Search results for: "Skillfulness"

  1. Page 119
  2. The Veils of Delusion
     … It’s the basis of our skill here. And it’s not that it gives its result only way off in the future. As the mind gets trained to stay here in the present moment, there’s a sense of solidity, there’s a sense of inner balance that leads to a very immediate sense of well-being right now. Even though it may … 
  3. Your Ancestral Territory
     … That way, as you stay with the breath, you’re not simply hiding out trying to suppress the difficult issue, but you’re actually getting some perspective, so that you can deal with the issue in a skillful way. Of course, as you go through the day, you do want to stay near the breath. It’s one of the establishings of mindfulness, the … 
  4. Normalcy
     … Then we learn the techniques and skills for holding to that determination. In this way, we keep the mind at normalcy. This, of course, requires more than just virtue and concentration. It also requires discernment: understanding, when there’s a provocation, how it comes, what its origination is—in other words, what in the mind causes it—how it passes away, what its allure … 
  5. Watch What You’re Doing
     … One of the skills of meditation is learning how to get back to the breath right away, how to extricate yourself as quickly as possible, no matter how fascinating or entangling that particular distraction was. You have to be able to just stop and get out. I have a friend who was telling me that there’s a question you can ask different people … 
  6. A Wealthy Memory
     … When your body doesn’t feel invaded by the effects of fear or anger or other unskillful emotions, when you can work through some of those effects by the way you breathe, that’s an important skill to bring with you. It’s an important kind of wealth. But this wealth is not just a matter of techniques, it’s also a matter of … 
  7. Delight in Stillness
     … This is a reference to one of the Buddha’s categorical teachings, which is to delight in developing skillful qualities and to delight in abandoning unskillful ones. It’s important that we learn how to take delight in these things, because if we don’t delight in the path, our delight is going to go someplace else. So you have to see that it … 
  8. Patience
     … Don’t focus on the hardships, focus on the opportunity you’ve got to develop skillful qualities here, because that opportunity is not that widely available. So patience is not so much gritting your teeth and just bearing with difficult situations. It’s learning how not to pile difficulty on top of what’s there—either thinking about how long you’ve had to … 
  9. Mindful & Discerning 24/7
     … We read books like Awareness Itself and The Skill of Release, where Ajaan Fuang and Ajaan Lee give some very quick retorts—some pretty good zingers— when their students say something stupid. And it’s the same with the old Zen koans: The student says something he thinks is perfectly fine, and then his teacher points out immediately that there’s something wrongheaded in … 
  10. Values
     … In the process of developing the path, we’re going to be developing skillful qualities, learning how to abandon the things that get in the way of knowledge and to encourage qualities like mindfulness and alertness that strengthen your knowledge, strengthen your awareness, strengthen your insight and discernment. These things, like the defilements, are not part of the nature of the mind. Ajaan Lee … 
  11. Family Ties
     … It has to depend on the skills you develop within your own mind. He does recognize that we have a debt to our parents. And the frequency with which he says that indicates that parents in those days weren’t all wonderful people. Some parents are really toxic. As he said, some parents have no virtue, no generosity, no conviction, and no discernment. And … 
  12. Whole-Hearted Concentration
     … Our awareness in our head tends to be pretty awake, but unless we’re actively engaged in some physical skill, our awareness in the rest of the body seems to be pretty much asleep. You don’t have the whole heart, you don’t have the whole mind fully awake, fully alert. So wake up your alertness in your feet, wake up your alertness … 
  13. Harmony Inside & Outside
     … You’re willing to give up any views that stand in the way of doing something skillful. And you try to create a spaciousness in your heart. When people are really, really anxious, really greedy for success in the meditation, that often gets in the way. This is not to say that you should be complacent or lazy. You do the practice, but instead … 
  14. Conviction & Truth
     … To what extent are you going to actualize them and make them really skillful? It comes down to your truthfulness. Do you really want to put an end to suffering? Do you really want to test your potentials? Or would you rather just coast through life and leave this question unanswered? To learn the truth, we have to be true. To learn the truth … 
  15. Potentials for Refuge
     … That’s how the skills of breath meditation become your own. In Thai they have a pun around the word patipat. To patipat something means to practice it, but to patipat a person means that you look after the person, to serve his or her needs. And as they often say, when you patipat the Dhamma, you also patipat yourself: When you practice the … 
  16. The First Noble Truth
     … We can re-identify, develop new skills, take on new identities. Once those new identities deliver us to the place of true happiness, the mind doesn’t need any identities because it doesn’t need to do anything for the sake of happiness anymore. That’s when it’s free.
  17. A Healthy Body Image
    Heedfulness, the Buddha said, is the basis of all skillful qualities: realizing that there’s work to be done and you don’t have much time to do it. When the Buddha asked the monks how often they practice mindfulness of death, some were saying, “I think about death once a day.” He said, “Heedless.” “Twice a day.” “Heedless.” They worked down till finally … 
  18. Where You Set Your Heart
     … That’s when** you have to fall back on yourself, the skills you’ve developed, the extent to which you have made your mind its own refuge, its own mainstay.** So as you’re focusing here, it’s simply a matter of having your priorities straight. Set your mind on what you’re doing. Set your heart on finding true safety. The potential lies … 
  19. Take Care
     … So, we’re learning a very important skill here as we’re meditating: being very careful to stay with the breath, not letting the slightest thing pull us off, not letting the slightest thing interfere. This is precision work, because our wellbeing is precision work as well. After I’d been ordained a couple of years, Ajaan Fuang had me translate some Ajaan Lee … 
  20. Ready for the Truth
     … But you learn to do it in a skillful way, in a way that’s not taking anything away from anyone else. In that sense, you’re being very responsible. It’s not as if you’re abandoning the world. You’re becoming a responsible member of the world. Even if you decide that you want to leave the world and find a happiness … 
  21. Ajaan Suwat 100 Years
     … As for the skillful things, ask yourself: Is this the right time and place for them? Because there are some things that will come up in the mind that aren’t necessarily bad, but they’re not really related to what you’re doing. Try to pare things down to what’s really relevant to getting the mind to stay still right here, right … 
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