Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. First Principles
     … And when you are tempted to do something unskillful, how can you talk yourself out of it? When you’re too lazy to do something skillful, how can you talk yourself into being not lazy? That’s real discernment—and that has to come from you. So we’re looking at the potentials of the breath at the same time we’re looking at … 
  3. How Right Mindfulness Leads to Right Concentration
     … It tries to be skillful effort. That means reading the situation and figuring out what needs to be done and then doing it—and having a desire to do it as well. All of this is based on desire. Sometimes you hear people say that you should try to meditate without desire. But if you meditate without desire, you’re not meditating. The mind … 
  4. True Friends & False
     … Are they really helping you, or are they your own worst enemies? Do they reinforce your unskillful thoughts, or do they try to reinforce your skillful ones? This is something really important, because just as you have enemies and friends inside your own mind, or friends that are not real friends inside your own mind, like that chant we had just now, they’re … 
  5. Curious About the Process
     … If you’ve been able to peer into the process, see how it goes, learn how to direct it in a useful direction, then you’ve developed a skill that you’re really going to be able to use at that point. We don’t know when that point is going to come. So take an interest now.
  6. An Exercise in Sensitivity
     … You have to learn about feelings, and what better way of learning about feelings than to create feelings that are skillful and pleasant? There’s the phrase says, Vivicc’eva kāmehi vivicca akusalehi dhammehi, secluding yourself from sensual thoughts, secluding yourself from unskillful mental qualities, you settle down. You try to find a sense of well-being with the breath. This is why Ajaan … 
  7. Happiness Without Conflict
     … the desire to prevent unskillful qualities from arising in the mind, the desire to get rid of any ones that already have arisen, the desire to give rise to skillful qualities, and then the desire to maintain them and bring them to their full development. But that first set of right resolves—renunciation, non-ill will, harmlessness: These things are related because our fascination … 
  8. The Importance of Being Truthful
     … It’s a form of heedfulness, which is the beginning of all that’s skillful, realizing that if you keep on acting in unskillful ways, you’re going to suffer, the people around you are going to suffer. But keep it on that level: just the action. When you see these things as simply actions, there’s nothing inherently wrong with you, there’s … 
  9. To Purify the Heart
     … That’s how you develop skill inside with regard to how you relate to your own breath, how you relate to the energies and other potentials in the body right now. This is something each of us has to discover for him or herself. That’s why Ajaan Fuang said that, as a meditator, you have to think like a thief. In other words … 
  10. Fear
     … When you believe in that basic principle, believe in the principle of karma—skillful intentions do lead to happiness; unskillful ones, to pain, suffering—you’re going to be very careful about what you do. Persistence comes as the next strength. You just keep at it, because you realize the law of karma is not like a traffic law: It’s not enforced only … 
  11. The Lightness of the Concentrated Mind
     … Then you can make that your skill: picking up assumptions when you need them; putting them down when you don’t. Our minds are like those old tank water heaters. They keep water boiled at a high temperature all the time so that it’s there when you need it. But it’s a huge waste of energy. So they developed tankless heaters and … 
  12. Strengthening Concentration
     … That’s one set of skills and strategies that help you to associate sitting in meditation with a sense of well-being, a sense of refreshment. And you have that to tap into when mind gets antsy and wants a quick fix of pleasure. But there are lots of other issues that are going on in the mind as well, in terms of your … 
  13. The Dhamma Protects
     … If we don’t have patience, we can’t see what’s happening, we can’t figure out what’s the skillful thing to do. This is why the Buddha teaches patience, equanimity: so that we can observe carefully. When the mind is very still, it’s like putting scientific equipment on a very stable table. You don’t have to worry about the … 
  14. The Four Biases
     … It’s that quiet corner that allows us to have a basis for our integrity, a basis for our skill in how we approach life, so that we’re not influenced by what the Buddha called the four wrong courses, or the four ways of going off course: going off course through desire, going off course through aversion, going off course through delusion, or … 
  15. When the Mind Is Still
     … In that way, you can develop this skill.
  16. It’s All in What You’re Doing
     … And as you get more skilled at it, reflect on what you’re doing, because everything you need to know is involved in what you’re doing right here.
  17. A Complete Training
     … You climb the stairway that’s composed of developing skillful senses of a self and also learning how to use not-self. But as long as you stay on the stairway, you’re not in the house. When you get into the house, you don’t carry the stairway in with you. You leave it there. That’s when you’re really free. So … 
  18. In the Land of Wrong View
     … And you want to be skillful about it. You don’t want your attention to be distracted by other people’s behavior. At most you look at them as examples: Is this person’s behavior a good example? A bad example? But your primary focus has to be on what you’re doing right now. That’s one of the questions the Buddha has … 
  19. Learning by Doing
     … As he said, if people couldn’t abandon unskillful qualities and develop skillful qualities, there would have been no point in his teaching. But we can do this, we can change. And we learn as we change. So this is your laboratory: your mind, right here, right now; the body, sitting here right now; the breath, putting it all together. This is a laboratory … 
  20. Thinking & Evaluating
     … The same with anger, the same with greed, the same with any of the unskillful thoughts—even the seemingly skillful ones, like equality or justice. For right now, you just put them aside. Even our best values have to have their time and place. When, as right now, you’re trying to get the mind quiet, they’re not going to be helpful, because … 
  21. Goodwill First & Last
     … Looking at intentions as skillful and unskillful, looking at views as right and wrong, and applying those perspectives to the question of suffering, he discovered the four noble truths. He applied them, followed the tasks appropriate to them, and gained awakening. So notice the pattern. It starts with his own narratives, moves to the larger picture, and then focuses in on the present moment … 
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