Search results for: "Skillfulness"

  1. Page 144
  2. Off the Continuum
     … If you find yourself leaning too far in one direction, you go to someone else who is skilled in the other direction and ask them how to do that. If you’ve been developing insight, analyzing things, but the mind can’t really settle down, he says to go find someone who has mastered the ability to get the mind to settle down and … 
  3. Insight Is Seeing What’s Worth Doing
     … As you act in more skillful ways, life becomes a lot lighter. You feel a lot better about yourself. There are a lot of people out there who, when they’re feeling bad about themselves, go see a therapist. And what the therapist should tell them is, “Go out and do something good. Go out and help somebody. Try to be more principled in … 
  4. Hope
     … And that’s a skill that can be learned. Without that possibility, things would be hopeless. With that possibility comes responsibility but it also brings hope.
  5. Getting Back on Your Feet
     … So if you can learn how to breathe in a way that’s really refreshing, take that skill wherever you go. That helps to build up the momentum that gets your practice on course. You’re going to refind your footings, regain your bearings. This time around the foundation’s going to be more solid. If things collapse again, go back and look at … 
  6. Bless Yourself
     … And you realize, as I said, that you don’t know how much time you have left, so you’ve got to keep these teachings in mind, keep the need to develop skillful qualities in mind, keep in mind the need to abandon unskillful ones all the time. That’s how, when reflecting on the need for persistence, you see the need for mindfulness … 
  7. Clinging-Aggregates in Context
     … Often you find yourself identifying with the various skills you might have developed in order to get what you want, to get past the obstacles. That becomes one of your identities, too. We have lots of these identities in the mind. For most of us, that’s how we find pleasure, how we find happiness in life. Yet the Buddha’s pointing out that … 
  8. Remembering Ajaan Fuang
     … He was skilled in all kinds of ways. But he was also a person of many personalities. He could be harsh. He could be gentle. There were times when he would explain things in great detail, and other times he wouldn’t explain things at all. There’s that passage in Ajaan Lee’s autobiography where he talks about being Ajaan Mun’s attendant … 
  9. The Triple Training
     … But that kind of concentration is not really a skill. Those same people, on the days when they have trouble letting go, don’t know what to do. But if you’re the type of person who needs to understand what’s going on in the mind before the mind will be willing to let go of things, then you begin to see: The … 
  10. The Second Noble Truth
     … There’s the self-image we enjoy of being this particular person who’s mastered these skills in gaining what he or she wants. This sort of thing can range from finite to infinite things. But that, too, is going to lead to the kind of grass that you try to grasp as craving sweeps you along and it’s going to get pulled … 
  11. The Economy of Goodness
     … Actions based on skillful intentions lead to happiness. Those based on unskillful intentions lead to unhappiness. Now, that kind of conviction doesn’t just sit there and say, “Yes, I believe that.” It requires you to act on it. And the way you act on it to begin with is to practice virtue. That’s the second form of noble wealth, in which you … 
  12. Recollection of the Buddha
     … Ajaan Lee made the comment one time that we human beings have lots of potentials within us that we don’t take advantage of—potentials in the body in terms of the breath and the other elements, potentials in the mind in terms of the skills we can learn. We’ve got all these potentials, but what do we use them for? To make … 
  13. Using Perceptions
     … After all, our perceptions of the world are the ones that accompany our lack of skill in approaching the issue of suffering. So we have to learn how to step back from them a bit. This is why it’s helpful to think of coming to the Dhamma as going to a new country where the customs are different, the language is different. Their … 
  14. Don’t Worry, Be Focused
     … This is a skill you have to practice because it’s so easy—as you tell yourself you’re going to stay with the breath—for other members of the mind’s committee to have other ideas. Here you’ve got a whole hour. You could think about all kinds of things, and as soon as your mindfulness lapses, or your alertness lapses, there … 
  15. Respect for Emptiness
     … Some people start analyzing things radically in terms of the three characteristics before they have sufficient skill in concentration, and it can get pretty depressing, pretty disorienting. It can short-circuit the practice. You manage a little bit of concentration and then you lose it, so you console yourself by saying that you’ve gained all the insight you need from concentration. You’ve … 
  16. The Balance of Power
     … It is not easy, but as you work with it and really approach it as developing a skill that may take time, it may take effort, but it’s really worth all the time and all the effort. Because it does create that possibility that living without causing suffering, living without causing harm, living with true peace, at the very least with peace inside … 
  17. An End to Suffering
     … trying to get the mind into concentration, or at the very least trying to get rid of unskillful qualities and to develop skillful qualities in the mind. That’s right effort. Develop the desire to do this. Stick with that desire and be intent on carrying it through. In other words, really pay attention to what’s happening. See what works and what doesn … 
  18. A Healthy Ego
     … If we don’t have something skillful inside as a source of pleasure, we’ll go for whatever. So learning how to meditate is actually a healthy ego function: finding an alternative source of pleasure. Psychologists call this sublimation. In other words, you take a desire for a lowly pleasure and you direct it toward something sublime. Another healthy ego function, one that the … 
  19. The World Does Not Endure
     … Think of it just as a skill you’re working on. And those pleasures in the world, no matter how much you think about them, are never enough. Whereas those who’ve completed the path have found that there really is a source of true happiness inside. You get to what they call “the land of enough,” something that doesn’t have to be … 
  20. Oppressed by Old Kamma
     … As you build up your skill for dealing precisely and specifically with the present moment, you’ll find that each moment does become a lot easier to handle. What this means is that you’re learning to see through these voices that come and try to pull you away. If you actually look at them, say: “Who’s there? Who’s saying that?” Well … 
  21. Investment Strategies
     … And you can try to remember, as best you can, what is skillful at any particular time. I know some people who are concerned that when they get older their brains are going to start decaying. The synapses are going to get slower, and they’re going to forget things. But the quality of mindfulness, if it’s been well trained, can help you … 
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