Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Weathering Karma Storms
     … Remind yourself, “These are the thoughts that are the result of past bad karma, and this is what bad karma looks like as it gives its results.” Do you want more of that? No. Then do what you can to be skillful right now in the present in how you approach these things. As you remind yourself that this is past karma, you’re … 
  3. The Escape of Discipline
     … Heedfulness is the source of what’s skillful. Carelessness and complacency: That’s not the path at all. Heedfulness sounds strenuous but it’s got a lot of friends. Virtue comes as one of its friends, concentration, discernment, release—all of which give great happiness as you follow the path and even more so as you reach the goal.
  4. Focal Points
     … As we were saying last night, the goodness of the energy depends an awful lot on the stillness of your awareness, the steadiness of your awareness, the inquisitive interest that you have in trying to be as skillful as possible, as sensitive as possible to what’s going on. Try to develop that attitude in mind and then bring it in around your most … 
  5. Tuning Your Lute
     … It teaches a lot of good lessons about the process of mastering any skill. One of them is that on the days when you don’t have much time to practice, you put a lot of emphasis on at least getting your form right. It’s the same when you’re sitting and meditating and you only have a short period of time. You … 
  6. The Arrows of Emotion
     … We have to remember as we’re meditating that we’re here to learn about the mind in hopes that someday our knowledge will enable us to develop more and more skillful habits. But sometimes you have to watch yourself doing something really stupid over and over again before you can catch sight of why you’re doing it. That’s where patience comes … 
  7. De-domesticated
     … You’ve developed habits and skills to negotiate the world as you know it. And there’s a general preference for the world to stay pretty much the same so that you know how to negotiate it, learn how to deal with it, get what you want out of it. As you meditate, there’s a new you. And here in the monastery, we … 
  8. Take an Interest
     … This is a very useful skill to have when your mind is telling you all kinds of things that could make you suffer. You realize the process leading to those thoughts that would induce suffering is not all that reliable, so why would you allow yourself to suffer from things you can’t trust? Why do you believe them? Watching the processes allows you … 
  9. What Are You Doing?
     … And try to replace those perceptions with other perceptions, more skillful ones: the perception of the pain as just points, or that it’s a different level of energy from the body. It seems to be in the same place, but just as radio waves from different stations can be in the same place, carrying different messages on a different frequency, the pain is … 
  10. The Core of Experience
     … Those are the skills you need to develop to get to release. After all, you can’t use release to get to release. You have to use what you’ve got. And the things you’ve got—form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness, what the Buddha calls the five aggregates—are things that if you simply cling to them, are going to cause problems … 
  11. Mindfulness of Breathing: Four in One
     … that it doesn’t feel threatened by the things it doesn’t like, and it’s not so attached to things that it does like—but that are not quite as skillful as you may have thought. It’s easier to accept the things that are unpleasant about your own mind if you have a sense of well-being right here. It’s like … 
  12. Breath Meditation When It’s Hard to Breathe
     … This is a skill we should keep in mind. As Ajaan Lee says, we have lots of potentials in the body, lots of potentials in the mind that we hardly use. They’re very elemental, which is one of the reasons why we overlook them. We have space as well. You can hold a perception of space in mind when the body gets tight … 
  13. The Desire to Be Free from Desire
     … And this faculty of right effort, which includes skillful desire, underlies right mindfulness—like we’re practicing right now, trying to get the mind into concentration by being very mindful of the breath in and of itself. You have to want to focus on the breath and to put aside any thoughts that would pull you away. The Buddha recommends three qualities to help … 
  14. Strength of Concentration
     … But you also learn the skill of learning how to put them down. Let them go—so that even though there are burdens you sometimes have to carry in the world, you don’t have to be bent over all the time.
  15. Goodwill Is Respect
     … The Buddha says that it’s through their skillful actions that they’ll find happiness. That’s one of the reasons why he says that if you really care about your happiness, you not only refrain from harming other people, but you also don’t get them to do harm. And you try to discourage them from doing harm. But how well do you … 
  16. You Are Not Redundant
     … But even if you don’t go that far, the fact that you do decide to be as skillful as you can in how you run your mind: That’s taking a huge step right there. So it’s important that we not let ourselves be defeated by the world, especially when we see that the leaders of the world don’t seem to … 
  17. Food for Endurance
     … Then we can ask ourselves: “Which of these ways is the most conducive to keeping the mind happy, keeping the mind acting in skillful ways?” Choose that perception; choose those feelings. Then you can feed on those. That’s the food of intention. It’s in this way that we can create happiness from within, because we live in a world where we have … 
  18. Concentration Teamwork
     … The Buddha said that one of the secrets to his awakening was to not be content with the skillfulness that he’d already attained. So when the pleasure comes, don’t content yourself with the first hit of pleasure. See it instead as a sign that things are settling down properly and that you’ve finally found a good place to work, just like … 
  19. Equanimity After Victory
     … The Buddha’s most frequent images in the Canon are of people who are engaging in battle, people who are searching, people who are trying to master skills, all of which require effort. So it’s good to remember that we’re here battling with our defilements. We have to adjust our attitude as to what it means to be a warrior. Nowadays, most … 
  20. The Missing Truth
     … As for skillful qualities, those start with the factors for awakening: mindfulness, your analysis of what’s going on in the present moment, your persistence, a sense of rapture, calm, concentration, equanimity. Those are things you try to give rise to when they’re not there. When they are there, you try to maintain them. This is how all four of the establishings of … 
  21. How the Breath Helps You to Die Well
     … There are all sorts of useful side skills that you can develop as you focus on the breath. And all of this is meant to teach you a lot, not only about the body but even more about the mind and how it relates to the body. As the mind gets really, really still, things begin to separate out. As you begin to meditate … 
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