Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Quick on the Draw
     … You’re not trying to compare yourself with other people, you’re just taking pride in your own skill. That kind of pride is not to be abandoned. And part of taking pride in your skill is that you want to keep it up, i.e., keep practicing. An important part of pride in skill is learning how to recognize when you’ve made … 
  3. Contentment
     … Notice, the Buddha doesn’t say, “Be content with what skillful qualities you have,” or “Be content with what unskillful qualities you have.” In fact, he said that he reached awakening precisely because he didn’t let himself rest content with whatever skillful qualities he had developed—until he reached the point where there was nothing more to develop. So he’s not teaching … 
  4. Skillfully Shaping Your Life
     … But it all depends on how you shape things, how you think about things, how you perceive things, how you train your mind in the skills of breathing, in the skills of talking to yourself and then the skills of perceiving and feeling things., A lot of these things we don’t think of as skills, which is why we don’t get the … 
  5. Living Forward, Understanding Backward
     … This gives you the skill to deal with whatever comes. When you have that kind of skill, you can have a lot more confidence, knowing that even if you do make unintended mistakes, you have the skill to deal with the results. In other words, the more mindfulness, the more alertness, the more concentration and discernment you can develop now, the less likely you … 
  6. The Duty to Understand
     … This is where the teachings on skillful and unskillful behavior come in. As the Buddha suggested, there is a skillful way of holding on to these things. For instance, as we’re meditating here right now, we’re holding on to the body as our object, the form of the body here. We’re also trying to breathe in ways that give rise to … 
  7. The Acrobat
     … If you can maintain this frame of reference inside, with this issue of what’s the skillful thing to do, that can then translate into, “What’s the skillful thing to do while I’m dealing with this person?” You try to maintain your frame of preference inside and be compassionate outside at the same time, with the question of skillfulness being the connection … 
  8. Cooking Skills
     … So these are some of your cooking skills, the skills you use in the present moment, so that no matter what’s coming in from the past, you don’t have to suffer from it—because after all, that is the essence of the Buddha’s teachings. He didn’t teach the end of suffering only to people who had exclusively good karma. He … 
  9. The Second Frame of Reference
     … Where do you want to focus your attention? What do you want to maximize? Do you want to maximize the pain or maximize the pleasure? What we’re doing as we’re sitting here meditating is learning how to develop the skills for maximizing skillful kinds of pleasure, skillful ways of approaching the pleasure. There are even skillful forms of distress. The Buddha talks … 
  10. The Heart of the Teachings
     … That means you have to use your discernment to get more and more skillful in how you observe the precepts. Perfecting skill in virtue also means developing the positive virtues that correspond to the precepts: It’s not that you simply don’t kill. You also show kindness and gentleness to living beings. It’s not that you simply don’t steal. You also … 
  11. Truths of the Will
     … For the Sangha, you’ve got people who believe in the worthwhile endeavor, the value of developing skillful qualities and encouraging other people to develop skillful qualities. It creates the right social environment for learning how to mature. And then second, there’s the system—the belief system or the values of the Dhamma—that if you develop skillful qualities in your mind, it … 
  12. What Is Skillful?
     … We try to develop our skills so that we can expand that amount of control, and in doing so we gain a lot of insight. The insight then helps us let go of the greed, aversion, and delusion, so that our actions will lead to long-term welfare and happiness. They’ll be skillful; they’ll be blameless. So, what we’re doing is … 
  13. Skills to Take Home
     … So when you leave the monastery, remember that you’re taking skills with you, skills necessary for life—i.e., the life of the mind’s goodness, the life of the mind’s awareness, the life of its potential for freedom. Don’t forget to pack those skills with you when you go.
  14. Good Fundamentals
     … The Buddha’s word for ignorance, avijja, can also mean “unskilled.” It’s our lack of skill in how we act and think and speak that creates that suffering, but we can master skills that put an end to that suffering. In mastering those skills, we’re not depending on the fact that we’re fundamentally good, because the Buddha doesn’t say that … 
  15. Shaping Your Life
     … And through the present moment you shape the future in a way that’s really skillful, causes less and less suffering for yourself, less and less suffering for the people around you—always mindful of the fact that the way you experience the present moment is a doing. There’s an effort that goes into it. It’s a skill that can be developed … 
  16. Bare Attention
     … There are skillful mind states and unskillful mind states. States that make you suffer are the unskillful ones. States that lead you away from suffering are the skillful ones. You’ve got to look at experience in those terms. And how do you recognize them? How do you tell skillful mind states from unskillful ones? You look at them in terms of what they … 
  17. Patience & Hope
     … Happiness is something you can pursue, through getting more and more skillful in your actions. And where do your actions come from? From the mind. So skill in your words and deeds has to come from skill in the mind—which is what meditation is all about. We’re developing the skills of mindfulness, alertness, and ardency; the skills of concentration and discernment, that … 
  18. Exploring Possibilities
     … Whatever you’ve learned, look at it as a skill that has shown you a new possibility in the mind. Then see how much you can apply that skill to other areas. That’s the test of your insight. Some skills are universally applicable. Others are useful only for specific problems. You learn about your new skill by trying to apply it to everything … 
  19. Protection Through Mindfulness
     … But then once you’ve mastered that skill, there are more skills you can master. You can try different shapes, different colors. Expand on your skill. It all comes from being very observant of your clay and your sand and your water and the fire that’s used to fire the clay. In other words, there’s a lot you have to learn by … 
  20. Not What You Are, What You Do
     … But skills can be developed gradually. Your sensitivity develops, your dexterity at shaping things more skillfully, more appropriately, develops over time. So the path overcoming this practical ignorance isn’t a sudden, all-or-nothing sort of path. It’s a gradual path, a gradual training, in gaining more and more skill. It’s in this way that the teachings of dependent co-arising … 
  21. You Contain Multitudes
     … Some of them are quite skillful. Some of them are less skillful. You want to put the skillful ones in charge. Learn how to recognize them for what they are and make use of them. As you use them, they get stronger and stronger. So think of that. You contain multitudes, just like the famous poet. You can think about all the different roles … 
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