Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Acceptance Isn’t the Issue
     … Look for people you can emulate, people you can learn from, especially concerning what’s skillful and what’s not skillful: how to have conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, how to be generous, how to be virtuous, how to develop your discernment. These are things we can learn from one another. The people who embody these qualities are the people we should search … 
  3. An Island in the Flood
     … I’m going to set myself up as a teacher.” But the Buddha’s question was, “What’s the most skillful use of this knowledge?" The most skillful use, he realized, was seeing that his lives in the past didn’t go up a stairway from low to high, and then higher, higher, and higher. They would go up and down. They would go … 
  4. The Psychology of Harmlessness
     … how to understand the mind so that it can become skillful. Very skillful. All the Buddha’s analysis of mental functions is pointed to that purpose. This is why when someone was asked one time if the Buddha taught whether the world was eternal or not eternal, finite or infinite, going down the whole list of the hot issues of the day— it was … 
  5. Is ‘I Am’ the Problem?
     … the skills of the path—taking virtue as a skill, concentration as a skill, discernment as a skill. After all, what we like about what we see and hear, etc., is what we can make out of these things, either in terms of fantasies or a sense of possession or the changes we can make in the world—the same as when an artist … 
  6. Slings and Arrows of Ordinary Fortunes
     … So the teachings are all here—the skills of concentration, the skills of mindfulness, the skills of discernment—for helping us master this skill of knowing how not to suffer, how not to shoot ourselves with those extra arrows. It’s something we can do. We can catch ourselves in the midst of doing it and ask ourselves why. That ability to ask yourself … 
  7. Thinking About Rebirth
     … So there’s a very strong teaching here on skillful selfing. There’s important teaching on not-skillful selfing as well. The important teaching about skillful not-selfing would be to realize: This is yours for only the time being. It’s not really yours. What good use can you get out of it while you have it? You have youth, you have health … 
  8. You Are Not a Textbook
     … And the second is making yourself want to do what’s skillful. This applies inside the meditation and it applies outside the meditation as well. In a situation when people are making strong demands on you and you’re tired and you’re not focused, what do you draw on inside to say the skillful thing and do the skillful thing? And to figure … 
  9. Goodwill
     … The reason we’re tied up in this world of wandering on is because of our own lack of skillfulness. The same holds true for others: They’re tied up by their lack of skillfulness, too. We can learn to be skillful but we can’t make other people skillful. You can teach them how, but it’s up to them to want to … 
  10. Doubts
    One of the purposes of the practice is to develop the skill to think the thoughts you want to think, and not think the thoughts you don’t want to think. And as we all know, a lot of the meditation is about not thinking thoughts. If any thoughts do come up as you’re trying to focus on the breath, if they’re … 
  11. Exercising Discernment
    As we meditate, we’re working on a skill. And it’s important to reflect on what you need to bring to an activity to turn it into a skill. The Buddha offers a number of ways to reflect on that. One is his description of the qualities of mind you have to bring to mindfulness practice. As we were saying earlier today, the … 
  12. A Sense of Yourself
     … If they have all the power, if they have all the selves and you have no self, then who’s going to do battle? Who’s going to have the techniques? Who’s going to have the skills? Who’s going to be able to work on the skills that are needed? You’ve got to develop a skillful sense of self. This is … 
  13. Self-Healing
     … So learn your skills: Learn how to breathe in a skillful way; learn how to talk to yourself in a skillful way; hold skillful perceptions in mind; focus on your feelings in a way that gives you strength. In this way, you’re taking care of what you have to be responsible for, you don’t make yourself sick, and you don’t place … 
  14. One Person
     … A lot of the skill in the practice is knowing when to use which: when not-self is skillful and when self is skillful—and what kinds of not-self can be unskillful, as well as which kinds of self can be skillful. But for the time being, let those questions settle back in the background. You want to maintain this sense of stillness … 
  15. Protection, Inside & Out
     … And then you’re ardent, trying to get rid of unskillful qualities and develop skillful ones. That ardency is based on a quality called appropriate attention. That, too, is one of your inner refuges. It’s what lies at the beginning of right view. That’s something you have to remember as well. Appropriate attention focuses attention on questions of: What is skillful? What … 
  16. Change
     … As he said, “Skillful qualities can be developed. Unskillful ones can be abandoned.” If skillful qualities couldn’t be developed, there’d be no point in his teaching. If unskillful qualities couldn’t be abandoned, there’d be no point in his teaching. So those kinds of change are actually good. But then again, he didn’t say that all change was good. There … 
  17. Skills for Dying Well
     … These are the skills you’re going to need. And these are the skills you’re working on right now. The ajaans like to talk about this. They say that meditation is preparing yourself to die well. There’s a skill there. A lot of people, when death comes, just surrender. Or else they go down kicking, but without really realizing what they’re … 
  18. Unskillful Voices
     … Then one of the results of making skillful choices is that it also makes skillful choices easier to make. You’re coming from a position of strength. You’re coming from a position not of poverty, but of wealth. You’ve got this food and water for the mind. Ultimately that leads to the strength of discernment, when you begin to see through all … 
  19. Your Higher Power
     … So learn to work on these skills: the skills of getting focused, the skills of allowing the comfortable breath energy to spread through the body. And also work on skillful ways of thinking about what’s going on in the mind, remembering that you’re not alone when you’re suddenly faced with a very strong desire. You’ve got your skills. And you … 
  20. Not Getting What You Want
     … You’re developing new skills. The word for ignorance, avijjā, means not only not knowing, but also lack of skill. The discernment that comes with mastering these skills is what enables you to see these things for yourself. You’re not just cutting out the Buddha’s brilliant ideas and concepts and pasting them on your mind or on your experience. You’re actually … 
  21. Skillful Judgment
     … The men in prison were willing to accept the teaching that there are skillful ways of behaving and unskillful ways of behaving, and that you’ve really got to do your best to work on developing the skillful ones. The men in the men’s group, though, didn’t like the idea of being judged as skillful or unskillful. One of them had heard … 
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