Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Self-hatred… You may need to learn some new habits, some new skills. You may say, “I’m an old dog. I can’t learn new tricks.” Well, we’re all old dogs in light of the fact of rebirth. Some of our habits go way, way back, to previous lifetimes, and it’s never too late to change. Simply get a sense of how things …
- Peace Requires Character… So we lay claim to our various skills for eating and we lay claim to the food that we want to eat. The problem is that the food sources are limited, the range of food in the world—I’m talking not just about physical food, but also all kinds of things in which people take their mental nourishment—is limited. And yet the …
- Strength for the Heat… They tell us that the climate is going to get hotter and hotter, so this is going to be a good skill to have. You can be with the heat but not be oppressed by the heat. It’s the same as with any pain. Pain can be there in the body, but you don’t allow it to invade your mind and remain …
- Dethinking Thinking… You gain your range of perceptions that help the mind to settle down, that help you gain insight, and you’ve mastered the skills of taking apart any perceptions that are unhelpful or actually get in the way. That’s when you really can start counteracting that tendency to keep building dams and lodges, to create little worlds and then go travelling in them …
- Creating a World of Concentration… There will come a time when you take these skills and apply them to other thought worlds that come into the mind—the ones that the mind tends to gravitate to, that seem to have a magnetic power over it, that pull it in, pull it in. You can begin to see: Okay, what’s the magnetism there? What’s the pull? And you …
- Joy in the Effort… You’re just hoping that they behave in skillful ways, stop their unskillful ways, and that they’ll find happiness in that way. Is there anyone out there for whom you can’t have that thought? If there is, ask yourself why. Take it apart. Explore your mind. That’s what meditation is all about: You’re exploring your mind. You want to find …
- The Four Precepts… In that way, you create a lot of the skills that you need as a meditator, because the precepts basically are teaching restraint. And this applies to all four of what they call the precepts—or principles—of purity. Sometimes the ajaans in Thailand like to shock people by saying, “Lay people have five precepts, but monks have only four.” They’re referring to …
- True & Beneficial… You do have to make it skillful. Some people don’t like themselves. They’re happy to hear that there is no self, that what they don’t like doesn’t exist—but that aborts the path. There are things in yourself that you do have to develop. As for seeing the constructed nature of reality, it is true that your experience of the …
- Asalha Puja… He did it so that he could find a skill that was really worthwhile, that would go to the heart of the problem of suffering, and so that he would be able to teach it as well. He had that kind of broad heart that didn’t want to solve the problem only for himself. He wanted to solve it for as many people …
- Pleasure & Pain… How does that happen? Why are there these different layers in the mind? And who’s fooling whom here? Can you learn to detect the points where the mind is ready to go, when it hasn’t quite left the breath yet but it’s on its way? When you can do that, you’ve learned an important skill. You’ve also learned a …
- Two Kinds of Middle… In this particular case the Buddha asked him, “Back when you were a lay person, were you skilled at playing the lute?” The monk answers, “Yes.” “What happened when the string was too tight? Did it sound good”? “No.” “When it was too loose, did it sound right?” “No. You have to tune the string so it’s just right.” “In the same say …
- All Eye… So try to work on the skill of developing this alternative, where—instead of being focused on what your thoughts are—you’re focused on fully inhabiting the body, with your awareness spreading in all directions. Front and back, top and bottom are all equal, and everything is clear all around.
- Stretch Your Mind… he turned his mind to thinking of all beings dying and being reborn to see what the pattern was. And he figured out that it had to do with their actions. Skillful actions led to good rebirths; unskillful ones, to bad rebirths. It was a tendency, because of course, everybody’s actions were basically a mix. And in particular it had to do with …
- Sophisticated Dhamma… But don’t be too quick to say, “Okay, that’s a good reason.” Keep probing, probing, saying No, No, No, until you’re really sure, 100% sure, that this really is a skillful intention. It’s something worth following through with. Now, it’s a lot easier to say No when you’ve got a good place to stay, a good solid foundation …
- A Concentration Checklist… This ability to perform self-correction is one of the most important skills in the path. It’s like learning how to stand on one leg in yoga. There’ll be a wobbling back and forth, back and forth, but you learn how to correct—and that’s how you keep your balance. It’s the same with the concentration: There will be a …
- Worries & Regrets… If we couldn’t develop skillful ones in their place, he wouldn’t have taught us to do so, either. It’s because we can make these changes: That’s why we’re practicing. That’s why he taught. In addition to recognizing your mistakes, try to develop goodwill. Goodwill is your protection for the future, in the sense that the things you really …
- Using What You’ve Got… The breath isn’t the troublemaker, it’s not the problem, but it’s a great place to focus to develop the skills you need to deal with subtler problems, subtler issues. A very simple way of seeing the power of perception is trying to keep this perception of breath in mind during all of your activities, not only while you’re sitting here …
- Strength from the Basics… He had worked on his really basic skills in the meditation: how to stay with the breath where to focus in the body, the different places where you can focus. When you’ve got the strength, explore all the possibilities of the breath, so that when you need them, the very strong spots will be there. When some of your physical abilities get impaired …
- Verbal Fabrication… Think of your use of language as a skill that you have to master. And it’s not just being able to talk a lot. As the Buddha says, the ability to talk a lot doesn’t mean you’re wise. But if you can learn to talk to yourself in ways that are true and beneficial and timely, you take this troublemaker and …
- Conviction in the End of Suffering… All of these are good skills to master, and they don’t save all their rewards for the end. They give you rewards all along the way. It’s simply that the reward at the end is of a totally different order. As I said, it’s beyond your expectations. So the conviction that allows you to get there is a form of wealth …
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