Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- The Fourth Frame of Reference… Mindfulness is what helps you remember to look for what’s skillful and unskillful; analysis of qualities—which is nurtured by appropriate attention—is what enables you to recognize skillful and unskillful qualities as they arise; and persistence is what carries through with the desire to develop the skillful and abandon the unskillful ones. Analysis of qualities actually helps you in many ways. It …
- Standing Outside Your Thoughts… The Buddha gives you skills not only in passing judgment on your thoughts, but also in learning how to stop the thoughts that are not worth thinking and to encourage the ones that are. He talks about five skills all together. When a distracting thought comes up as you’re meditating, the first approach is to simply note the fact that it’s a …
- Ways to Think… These are precisely the skills you’re going to need as death occurs. So remind yourself that no matter what happens in life, no matter how bad things get, there’s always a skillful response—and that you benefit and the people around you benefit as you try to find that response and act on it. The second way of using these reflections is …
- Healing Skills… It’s a skill, a healing skill. This way, whatever comes up in the mind, you have a way of healing the wounds in the mind. Whatever comes up in the body, you find the breath actually has a lot of impact on the way different illnesses going on in the body. Any illnesses that come from stress or tension will gradually disappear. As …
- A Simple Path Through a Complex Map… So here the Buddha is laying things out in their complexity to show you why his approach works, and then he focuses you on the loop of getting things past appropriate attention and skillful intentions. Whatever comes up, apply virtue, concentration, and discernment to loop it through those two factors, attention and intention, in their skillful forms. That’s how the end of suffering …
- Unhindered at Death… How do you overcome doubt? You overcome doubt by observing what’s skillful and unskillful in the mind. What are you doing right now that’s skillful? Whichever thoughts coming through the mind are skillful, hold on to those. As for the unskillful ones, don’t let yourself wander off in their direction. See that this really does clear up the mind, and that …
- Refuge in the Dhamma… You can learn to be more and more skillful in how you shape your experience. And it’s worth developing this skill because your actions have such a huge impact on your experience. This is where the concept of heedfulness comes in—that you really do want to be careful. You want to be meticulous, even about little things. One of the teachings the …
- The Duties of Compassion… So when you’re spreading those thoughts of goodwill, that’s the thought you’re spreading: “May all beings act on skillful intentions.” And skillful intentions are informed by right views, so: “May all beings have right views.” This is why, when the Buddha taught the four noble truths, it was an act of compassion: to help beings—anyone who was willing to listen …
- Believe in Your Actions… Because there are skillful and unskillful actions, you want to abandon unskillful ones and replace them with skillful ones. The whole rest of the path grows from that. So what we want to find out is, okay, what’s the payoff when you really believe in your actions? Well, it’s not anything you’re going to know just by looking or thinking. It …
- Fighting off Ignorance… And then, in that context, develop the skills you need. The knowledge that the Buddha is talking about here is not an either/or kind of thing, where either you know it or you don’t. It’s more like the gradually developing knowledge that comes with a gradually developing skill, because each of the four noble truths has a skill, a task appropriate …
- Shoulds & Desires… There are also the desires to be skillful, to develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones. That’s in the other half of the four noble truths, the skillful half. You can divide the four truths into two sides: There’s the unskillful cause, craving, and the undesirable result, which is suffering. Then there’s the skillful cause, which is the noble eightfold path …
- Trust in Heedfulness… Is it going to be skillful or not? If it’s not a skillful intention, don’t act on it. If it is skillful, be clear about it. As when you’re meditating: Sit down and remember that you have a purpose for being here. Remind yourself of that purpose every time you meditate. This is why we have the chanting in the evening …
- Right View… the desire to learn how to create something really skillful out of them—which includes learning to develop skillful desires before you ultimately let them go. This is a basic pattern in the Buddha’s path. The fourth noble truth is to abandon unskillful states and to give rise to skillful states in the mind so you can understand what’s involved in giving …
- Guardian Meditations… And again, many of the images and analogies have to do with skills: Being a skillful meditator is like being a skillful cook, carpenter, or archer. There’s a skillful way to perceive; there’s even a skillful way to feel. Feeling comes not only from raw data, streaming in from the outside, but also from an element of fabrication and mental impulse. A …
- Wisdom for Dummies Revisited… Then ask yourself, “When is it skillful to identify with this idea? And when is it skillful to identify with that idea?” You have the freedom to choose. Selfing is a verb. It’s an activity, a kind of kamma. And as with all kinds of kamma, the question is, “When is it skillful? When is it not?” So give yourself a little more …
- To Practice Dying… That way, the skills you develop here are going to see you through all kinds of difficulties in life, all the way through death. So focus on mastering them well, so that instead of having willy-nilly to place your hopes on craving, you can place your hopes on the skills that come from being mindful, alert, knowledgeable, seeing things in terms of the …
- To Sustain Your Practice… So appropriate attention means paying attention to what you’re doing while at the same time keeping that question in mind: “What’s skillful, what’s unskillful? What should I do if I’m inclined to do something unskillful? What can I do to learn how to do what’s skillful? When I’m already doing something skillful, how can I maintain it?” You …
- Wise about Happiness… And ardency is wisdom in realizing that this is something really worth doing, worth doing well, and it sets to work at the skill that’s involved. That’s the kind of discernment the Buddha was talking about: strategic discernment, discernment in action. After all, as he points out, some kinds of happiness are not noble, others are noble. And among the ignoble forms …
- Ironclad Technique vs. No Technique… But the pleasure that comes from mastering a skill is one of the highest joys. For a lot of us, our joys come from consuming, taking things in. But there’s a higher level of joy that comes from mastering a skill, knowing that you can handle different situations. You’ve got techniques—plural—that you can apply, depending on what the situation is …
- The Identity Crutch… The process of following the path develops your skills in a sense of making you more sensitive, more alert—all the skills you’re going to need for awakening. But you don’t need to have a clearly articulated idea of awakening in order to follow the path. That’s one of the reasons why the Buddha didn’t talk about the goal that …
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