’s the skillful action in any particular set of circumstances and follow through with that. That requires mindfulness, it requires alertness, discernment, persistence, all of which are qualities we can train in, we can develop in the mind. Staying focused on the breath … 
  5. Levels of Truth
     … This level of right view is good for when you want to learn about what’s skillful and what’s unskillful in your day-to-day actions—and even what’s skillful and unskillful in learning to get the mind to settle down. After all, meditation is a kind of kamma, a kind of action, so you want to do it skillfully. It’s … 
  6. Looking Inward
     … As for their good qualities, look at those again—as a mirror for yourself. “Do I have those good qualities in myself yet?” If not, “What can these people teach me? What can I learn from them, so that I can master their skills as well?” But again, when you look outside, it’s meant to be as a mirror to reflect back in … 
  7. Tranquility, Insight, & Concentration
     … In trying to do it well, you’re trying to master this as a skill. As for any thoughts of the world outside—what the Buddha puts under the categories of greed and distress—just put those aside. Then as you stay here, the mind settles down with a sense of well-being. When the Buddha would tell people to go meditate, he’d … 
  8. The Right to Repair Your Mind
     … One of the skills of meditation is learning how to apply that pattern to the particulars of your experience. This requires that you be observant, because to see the clinging in your suffering requires that you be very perceptive—and also to see where there’s craving that you may not have noticed before. And as for the potentials for all the good things … 
  9. Take Good Aim
    Take Good Aim January 9, 2016 The Buddha compares the discernment that comes from meditation to the skills of being a good archer. You’re able to shoot long distances, fire accurate shots in rapid succession, and pierce great masses. In other words, you see the long-term results of what you’re doing, or of different possible courses of action, so that you … 
  10. Training Your Intentions
     … Which means they’re not yet skillful. Try to figure out where they went wrong. Here we get back to that old theme of commitment and reflection. You do your best, and then when your best is not good enough, you reflect on why. When it is good enough, you remember it. If you figure out why it’s not working even when it … 
  11. Listening to the True Dhamma
     … As long as it isn’t fully skillful, you want to continue developing it. Persistence—whatever Dhamma urges you on, gives you energy to practice—is true Dhamma. But if it encourages you to be lazy, just to sit back and say, “I have to accept everything. I’ll let everything to take care of itself”—that’s not true Dhamma, it’s something … 
  12. What Should & Shouldn’t Be Done
     … He teaches one thing very clearly, and that’s that skillful actions should be developed and unskillful things should be abandoned.” The student went back and reported the conversation to the Buddha, and the Buddha confirmed that what he said was right. There is this basic dichotomy that runs all the way through the teachings. You see this clearly, of course in the four … 
  13. A Pleasure Not to Be Feared
     … So you bring that desire out into the open and learn how to satisfy it in a skillful way. This is an important part of the path. Once the mind is nourished in this way, then when you do start letting go of other desires, other attachments, you’re doing it from a sense of well-being. It’s not neurotic. It’s not … 
  14. An Island of Concentration
     … And that combination of stillness and alertness requires real skill. Usually we err on one side or the other: We get very still and then drift off, or we’re too alert, thinking about this, thinking about that. Real alertness is watching what you’re doing as you’re trying to get the mind to be still. That’s the kind of alertness you … 
  15. The Teacher Inside
     … A large part of the right attitude is realizing that the skill of learning how to be skillful in things you’re not immediately talented in depends on your attitude, learning how to relate to long-term projects, giving yourself pep talks along the way, recognizing when you’re pushing too hard, recognizing when you’re not pushing enough. How are you going to … 
  16. Learning Through Healing
     … Then, as you develop skill in this process, you develop skill not only in getting the mind to settle down, but also in understanding how the mind deals with things, how it shapes its experience. Because this is the big issue: We shape our experience out of ignorance. We have things coming in through the senses that are essentially the result of past kamma … 
  17. When You’ve Played Enough With the Breath
     … You start out mindful and alert and then you go straight for the analysis of qualities—analyzing what’s skillful and unskillful in your mind—and then make an effort to give rise to what’s skillful in a way that gives rise to rapture. That would involve directed thought and evaluation. From there you calm things down through calm, concentration, and equanimity. Once … 
  18. Thinking Your Way to Stillness
     … figuring out what’s a cause, what’s an effect; which causes are skillful, leading to good results and which causes are unskillful, leading to bad results. That set of questions should always be in the back of your mind. They’re the ones that will eventually lead you to see things in terms of the four noble truths: looking at what’s going … 
  19. Make the Most of This Breath
     … If you’re not really honest with yourself, not really scrupulous and rigorous in how you look at things and describe things to yourself, it’s very easy to miss the behind-the-scenes motivations that are not so skillful—the ones that are hiding for good reason. They know that if they displayed themselves openly, you wouldn’t want to be seen following … 
  20. Verified Confidence
     … One is that if you accept this teaching, you’re much more likely to behave in skillful ways. You can reflect on your behavior, and there’ll be a sense of well-being that goes with that reflection because you can see that you haven’t harmed anybody. A second pragmatic proof is that it doesn’t make any sense to cut yourself off … 
  21. A Mind Like Earth
     … In other words, you see more clearly what’s going on, what’s skillful and what’s not, and you begin to see the areas in which you’re adding a lot of unnecessary complication to the situation. Because that’s mainly what we’re looking for: “To what extent is this stress that I’m feeling in my mind right now the result … 
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