Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Conviction & Focus… Your conviction that you’ll need these skills will help keep you motivated to exert right persistence; developing what’s skillful, abandoning what’s not, and to use your discernment as to what’s really important in life: trying to get a handle on this problem of why the mind keeps doing things that are going to cause itself suffering. From there, you can …
- The Best Use of Your Time… And you find that you benefit, because the skill of a trained mind underlies all the other skills you might develop, whether they’re physical skills or mental skills. The discipline that’s required to keep the mind on one object and to be very observant: These skills can be applied to every activity in life that you might want to pursue. So the …
- Motivation… And if you don’t work on the skills, there’s going to be a lot of suffering. If you do work on the skills, you can avoid the suffering. Heedfulness means you have a choice. It’s not just a matter seeing dangers and getting all upset and scared. It’s the heedfulness that allows you to develop skill because you know there …
- Cooking the Present Moment… So instead of looking for the intensity of a pleasure—nice things happening to you—learn to take pleasure in your skills, the skills that you develop as a meditator: the skills in virtue, concentration, discernment, learning how to deal with pleasure, learning how to deal with pain, and developing that unlimited state of mind that goes with the brahmaviharas. Those are the skills …
- Strength of Discernment… When something comes into mind, you have to ask yourself: “Why is it there?” And then you look in terms of what the Buddha calls its diversity: “Is this skillful? Is this not? How skillful is it?” And if it’s not skillful, you’ve got to get rid of it. You have to figure out what the cause was so that you can …
- Heedful of Small Dangers… The dangers are there but we have the power to ward them off by developing good skillful qualities in the mind. He once said that heedfulness lies at the base of all skillful qualities. So when you respect being heedful, it’s like having respect for the skillful side of your mind, the side that can lead to true happiness. So have some respect …
- Clinging & the End of Clinging… It’s not like you’re totally having to abandon your old skills. In some cases, it’s just a matter of learning how to convert your old skills to a new purpose. But there are some old skills and some ways of acting that are simply no longer appropriate, because the way we act creates our sense of what we are. That means …
- Knowledge over Fear… And that can eat away at a lot of the skillful qualities of the mind right there. Craving for becoming: That means is wanting to take on a particular identity in a particular world of experience. And again, some becomings are okay. The becoming that you would like to become a meditator, you would like to be skillful in the meditation, you’d like …
- Fear of Death… That’s a really important skill. So as you’re sitting here struggling with pain and distraction, realize that it’s not just a little thing you’re doing here. You’re learning an important skill. You’re working on skills that are going to stand you in good stead for a long time to come. Each time you’ve learned how to pull …
- Visakha Puja – Shaking the Earth… If, in developing skillful qualities, people didn’t gain true happiness, the Buddha wouldn’t have recommended it. But because we do gain true happiness in developing skillful qualities, that’s why he taught these things. This is how we begin our practice of Dhamma in line with the Dhamma: by trying to develop skillful qualities in the mind, as when we’re meditating …
- Take the One Seat… This is probably the most important skill you need as a meditator: watching your own mind as it’s making choices, and then looking at the results. When you can watch that, you can begin to gain a sense of what works and what doesn’t work, what’s skillful and what’s not, where the different pains and sufferings you’re dealing with …
- Values of the Noble Ones… It’s basically thinking, “What would be the skillful thing to do here?” You want to think in this way because it’s through your skillful actions that you’re going to be happy. If there’s any way you can induce other people to be skillful in their actions, too, that’s going to make them happy. They may not realize it yet …
- Heedfulness All the Way Through… You see that there are some things in the mind that are skillful, others that are unskillful, and this is where your actions come from. You do your best to promote the skillful qualities inside: things like renunciation, goodwill, compassion. And get rid of the unskillful ones: sensuality, ill will, cruelty. But again, you realize that if you really want to be secure, you …
- Choiceful Awareness… So remember that what we’re developing here is a skill, and the skill has to go through very basic steps. Don’t think that you’re too advanced for those basics. They’re basic not because they’re simple but because they’re important, like the basic principle of kamma: that our lives are being shaped by the choices we make. We’d …
- Respect for Tranquility & Insight… This is especially hard for people who have skills in some areas and who want to do the things they’re skillful in. It’s hard to go back and start over with a new skill, because all you can see is how your skills are not measuring up to the skills of the Buddha. Remember, where did the skills of the Buddha come …
- The Breath Soufflé… After all, mindfulness has the role of remembering to do what’s skillful and to abandon what’s unskillful. If something unskillful comes up, you’re mindful to bring it to an end. If something skillful has not come up, you make it come into being and then you try to maintain it. These are the duties of mindfulness. These duties often get sloughed …
- Questioning & Acceptance… You have to see the connection, because it’s in the connection that the whole issue of skillfulness arises. You’re going to do something and you hope for a certain effect. If you get the effect and it really is good, then you know that the action is skillful. There has to be that relationship between cause and effect for the whole notion …
- How Completion is Found… And you want to be the sort of person who habitually tries to master the most skillful strategy in any given situation. So when you look back on the practice, if you need some encouragement when you start getting discouraged about how things are going, remind yourself, “Well, at least I have this good habit, which is trying to figure out the skillful thing …
- Three Weapons… The mistakes you made came from your own lack of skill, and if you don’t work on those skills right now, you’re going to keep on making those same mistakes.” So the solution to dealing with issues in the past is to focus on your lack of skill in the present moment: the way the mind talks to itself, the way the …
- Acceptance… He provides guidance in how to develop these skills. It’s like being a sculptor. You’ve got a piece of marble. The marble may have some cracks here and there, it may have a peculiar shape, and if you’re not very skilled, you can’t make much out of it. But if you’re skilled, you might make something really good. There …
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