Search results for: "Skillfulness"

  1. Page 110
  2. Fighting Spirit
     … How long could I sit here without moving, and without suffering from it?” If you just sit there without trying to develop any discernment, it doesn’t really accomplish much aside from, on the one hand, developing more patience, but also developing some either skillful or unskillful qualities that nourish or hinder that patience. You have to be on the lookout for that. But … 
  3. Sensitive to the Mind
     … You ask yourself, “How is the mind out of balance? Is it willing to settle down? Or is it not willing to settle down? And what kind of antidote would be good? What can you do to gladden the mind? What can you do to concentrate the mind? What can you do to release the mind?” Try to have a range of skills in … 
  4. Right Speech, Inside & Out
     … That’s a skill. And it’s a skill worth mastering. Then there’s the principle against divisive speech: when you see that two people are becoming friendly and you feel threatened by their friendship, so you say things to break them apart. Notice that this is not a hard and fast rule. That’s because there are cases where you see that person … 
  5. The Buddha’s Safe Space
     … Which means that you’re going to try to be skillful in your actions. And to whatever extent you can influence other people to be skillful in theirs, so much the better. But the important thing is that you resolve not to repeat that old mistake, whatever the mistake may have been. And then for the suffering you’re having now and the suffering … 
  6. Kamma & Rebirth
     … This shows that on a pragmatic level they still believed that action was important and that some actions were preferable to others, some were more skillful than others. They really would have an impact on your happiness. There were also people who said that your actions didn’t really lead to happiness or pain. Happiness and pain were self-caused and very arbitrary. And … 
  7. The Reality Principle
     … Our education system is designed to make us producers and consumers, and the skills we develop in that direction are not necessarily good for the mind, not necessarily helpful for dealing with aging, illness, and death when they come. This is what the Buddha’s training is all about. You go to a monastery in Thailand and that’s the first thing you hear … 
  8. Basics
     … We suffer in life because of our own lack of skill in dealing with sights and sounds and smells and tastes and ideas that come our way. And because it’s our own lack of skill, we’re the ones who have to overcome that lack by developing more skillfulness in how we manage our minds. If we don’t do it, nobody can … 
  9. Thinking Your Way to Stillness
     … You analyze unskillful thinking and you try to replace it with skillful thinking. As the Buddha said, once the mind has settled down with the skillful thinking, you can then bring it back to the breath, bring it back to contemplation of the body, whatever your frame of reference, so that you can deepen the concentration. In Ajaan Maha Boowa’s analogy, this is … 
  10. Sensitive to Fabrication
     … In this way, you’re dealing with all three types of fabrication, and you’re using them with skill, instead of the old way, which was just willy-nilly. We fabricate things sometimes simply because we’re bored. There’s that story of the luminous brahmas who, as the universe is beginning to reform, just for a lark, say, “What does this taste like … 
  11. Developing the Path
     … Your ability to give a truthful account of what you’ve done so that you can know what cause and effect are—what really is skillful, what’s not skillful—gets borne out here as well. There’s that other introductory instruction that the Buddha gave to Rahula before he taught him meditation: to make his mind like earth. He’s not telling Rahula … 
  12. Three Perceptions
     … You learn to gain more skill, more control. At this stage in the game, the issues of inconstancy, stress, and not-self apply primarily to the things that would distract you from your concentration. You try to see that no matter how attractive or alluring or interesting other topics might be, they don’t measure up to concentration as a source for happiness. They … 
  13. Outside the Box
     … This means that the path is rooted in desire, just as our defilements are rooted in desire, the difference being that some desires are skillful and some are not. The skillful ones have some wisdom in them. There’s no such thing as just brute desire, without any ideas behind it. There’s always a view that directs your desire, a view of what … 
  14. Admirable Friendship, Inside & Out
     … You have to regard your life as a skill because, as with any skill, if you do it poorly, the results come out poorly, and the results can have a long-term effect. So the Buddha’s trying to get you to be sensitive to what you’re doing and to the results you’re getting, and to keep on trying to get better … 
  15. Right View: Feeding Instructions
     … He wanted to teach us how we can develop the skills not to suffer. That’s an extreme act of compassion. Someone once called the Buddhist path “the path of the intelligent heart” – intelligent in the sense that it’s really wise. And there’s heart there as well. It’s not just about figuring things out, but figuring out the problem that weighs … 
  16. To See What You’re Doing
     … No need for regret.” At the same time, as you’re trying to observe the precepts, you’re learning some of the skills you’re going to need to meditate well. We’re practicing right concentration, which begins with right mindfulness. As the chant said just now, keep focused on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, mindful—putting aside greed and distress … 
  17. Culture Shock
     … The question is, “Do you really want to go where they’re taking you?” If you make the effort to get skillful at fashioning conditioned things, they can lead you to a happiness that’s worthwhile, that can be taken as a goal in and of itself. So we’re living in the same world of conditioned things as everyone else, but we’re … 
  18. A Post by the Ocean
     … I’ve got all these other responsibilities out there in the world, things I’ve got to prevent, things I’ve got to encourage.” But when you think in those ways, you’re neglecting one of your major responsibilities, which is that if you’re going to do anything effective, anything skillful, the mind has to have a good solid basis inside. It’s … 
  19. Generating Power
     … You’re going to depend totally on the skillfulness of your own intentions to whatever extent you can develop that skillfulness. That’s the principle to which you have to devote yourself. As for other principles or lack of principles, let them go. Sometimes this feels a little scary. You’re so used to hedging your bets so that at least you’re popular … 
  20. The Origination of Suffering
     … That, too, is a state of becoming, but it’s a more skillful one. It puts you in a good place, where you’re not compelled to feel that you go off after those other becomings. So sometimes as you’re meditating you may feel it frustrating that, as you’re trying to stay with the breath, this comes up, that comes up, this … 
  21. Possessiveness
     … You develop skillful qualities in the mind. The list of skillful qualities is there in the noble eightfold path. And even before the noble eightfold path, there’s the teaching of the graduated discourse, where the Buddha teaches developing qualities of generosity, virtue, reflecting on the rewards of virtue and generosity, realizing that the sensual rewards that come from those activities are going to … 
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