Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Think Like a Thief… After all, one of the basic skills you need as a meditator is to be observant. You’re not going to gain discernment simply by following directions. There are meditation techniques that give you directions, that say, “Do this, do that,” and somehow automatically you’re going to gain insight just by following the directions. It’s like expecting to get genuine food out …
- Questioning Impermanence… Our problem is that we’re not yet really skillful with these things. We haven’t explored their full possibilities. So sometimes the meditation gets boring. It’s because we haven’t learned how to ask the right questions. We haven’t learned how to watch. All we can think of is all the other things we’d like for the sake of our …
- Measuring Progress… At the same time, as you develop your powers of mindfulness and alertness, you get more sensitive to what’s going on in the mind, so that in your measurement of what’s skillful or what’s quiet in the mind, what counts as good concentration, what counts as a good insight, your standards are going to change. Like that old issue in relativity …
- Trustworthy Judgment… This requires all of the skills involved in concentration: mindfulness, alertness, discernment, tranquility. If an idea comes in your mind, you don’t get swept away. You watch it for a while. You think about it. If you were to make that decision, where would it lead you? Go through the steps. If something strange comes into the mind, learn how to recognize it …
- Turtle Meditation… That’s the kind of quality you want to develop in your concentration so that it becomes a basis for skillful action in every aspect of life, both inside and out. As you meditate, you’re exercising the four brahmaviharas. Goodwill, in terms of the concentration practice or focusing on the breath, means that you want the breath to be as comfortable as possible …
- Me, Me, Me… That’s precisely the skill set you’re going to need in order to deal with your sense of self. Don’t feel that you’re inside your self. See this “your self” as a series of activities and that you can watch them from the outside, to see how this particular idea of self goes with a particular sense of the world in …
- Harmlessness… As you get better and better at that skill, it doesn’t take all that much to bring it into the rest of your life. And if you do it well, you find that, yes, it is a grounding. It does provide you with a good foundation. That way, your breath is the container for the rest of your life, as it should be …
- Insight from Developing Concentration… As you maintain this perception of the breath, it’ll lead to a state of becoming—a skillful one: concentration. You’re inhabiting the body. There’s a sense of you in here in the world of the body. But you’re doing this in such a way that the processes leading up to becoming are transparent. Most of the time they’re not …
- Analyzing Suffering… It becomes more and more positive, because you’ve seen the results that come from letting go in a wise and skillful way. When you reach that state, then there’s no more burning. You abandon all the fuel. This is why the image for the goal is nibbana, “the going out of the flame.” This doesn’t mean that you go out of …
- A Pervasive Well-being… Once the mind final gets there and has a taste of the well-being that comes from being centered, the effort’s more than repaid, and you realize that you’ve developed a really important skill.
- Awaken to Your Potentials… You’re trying to master the skill that he taught, to explore the potentials you’ve got right here and see if you can arrive at the same place he did. And you’ll know when you do, because it’s really special. One of the reasons why stream-enters have no doubts about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha is because they …
- Wealth & Strength… He said it’s because people can develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful qualities that he saw that it would be useful to teach. If he hadn’t seen that people could change their ways, there would have been no reason to bother. But we can change. And anywhere where we see where we’re unskillful, we should quickly change our ways and not …
- Looking for Trouble… So the skills we learn here as we sit here with our eyes closed, focusing on the breath, are not meant just for the monastery or just for the meditation hall or just for the time of formal meditation. They’re meant to be used all the time. You can be in touch with the breath, you can learn how to feel a sense …
- Relating to Kamma… The happiness that comes, however, from knowing that you’ve developed a skill and you’ve benefitted from yourself in a way that doesn’t harm anybody, and sometimes in ways that benefit other people: A really solid sense of self-worth and happiness go with that. One thing to realize about happiness in light of the teaching on kamma is that we have …
- Discerning the Middle Way… This is one of the reasons why Ajaan Lee uses the mastery of a skill as his main image for the practice. It’s through doing things and then reading the results of what you’ve done and then making adjustments, that the path progresses. This is why his explanation of jhana places so much emphasis on the evaluation of the breath. Because that …
- In Gratitude- Ajaan Suwat… So we follow the customs of the noble ones.” Those are the custom of being content with our food, clothing, and lodging; the custom of delighting in abandoning unskillful qualities; the custom of delighting in developing skillful qualities. If you stick with these, then you’ve got the Dhamma that’s appropriate for everybody, no matter where they’re from. So we’ve tried …
- Intense Stillness… Then when things get still, you’ve got a different set of skills to master: the maintaining. You have to keep coming back, expanding the range of your awareness. Make sure it doesn’t shrink at all. At the same time, you want to detect any slight disturbances before they turn into thought worlds that carry you away. So there’s work to do …
- Suffering Comes from Those You Love… The things that cause us to want to come back are here, but the skills we can develop so that we don’t have to come back can be developed here as well. Right here is where the work has to be done.
- Dispassion Is Freedom… developing skillful qualities, abandoning the unskillful ones. You want to take your pleasure there. Make it your sport, shooting down your defilements when you see them. And try to do a thorough job, as thorough a job as you can. It’s only when the path is fully developed that you might think about what would be better than having to fashion the path …
- Metta… May we all be happy.” What kind of happiness are we talking about here? Any kind of happiness that comes from skillful actions. The attitude of goodwill is called metta-cittena. The word citta in cittena can mean either heart or mind—it actually means both. The Buddha’s teachings don’t make a clear division between your thoughts and your emotions. You’re …
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