Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Ajaan Suwat’s Gift… We suffer from them because of our own lack of skill, our own lack of understanding. So the cause is inside, but the solution can also be found inside, in the qualities you develop: virtue, concentration, and discernment, based on a foundation of generosity and goodwill. Right here is where the real work has to be done. And when the work is done here …
- Ups & Downs… You stay confident in the fact that at least right now you’re trying to do something skillful. You’re not harming anyone; you’re trying not to harm yourself. You focus more of your attention not on the ups and the downs but simply on doing what you’re supposed to do. Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about a period in this practice where …
- Building Character… We had that phrase in the chant just now about right effort—learning how to generate desire to abandon unskillful qualities and to develop the skillful ones. In other words, you have to talk yourself into liking what you’re doing and to see the practice as an opportunity to develop good qualities all around. There are good qualities to be developed by meditating …
- All-around Alertness… Partly because the mind likes being with comfortable sensations, and partly because you realize you’re developing a skill. That’s part of the sense of well-being, part of the pleasure that comes with the meditation. As you’re learning how to figure out your own mind, you’re seeing connections that you didn’t see before. When the Buddha talks about giving …
- Fire… Then work on the necessary skills – like right now, as you’re working on the breath. There are different ways you can work with the breath. You can consciously tell yourself, “Okay, now I’m going to lengthen the breath,” – or “shorten the breath” and see how the body reacts. See how the mind reacts. And how about the quality of how heavy or …
- At Home in Jhana… In the meantime, the happiness of jhana depends on being mindful, being alert, being persistent in your efforts to be as skillful as possible in maintaining the state. Ultimately, as you get really good at maintaining this state, you get to the point where you understand it thoroughly, so thoroughly that you can go beyond it. That’s the true peace, the true happiness …
- Medicine – Timely & Timeless… Even though part of Jivaka’s knowledge covered the medicinal uses of every plant he encountered, that wasn’t the entirety of his skill. A lot of his expertise lay in his strategies: how to deal with difficult patients, how to treat difficult diseases. So when the Buddha was saying he was a doctor, he was saying that he was very strategic. When he …
- Mindful & Grateful for Lessons in Freedom… What makes it skillful mindfulness or right mindfulness is when you remember the right things: things that are useful. Like as we’re meditating right now: We’re remembering that it’s a good thing to stay with the breath. We remember the different instructions that tell us what we can do with the breath and what we can do with the mind so …
- Concentration Work… If you go just for the quiet breath all the time, it saps your strength.” An essential skill in meditation is learning how to read what your body needs. Give it more energy when it needs more, even though that may not seem as quiet and refined as you’d like. You’ve got to take care of both the body and the mind …
- Mental Experiments… And you learn a lot of other skills as well in the course of practicing generosity and virtue. For one thing, you learn deferred gratification, realizing that there are solid pleasures to be gained from putting aside or forgoing quick and easy pleasures that end quickly and easily as well. As you find yourself able to forgo the easy pleasures, you gain a sense …
- Lifting the Mind… They’ve done studies with school children and found that the most important skill that the kids need to learn, in order to learn, is how to observe themselves, how to monitor themselves. It’s called meta-cognition. That’s when the child reads a page and then stops and asks him- or herself, “Okay, did I understand that?” If he didn’t understand …
- Fires of the Mind… In fact, if you get yourself all tied up about remorse about the past, then it’s hard to do skillful things in the present moment because your energy is being siphoned off. Just make up your mind, “Okay, what I did in the past is past; what we’re going to focus on now is the present moment.” On the one hand, there …
- Courage… For once, why don’t you choose the skillful side? The way to give energy to that courage is to remind yourself that these are tradeoffs: that even though some of the choices we have to make may be hard, may require putting ourselves out on a limb, still we do have the example of the Buddha who showed that he benefitted from sacrificing …
- Minding Your Own Business… Make sure that your intentions are skillful. You can check them by looking at what you do and then looking at the results that come about. At the very least, make sure there’s as little greed, anger, and delusion as possible in your intentions. The impact of your actions will have to be a good impact. Whether you’ve worked out all the …
- Something Good to Cling to… sticking with what you know is skillful, trying to let go of what’s not. Mindfulness: The Buddha singles this out as being one of the main refuges you can take. In other words, you learn lessons from your practice, you learn lessons from listening to the Dhamma and reading it, and you try to keep those lessons in mind as you practice. That …
- Defilements… You want to take whatever skills you can manage, whatever sense of peace and well-being you can manage during your meditation, and see how long you can maintain them as you go into the day. Sometimes you may find that the temperature outside is pretty hot. In other words, you find yourself in difficult situations where it’s hard to maintain your sense …
- Sticking with an Intention… Always to do what’s most skillful. Always choose what’s going to be the least harmful, the most beneficial course of action. And one of the most beneficial things you can do for yourself is to learn how to stick with a very simple, good intention like this, like staying with the breath. As you get more and more reliable in staying here …
- Being Your Own Teacher… You’re the one making the decisions, so you’re in the best position to watch what’s going on, to figure out what’s skillful, what’s not, and how to change it. The problem is that you tend to abdicate that position. And who knows who’s coming in to take it over? So you have to be very clear. You’re …
- Samvega First… Even when people are inflicting pain on us, there’s a skill that can be mastered in the mind so you don’t have to suffer from the pain. It all starts right here, so bring things back as close as possible to right here. And remind yourself: Anything that would flow out from this to go to the past or the future is …
- Choose Your Battles… And understand that there’s a skill in each case. When things are tough, where do you find the parts of your mind, where do you find a way of thinking that can make them not so tough? Look for the parts that can give you some support so that you’re not totally one-on-one with nothing but pain, one-on-one …
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