Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Good Heart, Good Mind… We’re working on a skill that requires patience, it requires a lot of discernment, and it requires determination. Some people find it easy for the mind to settle down; other people find it a lot harder. But because it’s a skill that everybody should master, the fact that it doesn’t come easily should not be an obstacle. You have to learn …
- Driving Lessons… If it’s skillful, it’s part of the path. Our problem is that our unskillful desires have lots of tricks, and our skillful desires tend to be pretty clueless—they’re well-intentioned, but they don’t have the techniques to win out over the crafty ones. So as we meditate, we’re learning more techniques. We’re arming our skillful desires: the …
- For When the World Can’t Help You… You really want to master this practice as a skill, because this is the one skill that will hold you in good stead, when, as I said, even the best doctors can’t help you anymore. So the meditation is a combination of technique and values. The main value, of course, is heedfulness—realizing you need to develop these skills for your own safety …
- Kamma & Rebirth—A Handful of Leaves… not letting himself rest satisfied or content with skillful qualities. If there was a way he could make the mind more skillful, he would do it. It was because of his sense of urgency, his sense of the dangers that are there. Even when you’ve done a lot of good, and at the moment your karmic field is sprouting nothing but good seeds …
- Mind in & of Itself… Are they coming from skillful motives, or are they coming from unskillful ones? Are they leading the mind in skillful directions or unskillful ones? This is looking at the mind “in and of itself.” Where do the thoughts come from? What do they do to the mind? You’re looking at them as part of a causal process. They may be perfectly right, but …
- Committed to the Breath… The skills that you develop around the breath are really useful skills, and they’re skills that can help you all the way through life. My father was a carpenter, and over the years he got to be a really good joiner. He made really nice furniture, and his shop was his escape. When he was tired of being in the house, tired of …
- The Buddha’s Standards or Yours?… Sometimes they have very little to do with whether the impulse is skillful or not skillful. A lot of it has to do with things we like and don’t like. But then our likes are very arbitrary. Seeing them as fabricated is going to be a huge step in making it a lot easier to practice. You may hold onto a particular like …
- Thoughts with Fangs… The intention you can gauge as to whether it’s skillful or not, the results you can gauge as to whether they are skillful or not. What kind of person you are, how good or bad you are, that’s not anything you can gauge at all. If you try to do it, it really gets in the way. So your duty here is …
- Why We Train the Mind… Warriors needed skills. They had to master archery. They had to master horse-riding, all kinds of different things. In that case, mastery doesn’t depend so much on definitions as it does on getting a feel for things. And as with any skill, the more you master the skill, the more your sense of the different elements of the skill begins to grow …
- Just Events… If you would like a certain technique to work in a certain way but it’s not working that way, and you let your preferences get in the way of admitting that, you’ll never get skilled. The skill requires that you be a fair observer. But the Buddha’s image is also there to remind you that you can stand anything. The earth …
- Empathetic Joy… Just realize that there are people not only being happy but also people doing skillful things. Wherever that’s happening, you’re happy for them. Cast your mind out. Think of some examples and ask yourself, “Why would you not be happy for their happiness?” At some point, you’ll come around to the quality of resentment in the mind. If you’re sitting …
- The Noble Pursuit of Happiness… And it’s a skill that you can then share with others. You can’t make them skillful, but you can give advice. And, through your example, you can show other people: This is how it’s done. We need more people like this in the world. So learn how to develop all four of the brahmaviharas as a way of adjusting your attitude …
- Inconstancy… Once you’re mindful of the breath, for instance, you begin to see that there are skillful and unskillful qualities arising in the mind and that you’ve got to learn how to distinguish them. That’s called analysis of qualities, the second factor for awakening. Then you foster the effort to do away with the unskillful ones and to encourage the skillful ones …
- The Wisdom of Ardency… Right effort builds on right view in the sense that it makes the distinctions between skillful actions and unskillful actions, skillful qualities of mind and unskillful qualities of mind, and then it tries to do something about them. You have the duties of the four noble truths. You try to comprehend stress, abandon the cause, realize the cessation of stress, and develop the path …
- Consistently on the Path… That way, you can continually bring knowledge and skill to the way you talk to yourself, to the way you picture things to yourself. The word vijja, in Pali, the opposite of avijja, or ignorance, means both knowledge and skill. That is, avijja, ignorance, can also mean lack of skill. We’re working on a skill here. It’s like learning how to play …
- Right View, Right Attention… Appropriate attention is the quality of mind that takes what you’ve learned from right view about what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, what leads to suffering, what leads away from suffering, and actually applies that knowledge—in this case, each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out. What this means is that you’re approaching the present moment with …
- Stubborn Clinging… You notice as you go through life that the more skills you have, the wider the range of different senses of self you can develop around those skills. You have an enlarged sense of what you can manipulate, what you control, and if one set of skills doesn’t help in a situation, you can try another. Mastering concentration gives you a new range …
- Alighting on the Dhamma… And whether it’s a skill that comes easily or a skill that comes hard, it’s a skill you’ve got to master. And fortunately, it’s something human beings can do. This is where that element of conceit that Ven. Ananda talked about is useful: “Other people can do this. They’re human beings. I’m a human being. I can do …
- You’re Already Dead… This practice is recommended for people who have already developed a sense of what’s skillful and what’s not, and desire to do what’s skillful, because there are people in this world who would like to come back and inflict a little revenge if they had the chance. But if you’re serious about doing what’s skillful—trying to be compassionate …
- The Power of Present Kamma… You learn these skills and then whatever the suffering is, it’s something that can be overcome. Even though there may be bad things coming in from the past, you still don’t have to suffer from them because your present karma is what determines what you experience. And that’s something that you can master. That’s a skill that you can work …
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