Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Encouragement
     … So we’re working on a skill. As you approach this skill, you need to have the same attitude you’d have toward any skill. You have to give a lot of time to it, and you have to develop the sort of patience that comes with learning a skill. For a lot of us, that kind of patience is something that we’ve … 
  3. Right & Wrong Decisions
     … to develop the skills we need to find that happiness. Because it is a question of skill. We work on the mind so that it can develop those skills. When we work with the breath, it may seem like a detour but it’s not. When you’re with the breath, you’re in the present moment. As you work with the breath to … 
  4. Comparing Mind
     … And to get a sense of what’s more skillful and what’s less skillful, it’s good to have comparisons. This is one of the reasons why you have to meditate so much: so that you can begin to have a range of comparisons as to what kind of concentration is skillful concentration, what kind of concentration is a little foggy; when you … 
  5. Skills to Make a Difference
    Many times, when Ajaan Lee is talking about meditation, he compares it to skills—manual skills. This is keeping with the Canon. The Buddha also uses analogies with skills. Being a good meditator is like being a good cook, a good carpenter, or a good archer. A good cook knows how to read his boss: what kind of food the boss likes and doesn … 
  6. Mindful to Be Skillful
     … And then you’re ardent. “Ardent” here means making an effort to be skillful, to develop skillful qualities and to abandon unskillful ones. To take a delight in this is one of the customs of the noble ones: learning how to delight in trying to be skillful and in trying to abandon unskillful behavior. So that’s something else you want to keep in … 
  7. The Practice is Wherever There’s Mindfulness
     … Keep asking yourself, “What would be the skillful thing to say now?” And then go ahead and do what that skillful thing would be. That’s the question you should always bring to the present moment: What’s the skillful action here? What’s the skillful action now? And “action” here, of course, means not just physical actions, but also your words and your … 
  8. Questions of Skill
     … This word is usually translated as ignorance, but it also means lack of skill. So, what are the skills we need? The skills having to do with the duties of the four noble truths. The truths are not just truths “about” something. They’re truths that you have to approach in a skillful way. You try to comprehend suffering to see what it really … 
  9. The Alternative of Concentration
    The suttas often compare the practice to learning a skill. Many of the similes that the Buddha uses to teach meditation, to teach concentration, to describe the arising of insight, are illustrated with similes drawn from different skills: the skills of being a carpenter, the skills of being an archer, the skills of being a cook. It’s useful to explore these similes, to … 
  10. The Skill of Happiness
    As we meditate, we’re trying to master a skill. In the beginning, the skill is the skill of concentration: getting the mind to stay with one object—like the breath. You think about the breath and then you notice when it’s coming in, when it’s going out, and you evaluate it: Is it comfortable? What kind of breathing would be comfortable … 
  11. Meditation as a Skill
     … Those are qualities you need to develop a skill. The project of developing skillful mental states and abandoning unskillful ones, in and of itself, has to be approached as a skill. You bring the same qualities that you would to any skill. The Buddha himself makes this point when he keeps comparing the practice to the skills of a cook, a carpenter, an acrobat … 
  12. The Buddha’s Questions
     … The questions he encouraged basically come down to this issue of what’s skillful, and then how to understand the four noble truths, how to develop the skills appropriate to those four noble truths—in other words, how to put those truths to the most skillful use. Those are the questions he asks you to focus on. Look at other questions he encourages: When … 
  13. Heedfulness & Confidence
    Heedfulness is a skillful quality of the mind. In fact, the Buddha said it’s the root of all other skillful qualities. Anxiety, however, is unskillful. It’s one of the hindrances. And it’s important that you understand the difference. That passage just now, connecting heedfulness with the ability to see dangers, makes it sound like heedfulness is anxious. But it’s not … 
  14. A Full Range of Archery Skills
     … There’s a passage where the Buddha compares the skills you learn through doing concentration to the skills of an archer. You can shoot long distances, fire shots in rapid succession, and pierce great masses. Those are three very different skills. Firing shots in rapid succession means that you’re alert to see things quickly, to recognize what’s going on, to observe what … 
  15. Enthusiasm
    One of the important skills in meditating is learning how to push yourself in an effective way—in other words, realizing that there is more to be done, you could put more effort into the practice, and figuring out how to take that realization and actually embody it, so that you’re enthusiastic to put more into the practice. It’s not just pushing … 
  16. The Heart to Keep Going
     … So you need an element of pride in here, but it’s skillful pride: the pride of mastering a skill—a harmless skill, a useful skill, a skill that can take you someplace you’ve never been before. Now, this skill may take time, but don’t think about how far away the goal is or how long it’s going to take. If … 
  17. A Skillful Attitude
     … a lack of skill in dealing with the issue of suffering. Whereas the path—virtue, concentration, discernment—is a skillful approach. So in looking at the meditation as a skill, looking at the whole issue of where there’s dissatisfaction, where there’s discomfort, where there’s dis-ease as something you can approach as a problem to be solved through mastering the skill … 
  18. Merit & Skill
    Years back, when I returned to Thailand to ordain, Ajaan Fuang told me that I would have to become skillful in everything in my life as a monk. He said, “It’s not just a matter of getting good at sitting with your eyes closed. There are lots of other skills you have to master, too.” And it was true. In addition to meditating … 
  19. Heedfulness
     … Each of these duties is something you also develop as a skill. And the only way you can develop a skill is to have a strong sense of how important it is to have that skill and how dangerous it is not to. They’ve done studies of people who’ve developed manual skills to a high degree of mastery, and they’ve found … 
  20. A Path of Skills
     … The images are of people who master skills—cooks, carpenters, archers—people who have to be very careful to notice what they’re doing and how they can improve it. This is where the four qualities that go into developing a skill come in. You start with desire. You have to want to master the skill, but you also have to learn how to … 
  21. Introduction: Meditation as a Skill
    The purpose of the meditation is to develop the skillful qualities in the mind. It takes the same principles that we would apply to any skill—being mindful, being alert, evaluating the results of your actions and being ingenious about figuring out new ways to solve mistakes: It takes those mental qualities and applies them directly to the mind. Think about any skill that … 
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