Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Dichotomies
     … This is where the issue of skillful and unskillful plays itself out most clearly in dependent co-arising. With attention, it’s the way you look at things. There are skillful ways of looking at things and unskillful ways. The skillful ways have to do with looking at things in terms of cause and effect. Unskillful ways would include looking at things in terms … 
  3. We All Start with an Impure Heart
     … Even the desire to be skillful is skillful in and of itself, so keep that desire going. Where you’re really done-in, is when you have no desire to be skillful at all. So at the very least, nurture that desire: “I want to be skillful. I want to act in ways that are not harmful.” And so even when you’re acting … 
  4. Look After Yourself with Ease
     … There are all kinds of skills you need to look after yourself. Ajaan Lee pointed out in his autobiography that as a young boy, he decided to learn not only the skills of men’s work, but also the skills of women’s work: how to sew, how to weave, how to cook, so that if he ever had to depend on himself, he … 
  5. Refuge
     … They’ve done studies of people who are really skillful in external skills, and they’ve found that one of the essential ingredients is having a very strong sense of the dangers that come when you’re not skillful. People, for instance, who are really good at being surgeons have a strong sense of the damage they can do if they’re not skillful … 
  6. Skilled in Aims
    That chant just now is called the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta because the first words are* karaṇīya*, “what should be done.” The whole phrase is, “what should be done by one skilled in aims.” To be skilled in aims, you have to think about the long-term: What would be conducive to a true, long-term happiness? Much of the sutta is about goodwill. You … 
  7. Meaningful Freedom
     … He was more comfortable with comparing the practice to skills you can develop—the skills of carpentry, the skills of cooking, the skills of warriors. You explore your freedom of choice, the range you have right now, as you try to master the skills of mindfulness, the skills of concentration, all the skills of the path. So you have some freedom of choice, and … 
  8. Factors for Awakening
     … You’re trying to detect what’s skillful and what’s not. As you combine this factor with mindfulness, you’re approaching mindfulness as a skill. You’re specifically looking for what you’re doing that’s skillful, what’s not skillful, and what you can do to take what’s not skillful and make it more skillful. Actually following through with that is … 
  9. You Can’t Eat the Buddha
     … Our knowledge isn’t skillful; our desires aren’t skillful. And this is something that only we can take care of ourselves, because no one can teach another person to be skillful. You can teach people how they might try to train themselves to be skillful, but you can’t take your skill and put it in somebody else’s head or hands. They … 
  10. One Step at a Time
     … So the ability to focus exclusively on what’s happening right here, right now is a very useful skill. But it’s not the only skill we have to develop while meditating. Some people want to make the whole meditation just that: being in the present moment. But that’s only one of the skills we need to develop. There’s also the skill … 
  11. Meditator, Mediator
     … We’re working on skills. Skills are not all or nothing. You gradually develop skill over time, and it’s in learning how to be patient that a skill can develop. Look at the Buddha’s teachings on ignorance, the very beginning of dependent co-arising: Ignorance of what? It’s not ignorance of a thing, or a state, or a principle, something that … 
  12. Mindfulness, the Gatekeeper
     … You can teach the basics, but as for your student’s becoming skillful, that’s something he or she has to do independently. The student has to use his or her own powers of observation to become more sensitive and really want to develop the skill. You can’t force a skill down somebody’s throat, but you can become more skillful yourself. It … 
  13. Heightened Skillfulness
     … In fact, you could say this is the part that goes beyond skillfulness—or you could say that it’s skillfulness of a very special kind. After all, when the Buddha was searching for nibbāna, he kept framing his search as the search for what is skillful. Of course, that’s skillful in the ultimate degree. When we think about skillfulness, we think about … 
  14. Freedom Undefined
     … It’s a skill — the skill we’re working on right here, the skill that takes you out of having to live the household life or having to live the life of a monk. Without this skill, those are the only choices you have. Derived from them are lots of other little choices, but they’re all trapped inside those two categories. What we … 
  15. In Search of What’s Skillful
     … He went in search of what is skillful. When he left home, he went out in search of what is skillful. When he went to study with the different teachers, he was in search of what is skillful. When the two teachers didn’t satisfy him, he went off in search of what is skillful, going to the banks of the Nerañjara River to … 
  16. Urgency & Contentment
     … They say that people who’ve really mastered skills have a very strong sense of the value of the skill. This comes from both of these dimensions: realizing the good that comes when you’ve mastered the skill and the dangers that face you if you don’t. So as a good meditator, you have to learn to apply both types of thinking, and … 
  17. Overcoming Complacency
     … Okay, that’s a much more skillful “I,” or a much more skillful sense of self, than a lot of other things you could be doing right now. So hang on to it while it’s skillful. Try to get one with the sense of mindfulness, one with the sense of immersion in the breath. And even though there may be a sense of … 
  18. The Skills of Truth & Calm
     … As the Buddha indicates through many images in the Canon, we’re working on a skill. He compares meditation to being a skilled archer, a skilled cook, a skilled carpenter, a goldsmith. It’s good to think about what that imagery means. When you’re working on a skill, you have to get really sensitive to what you’re doing. If you want to … 
  19. The Perfection of Freedom
     … What this means is that we don’t learn new skills. Why is it important to learn new skills? Because the more skills you learn, (1) the more skillfully you can deal with the situations of life, and (2), the more you begin to explore the potential for freedom here in the present moment. You give yourself more choices. As you develop skills, in … 
  20. The Gradual Path of Skill
     … So what do you do? You try to develop skillful qualities as best you can. In fact, the process of developing skillful qualities is in and of itself a skill. And as with any skill, there are gradations. Given the amount of virtue you can develop, and the amount of concentration, your discernment will get more and more subtle, more and more precise as … 
  21. Beyond Duality
     … As Ajaan Fuang once said, there’s one skill in getting the mind to settle down, and then another skill in getting it to stay there. It’s a different kind of skill. It’s subtler and requires a steadier hand. Again, the only way you’re going to learn this is by noticing what works and what doesn’t work. In other words … 
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