Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Your Inner Ally
     … And the more skill you bring to this freedom, the more the freedom begins to widen out. So always keep that in mind, that whatever else is coming up in the mind, you can choose where you want to focus your attention. It’s like reading a newspaper. If you tried to follow all the stories in the news, you wouldn’t have time … 
  3. Unchanged by Loss
     … Right view reminds us that our actions are important, and virtue gives us some guidance as to what’s skillful and what’s not. The precepts are there as shortcut guides, quick notes in the mind—no killing, no stealing, no illicit sex, no lying, no intoxicants, ever—because they’re most needed when the mind is overcome with emotion, and when the mind … 
  4. What’s Getting in the Way
     … The only way to find out about what’s possible in jhana or in awakening is to master those skills yourself. We look at the teachings in the Canon and they seem huge: 45 volumes. Many people suspect that not all of them come from the Buddha, but then, there’s an awful lot that seems genuine. Yet even that is just the handful … 
  5. Specifics
     … Take them on one by one, and after a while you start getting skillful. You’re not dealing with generalities. You’re dealing with things as they’re actually happening, which is where you can make all the difference.
  6. All Your Old Baggage
     … After all, the whole notion of skillful causes and good results, unskillful causes and bad results lies at the essence of the four noble truths. So the Buddha never said not to pass judgment on things or not to be judicious in what you’re doing. There’s a difference between passing judgment and being judgmental. Being judgmental coming to a situation with a … 
  7. “My Way”
     … As for other thoughts, the ones that were skillful, the Buddha said it was like being a cowherd during the dry season. The rice had been gathered, there was no danger in the rice fields, so the cows could wander pretty much where they wanted. All you had to do was be aware of the fact there were cows out there. You were going … 
  8. The Four-in-One Establishing of Mindfulness
     … As the Buddha said, when mindfulness is a governing principle, then if there’s something skillful that you haven’t developed yet, you keep reminding yourself that it has to be developed, and you work on developing it, first by giving rise to it. Once it’s there, you keep on maintaining it until it gets fully developed. In other words, you make good … 
  9. Self-Starting
     … In other words, you delight in developing skillful qualities in the mind, and you delight in abandoning unskillful qualities. That delight is what keeps you going. We’re not here to please anybody. As Ajaan Fuang would often say, “Nobody hired us to be born, nobody hired us to get ordained, nobody hired us to come here to the monastery.” We’ve done this … 
  10. Still
     … Once you’ve got this stage, then the skill of using it for the sake of discernment will become a lot clearer. So. Patience. Steadiness. Consistency. Learn to regard those as real virtues.
  11. Catch It in the Act
     … That way, you can keep cutting away, cutting away, cutting away the mind’s unskillful habits, until ultimately there are no more skillful habits to cut away. You’ve got them all. None of the dogs in town will never come back to make a mess in your yard ever again.
  12. Keep Your Spirits Up
     … It’s probably one of the most essential skills that the inner teacher is going to have to develop. This is why so many of the Thai ajaans, when they give Dhamma talks, are basically giving pep talks. They want you to be constantly up for whatever is happening in the mind—good, bad, indifferent—and not to get blown away. **Take every meditation … 
  13. Helping Yourself by Helping Others
     … It’s a skill you want to master, because we can harm ourselves so much by the way we give into our anger and express it. Now, goodwill and kindness are not the same thing. Goodwill is wishing for happiness for everybody. Kindness is when you go out of your way to be gentle. You sympathize. That’s why that word anukampa can be … 
  14. A Heart Bigger Than the World
     … You can live with yourself, and your actions are much more likely to be skillful. This doesn’t mean that people aren’t going to be difficult. Often, the people who are most difficult in our lives are the ones that are closest to us. Goodwill is not a Pollyanna kind of wish, thinking that “Everybody’s going to be good, therefore I’ll … 
  15. Everyday Feeding Habits
     … That’s what’s going to give your discernment the opportunity to look into your feeding habits and do something skillful about them.
  16. When You Hit a Plateau
     … I’ve never been a hunter, but hunting is a skill. It requires that you be alert and still at the same time. If you move around, you chase away the game. If you stay still but fall asleep, the rabbits can be right under your nose and you’re not going to know. So ask yourself, “Are you still enough? Are you alert … 
  17. Breath Energies
     … This, too, is an important skill to develop, to protect yourself in this way. And you find that you’re also protecting others, because if you find that their energy is coming in, you tend to lash back out at them. But this way, people can stay in their respective places, as in the old saying that good fences make good neighbors. This is … 
  18. From Grief to Compassion
     … What we’re trying to do here is develop the skill so that each of us can remove the arrow in his or her heart. Then as long as we’re in the world, we don’t have to suffer. When we leave the world, there’s no suffering, either. This is how we abandon grief and show true compassion for ourselves and for … 
  19. Respect for Concentration
     … So we bring them all together in a way that’s really skillful. And try to have respect for that. It’s all too easy to overlook the well-being that can come from concentration. So you show some respect for this. Care for it. Look after it. This is where the principle of heedfulness comes in. You’ve got to realize that your … 
  20. The Problem Is Birth
     … As you get more and more skilled at stopping those processes, you have a chance of stopping the bigger problems of aging, illness, and death at the right place: at the cause. As you destroy your passion for the aggregates, you’re like those little kids who destroy their houses—the little houses they were so protective of, so defensive of before—when they … 
  21. A Boxing Lesson
     … Look for it in mastering the skills of the path. So even though the world may hit you and stab you and piss on you and spit on you and saw you up into little pieces, you don’t let it get to your mind. You don’t let it get in the way of doing your duty, which is to act on goodwill … 
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