Search results for: "Skillfulness"

  1. Page 134
  2. The Buddha’s Relationship Advice
     … Because there’s so much dissolution going on, we don’t take the time to stop and figure out, “Well, what should I hold on to? What’s skillful to hold on to?” We just grab whatever. So we need concentration to give ourselves a more solid basis. Even though the concentration itself is not permanent, still it’s a lot steadier than most … 
  3. Dhamma Books & the Actuality
     … In other words, really put the effort in to develop skillful qualities when they’re not there; to maintain them and develop them when they are; to abandon unskillful qualities and to do what you can to prevent them from happening again. You really work on this. You really develop a desire to do these things, to develop the good qualities so that you … 
  4. Metta Means Goodwill
     … What would be a more skillful way of handling the situation the next time it comes? This fits in with the Buddha’s teachings on preventing unskillful states from arising. These are times when you really do have to think about the past and think about the future, i.e. where you’ve made a mistake in the past and what you can do … 
  5. Clinging to Karmic Diarrhea
     … Again the question is, is it worth it? We’re learning how to be more skilled in passing judgment, in evaluating things. All too often, we hear that meditation is to teach us not to pass judgment, and that makes sense only in the sense of not being judgmental, i.e., jumping to quick conclusions without looking at things carefully. But we look at … 
  6. Taking the Buddha at his Word
     … This is how they developed their skill in the practice. Going into the forest, going into the wilderness, really forces you to hold onto the Dhamma in ways that you wouldn’t have to when you live in comfortable surroundings. Ajaan Lee learned this, one, through experience, and two, through thinking about it. This is how you understand the Buddha’s teachings: both putting … 
  7. Between You and Your Eyes
     … You don’t want to go to equanimity until you’ve got some basic skills in how to use the breath as a source of pleasure. This involves getting acquainted with your sense of the body sitting here in the present moment. Again, this is something else we tend to be ignorant of. We use the body for various things. Not only when we … 
  8. The Buddha’s Good News
     … If it were impossible to develop skillful qualities, he wouldn’t have taught that. But it’s because it’s possible, and because it’s for your good, that’s why he taught these things. His concern as a teacher always was to give people the confidence that they can do this. As he said, when you listen to a Dhamma talk, be careful … 
  9. Concentration as Wilderness
     … In other words, you gain some insight into how you’re focusing on the breath in a way that’s not as skillful as it could be, or how you’re coming back to the breath in a way that’s putting too much pressure on it – lots of details about what it means to settle into the body. You can gain insight into … 
  10. To Understand the Path
     … When these states come, you want to notice why they come; when they go, you want to know why they go, so that the next time when they come, you can treat them with more skill. You don’t try to clone the awakened attitude that says, “Whatever comes is going to go, so I’ll just let it pass, let it pass, let … 
  11. Directing & Not Directing the Mind
     … If you’re going to cut the tree down, you don’t have to use much skill or any great insight. You don’t have to figure things out much. Just decide which direction you want the tree to fall, cut it, and it falls down. It’s not entangled with anything else, so it falls easily. Other people, though, have a mind like … 
  12. To Comprehend Suffering
     … If you do put them together, you’ve learned how to put them together in a much more skillful way, as factors of the path. And if you don’t need to feed, you can give them to other people who do need to feed, to help them along their way. So these are a few beginning directions in how to comprehend suffering, the … 
  13. The Mind in Good Shape
     … But if you can put the mind in a position where its happiness doesn’t have to depend on things outside, then it’s in a much better position to do and say and think the skillful thing in any situation. So that’s the first step in getting some success in the meditation: having the desire to stick with it, to really apply … 
  14. The Value of Effort
     … Actually, the Buddha talks again and again about a skillful of self that you’ve got to use in the practice so that you can motivate yourself. Without that, why bother doing anything at all? So here we’re going to learn how to relate to our sense—or senses—of self in a mature way. For a lot of us, that’s quite … 
  15. Factors for Stream-entry
     … What’s skillful and unskillful? The Dhamma is Dhamma not because you can defend it with rational arguments, or you can put up very elaborate lists of citations that this comes in that passage, and that comes in this passage. Those aren’t the criteria that the Buddha mentioned. His first criteria are: If it leads to passion, then it’s not Dhamma. If … 
  16. Afraid of Pleasure
     … Those are important skills in the meditation. They form the heart of the path.
  17. True Happiness Starts with Giving
     … What’s left is the karma you made as you were trying to find and keep those sensual pleasures—which may have been skillful, but sometimes was not. So then you’re stuck with that kind of karma. And the process just keeps going around and around and around. As the Buddha said, it’s like throwing a stick up in the air. Sometimes … 
  18. Factors for Stream Entry
     … You look for a Dhamma that gives you good reasons to behave in skillful ways. Then when you’re heard the Dhamma, the next factor is appropiate attention. This is where you have to put a lot into it. Appropiate attention means basically looking at things in terms of the four noble truths, seeing how whatever teaching you’ve learned from the Dhamma applies … 
  19. The Craft of the Heart
     … But whatever experience you’ve had with a manual skill should help you gain some sense of “now you’re in the doing mode” and “now you’re in the observing mode.” They’re two different things, because the doer has to want, and the observer has to be totally unfazed. And that ability to stay unfazed can be your safe spot. One of … 
  20. Dethinking Thinking
     … We have lots of beliefs about ourselves, about how we run things inside our mind—sometimes skillful; sometimes not, particularly if you come from an unhealthy environment, which a lot of America is now. Many of the concepts you bring inside for dealing with your own thoughts, figuring out what’s going on inside, are actually harmful. So you want to learn how to … 
  21. When Things Aren’t Going Well
     … What are the basics? Why are you here? What is this all about? It’s about developing some skills and learning how to comprehend your stress and suffering, learning how to abandon the cause when you can see it, learning how to develop the good factors of the path and whatever other qualities of mind reinforce the path when they arise. Endurance is important … 
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