Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Right Mindfulness
     … You try to develop a skillful understanding of what’s skillful in the mind and what’s not, along with the desire to develop what’s skillful, to abandon what’s not. That’s what we’re going to keep in mind. The best way to remember something is to have a good solid framework, a good solid foundation, a good frame of reference … 
  3. Our Variegated Minds
     … How are you breathing right now? Where are you directing your thoughts? How are you evaluating things? Are these skillful ways of thinking or could you replace them with some other more skillful ways of thinking? What kind of perceptions are you applying to your situation? We feed so often on the bad things that other people have done. We chew them over again … 
  4. The Equanimity that Doesn’t Give Up
     … Once you’re confident that you’re on the right path—and what path could be better than the path that says to look at your actions and see where they’re skillful, look and see where they’re not skillful?—encourage the skillful ones and abandon the unskillful ones. It’s a path where you’re made responsible, so it’s a good … 
  5. Heedful of What’s Precious
     … As he said elsewhere, heedfulness is the root of all skillfulness. The practice of developing what’s skillful is the most basic Buddhist teaching. Some people accused the Buddha of not teaching anything in particular, not making any definite statements. One of his students said, “No, that’s not true. He was very definite about what’s skillful and what’s unskillful.” When the … 
  6. Mindful of Your Potentials
     … It’s remembering that there are such things as skillful qualities. There’s a potential for the mind to be skillful and a potential for the mind to be unskillful. If skillful qualities haven’t arisen in the mind yet, you can be mindful to make them arise. Then you’re mindful to keep them going. That’s the other thing you’re mindful … 
  7. Skilled in Leaving Concentration
    The Canon talks about the skills associated with concentration practice: skill in entering, skill in staying, skill in leaving. You might think that skill in leaving is the easiest out of the three—just jump right out, no problem. But that’s not what the Canon means. It means that you don’t really leave fully. At the very least, you stay in the … 
  8. Prerequisites for the Practice
     … What is skillful and what’s not skillful? What, when I do it, will lead to long term welfare and happiness? What, when I do it, will lead to long term harm and suffering? Then there’s a realization that you don’t simply want to know those facts, but you actually want to act on them. From there, you move into the four … 
  9. Approaching Painful Memories as a Meditator
     … That requires skills, because so many of our identities depend on our skills. If you learn how to play the piano, you’re a pianist. If you learn how to do carpentry well, you’re a carpenter. And there are certain attitudes that go along with those skills, a certain type of confidence, that if particular problems come up, you have the skills to … 
  10. Making Yourself Worthy of Trust
     … In this case, you keep in mind what you know is the right path, what you know is the wrong path, what you know is skillful, what you know is not skillful. You hold on to that and then you judge things as to whether they’re skillful or not. In other words, if they’re not skillful, they’re not going to cause … 
  11. Mindfulness + Discernment = Intelligence
     … What right now is skillful? How do you recognize what’s skillful coming up in the mind? How do you recognize what’s not skillful? How do you remember what to do? If you can’t remember, how do you figure out, using your ingenuity? How do you figure something out? What is it similar to? That’s using your memory in an intelligent … 
  12. Stay Principled
     … Discernment is figuring out how to do the skillful thing given the situation. It’s strategic. It’s a skill—which is why we work not only on mastering the techniques in meditation but also on using our ingenuity and powers of observation to make them skillful, because then we can use those powers to develop skill in other areas of our lives as … 
  13. Respect, Confidence, & Patience
     … It takes time and patience to develop the kind of detailed skills, the detailed sensitivities that are really required. When you’re clear about this fact, you find it a lot easier to overcome obstacles on the path. You’re here to learn a skill, and skills often require trial and error, learning from mistakes. A friend of mine once went to Japan to … 
  14. Practice in Dying Well
     … So, the skill to putting aside your distracting thoughts is an important skill in meditation. All too often, we try to get quickly past it, so that the mind can settle down. But the more you learn about the process of distraction while you’re meditating, through learning to overcome it, then the easier it will be not to be deflected when the time … 
  15. A Connoisseur of the Breath
     … We try to develop a skillful understanding of what’s skillful and what’s not in the mind—that’s right view—and we give rise to the desire to develop what’s skillful, to abandon what’s not: That’s right effort. And now we’re going to keep that in mind. The best way to remember something is to have a good … 
  16. In the Land of Wrong View
     … The Dhamma is here to say, “You do have the choice of acting more skilfully.” This is why that factor for awakening called “analysis of qualities” comes down to seeing dark and bright qualities in the mind, recognizing what’s skillful and what’s not skillful—in other words, reminding you that you do have these choices. There are skillful choices always available. The … 
  17. Willing to Learn
     … As you master more and more skills, you become a different person. The skills allow you to function in this new world, the world of the Dhamma. But simply having the skills doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be successful. There are some people who find it very easy to get the mind to settle down, with no big deal. Other … 
  18. The Skills of Stillness
     … All the other skills you need to know about becoming happy, truly happy, will come from here. That’s what’s special about the Buddha’s teachings. He teaches happiness not as a crapshoot or a gamble. He teaches it as a skill. And as with all skills, you have to practice it again and again, and watch yourself as you do it. You … 
  19. A Multilingual Mind
     … What kind of breathing is skillful breathing? What kind of breathing is unskillful breathing? What kinds of perceptions are skillful, what kinds are unskillful? The breath and the questions about the breath are all elements in the process of fabrication. When you’re talking to yourself as you meditate, what kind of talking is skillful, what kind of talking is not? The meditation points … 
  20. Compassionate Duties
     … So you want to act on skillful choices, act on skillful mental states. Some of the modern clinical definition of mindfulness, on the one hand, tell you to be non-judging of whatever comes up in your mind, but then on the other hand they tell you to try to be skillful in your actions, thoughtful in the way you act. Well, you’re … 
  21. Be Prepared
     … And so the skill that we’ve developed gets tossed away. Then something drastic or dramatic happens, and you remember, “Oh, I’ve got to have this skill,” but you haven’t maintained what you picked up in the meditation. So this is a good practice: Find the spot inside that is your spot, the place where you can go. If you’re not … 
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