Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Firmly Intent
     … Your intentions may be good, but not necessarily skillful, because good intentions, well-meaning intentions, can be pretty deluded sometimes. You mean well, you think that something is going to help somebody or help yourself, but it doesn’t. That delusion is something you have to learn how to overcome. You do it through those instructions that the Buddha gave to Rahula. You act … 
  3. Comfortable as an Outsider
     … Part of your own training in gaining some control over your mind is to ask the question: “Where does the suffering come from?” It’s coming from within. “What can I do to put an end to it?” You’re learning the skills. That’s what matters. There’s something undomesticated about those questions and those answers. And if they set you apart, they … 
  4. Nourishing & Interesting
     … Ajaan Fuang would say, “Take the breath as the basis for your skill.” The question always is, “What can the breath do here?” or “What can your awareness of the breath do to help with whatever’s coming up in the body or in the mind?” There are always things to learn. The problem is that sometimes they come slowly. Meditation is not like … 
  5. Your Breath, Your Territory
     … That’s the skill we’re working on here. It’s in this area right here. This is why the Buddha, when he posed the question, “What is one?” never said that we are all one. He said something else entirely: All beings subsist on food. Because after all, we are not one. There are areas in our environment that we share, that we … 
  6. Gratitude & Trust
     … Gratitude means that you value goodness; you appreciate the difficulties that are involved in making the skillful choice and carrying it out. When you appreciate that and have gratitude for it, you’re more likely to make the same kind of effort yourself. So keep in mind the distinction between gratitude on the one hand and attitudes like appreciation or contentment on the other … 
  7. Guarding the Truth
     … The skill lies right here. This way, when someone asks you information about something, you can tell them clearly that your information is based on what you heard, what you saw, or what you believe, based on logic or analogy. You realize that a lot of those sources don’t not necessarily guarantee the truth, but at least you’re letting people know where … 
  8. The Middle Way
     … The mind needs to learn some basic skills to see how much of its experience of the present moment comes from its choices right now. And that you can’t see unless you teach it to stay right here, because right here is where those choices are made. So you can think of this as the eye in the middle of a storm. The … 
  9. Switzerland Inside
     … The more skillful the intention, the better the results are going to be, at least for your mind. So this points you back to the mind again. You want to be right here, right now, to see clearly what’s going on and to be very frank with yourself if something unskillful is going on. You want to be able to hold it in … 
  10. A Clear Agenda
     … So when you find something that’s really nice, how do you maintain it? How do you relax around it? How do you give it space? How do you protect it without bursting the bubble? That’s an important skill right there. If your concentration has gotten to the level where it’s solid, then you’re ready for Ajaan Fuang’s third stage … 
  11. The Radiant Mind
     … So when you’re acting on skillful intentions but you discover that what you’re doing is actually causing harm, you stop. You don’t just blunder your way through, saying, “Well, it was a good intention, so it’s got to be good.” You have to tell yourself, “Maybe something was wrong with the intention, or maybe with how I carried it through … 
  12. Your Inner Teacher
     … Try to do it in a skillful way. In other words, when you’re getting frustrated, those are the times for Mrs. Lane. You learn how to cajole yourself back into doing what you know should be doing. When the mind is just ornery, that’s when you have to be more like my first grade teacher—whose name was Mrs. DeGraff, by the … 
  13. The Power of Perception
     … What would happen if you could change that image in a way that allows the breath to move in areas that have been restricted before? If you find a particular perception that helps you settle down more firmly, with greater sense of well-being, solidity, and resilience here in the present moment, then use that perception as long as it’s skillful. If you … 
  14. Looking in Three Directions
     … If you keep these three things in mind—what your plan is for the meditation, what you’re actually doing, how well you’re doing it and how well the results are going—this is how the meditation becomes a skill. You learn to recognize problems as they come up and you use your ingenuity to figure them out. You see if you can … 
  15. Beyond Gratitude
     … As you learn how to deal with one particular defilement, you can start developing a skill set for how to deal with other ones, and then other ones. For example, with the hindrances: Don’t expect that they’ll just come neatly in a row, starting with sensual desire, going on to ill will, and then sloth and torpor, then restlessness and anxiety, or … 
  16. Working Hypotheses
     … When you bring this into the calculation, you tend to be more skillful in your decisions, you tend to be more responsible. As you assume that there’s nothing you’re going to get away with, you might as well do things as skillfully as you can. That, he says, is a good pragmatic reason for at least taking on rebirth and the teachings … 
  17. Bringing Daily Life into the Practice
     … You’ll be bringing those two activities, or those two skills, into your concentration, so make sure they’re well trained before you apply them to concentration. You’ll find that your practice will go a lot more smoothly. The fourth principle is seclusion. You’ve got to find time to be off by yourself—away not only from other people but also from … 
  18. A Friend to the World, A Friend to Yourself
     … It’s always a matter of seeing whatever’s going to be skillful and trying to give rise to it if it’s not there. Once it’s there, you try to maintain it. Anything unskillful, you don’t say, “Well, I’ll think of this as a bank account. I’ll put a lot of good money in the bank account and then … 
  19. Mastering Pleasure & Pain
     … A large part of the skill of meditation comes from achieving that balance so that you can get the full benefits of the pleasure. You learn how to use it properly. A lot of it has to do with your attitude. In the beginning, it’s very easy to get hungry for the pleasure and get very attached to it. But after a while … 
  20. Papañca
     … As you get more and more skilled at this, the sense of whoever’s doing this begins to fade into the background. It’s just the question of which actions are good, which actions are not, which actions are helpful with getting the mind to settle down and stay settled down, or to get it to point to deeper states of concentration: Think in … 
  21. Attachment vs. Affection
     … So you want to think of them doing things that are skillful. If their past actions make it difficult to avoid physical pain right now, at least you hope they’ll be able to find a way of dealing with the pain so they don’t have to suffer from it. And you also wish for them to do things that will prevent future … 
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