Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. Afraid of Pleasure
     … Those are important skills in the meditation. They form the heart of the path.
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. Don’t Sell the Buddha Short
     … Well, now we’re going to cling in a more skillful way, creating states of concentration, because when you’re in concentration, you can see these processes clearly. You consciously have to do them in order to get into concentration, and when the mind is still, you see them a lot more clearly. Then it’s simply a matter of getting deeper and deeper … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. The Chattering Mind
     … But then you look at your inner chatter as you’re trying to get the mind to settle down, and then there’s the big question, “Who’s in control?” If you’re not in control of your chatter, what’s happening? Who’s talking to whom? What we’re trying to do as we meditate is to get some more control — skillful control … 
  18. The Blood You’ve Shed
     … Actions based on skillful intentions, under the influence of right views, showing respect for the noble ones, lead to happiness. That’s the basic principle. That’s what we want to focus on right here, right now. And that’s exactly what the Buddha did. From his second knowledge, he focused in on the present moment, looking to see what his mind was doing … 
  19. Finding Extra Energy
     … He asked him, “When you were a lay person, did you play the lute?” The monk said yes, he was skilled at playing the lute. “What happened when the strings were too tight? Did it sound good?” No. “How about when the strings were too loose? Did that sound good?” No. And the Buddha said, “In the same way, you tune your effort to … 
  20. Nibbana Is Better than You Think
     … That’s why the Buddha said all goodness, all skillfulness, comes from being heedful. It’s not that we’re naturally good. We’re good for a while, and then when circumstances get bad, that goodness can easily change into something else. You have to see that where you are is very unstable, very precarious, whereas there’s the possibility of absolute stability and … 
  21. Control
     … what kind of control is skillful, what kind of intentions help. Sometimes what you need is an intention just to watch. Other times, you need an intention to adjust things a little bit here, a little bit there. But you test the issue by seeing what creates stress and what doesn’t. In this way, you learn. Your control comes from knowledge and not … 
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