Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Endurance & Restraint
     … Look at your thoughts, your words, and your deeds as an area that you want to master as a skill. We’re born into this human realm, we have these human abilities, we should try to think of all our activities as an attempt to be skillful in our thoughts, our words, and our deeds, to look for every opportunity to be skillful. You … 
  3. Shaping the Present
     … The first one is called analysis of qualities, in which you try to figure out what the mind is doing that’s skillful and what it’s doing that’s not skillful. The other two are persistence and then rapture. Persistence is when you try to do things really skillfully. It’s that quality of ardency again. And specifically you learn how to motivate … 
  4. Start by Relaxing Your Hands
     … Right effort is simply noticing which attitudes of the mind are skillful and which ones are unskillful, then trying consistently to encourage the skillful ones and let go of the unskillful ones. And you notice very quickly as you sit here, it’s not just a matter of the mind. The way you hold the body can also be skillful or unskillful, in the … 
  5. Judging Your Efforts
     … Of course, everybody wants to jump past that to get to the real music, but a cleanly played scale is something really nice and it requires a lot of skill. Then, of course, you can transfer that skill to the music, but you have to be willing to go back when need be. Realize that if the music’s not going very well, maybe … 
  6. Learning from What You Do
     … So we are working on a skill here. And as with any skill, it partly depends on your own powers of observation and partly on finding other people who are skillful. As the Buddha said, when you get things wrong, it’s good to talk them over with someone else who is on the path. This is the other factor the Buddha extolled, the … 
  7. Inner Worlds
     … Here, though, we have the skills, we’ve learned the skills. So take advantage of them. Because otherwise, there’s no real escape from the suffering we cause ourselves. Remember the Buddha’s teachings on the four noble truths: The suffering that weighs the mind down is the suffering that comes from inside, not from things outside. If we’re constantly focusing on things … 
  8. Views & Vision
     … And if you decide to stick with the skillful path, that means that the skillful qualities you had in the past are the important ones. If you stray away from the skillful path, that means the unskillful qualities, the unskillful things you did in the past are the important ones. So as you shape the present, you’re not only shaping the present, but … 
  9. Facing Pain Straight On
     … He’s saying that we’re not skilled in the four noble truths, not skilled in seeing things in terms of four noble truths, we’re not skilled in performing the duties or tasks that are appropriate for the four noble truths. So the insights come in the same way that you gain insights as you’re mastering a skill. Bit by bit. You … 
  10. The Humane Quality of the Path
     … But with lots of different members in the committee, you can change the balance of power in the committee, train the skillful members to be even more skillful, even more strategic, so that they have more influence over the mind. In other words, skillful actions become more attractive, and you get better at them. That’s one way of dealing with the unskillful members … 
  11. Sensitivity & Strength
     … What’s the appropriate skill right here, right now? Some people would have us believe that there’s just one skill to the meditation, such as noting or accepting or whatever. But actually, there are four basic skills that you have to learn how to apply appropriately to whichever category is central to the mind at that point. When there’s stress, you want … 
  12. Skillful Fears
     … putting energy into trying to do whatever is skillful and to abandon whatever’s unskillful. Then there’s mindfulness: keeping in mind what’s skillful and what’s not, and keeping in mind the need to develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones. And that leads to concentration, which is where you get your real nourishment. The Buddha compares concentration to food for the … 
  13. Making an Effort
     … Right effort is defined as generating desire, upholding your intent, putting forth an effort to abandon any unskillful mental qualities that have arisen, to prevent unskillful mental qualities that haven’t arisen from arising, to give rise to skillful mental qualities and, once skillful mental qualities have arisen, to develop them and bring them to completion. So the effort is primarily an effort in … 
  14. The Limits of Control
     … If it’s a self based around the skills you develop in the practice, it’s actually useful. It’s not sentimental. It’s not based on some abstract idea. It’s based on your skill level, so you want to expand your skills so they can lead you to greater happiness and finally to the point where you don’t need those skills … 
  15. A Friend to the World
     … There’s skillful friendship and unskillful friendship. And it’s obvious, of course, that the Buddha wants us to develop the qualities of true and skillful friends. So it’s good to stop and think about what that means. If you’re going to be a friend to the world, you want to be a good friend. The Buddha recognized two types of worthwhile … 
  16. How to Be Happy
     … If you do this with some skill, you find that it creates a sense of well-being. If you do it without any skill, it can be pretty miserable. So try to be observant because that’s what skill is all about. And remind yourself, the whole purpose of this is to find happiness, true happiness, a happiness that goes deeper than ordinary happiness … 
  17. Strong Through Admirable Friendship
     … You really develop from that friendship, and it gives you more and more motivation to want to be skillful, as skillful as you can. And to be really concerned about your own actions. A lot of people think, “Well, as long as I want something that’s really good, I can do whatever I want to get it.” In other words, the ends justify … 
  18. The Middle Way
     … After all, following the path is a skill. When you work on a skill, you want to be able to look objectively at your handiwork and say, “This looks really good.” That’s because you’ve put a lot of effort into it, you’ve put a lot of time and attention, and the effort and the results come out well. Even if they … 
  19. A Trustworthy Mind
     … Then there’s discernment, which, in the sutta where the Buddha talks about these qualities, is described as discernment into arising and passing away, seeing how things arise in the mind, seeing how they pass away, understanding how and why they arise, coupled with a sense of when something arising is skillful or not. The things that are skillful, you want to encourage; things … 
  20. Whatever It Takes
     … So here’s an opportunity to learn that skill, to develop that skill.” If you find yourself not doing well with it, just remind yourself that the only way you grow is by learning how to deal with the things for which you’re not talented, that don’t come easily. I was talking to a man trained in martial arts this past weekend … 
  21. Don’t Just Fatten Your Mind
     … True happiness comes from having skills—being able to maneuver through the difficulties of life without suffering from them—and you don’t learn those skills simply by indulging in pleasures. In fact, the more you indulge in most pleasures, the weaker you become. When you get hooked on certain pleasures, you get really irritated when you can’t have them. Those are the … 
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