Search results for: "Skillfulness"

  1. Page 38
  2. More than Just Letting Go
     … After all, each of us suffers from craving and clinging through our own lack of skill. And no one else can come in and make us skillful. They can set a good example of what a skillful way to live would be, a skillful way to think. And they can give advice. But beyond that point, it’s up to you. What areas in … 
  3. Practice in Dying Skillfully
    Ajaan Fuang used to say that when we meditate, we’re gaining practice in the skills we’re going to need when we die. It’s true of the big problems that’ll happen as death approaches. There’ll be distraction and pain—the same problems we deal with as we’re meditating, sitting here trying to get the mind with the breath. First … 
  4. The Boundaries of Mindfulness
     … It’s remembering this issue of skillful and unskillful: where is the skillful place to focus, what are the skillful qualities of mind to bring to a situation, what are the things you’ve got to watch out for. You’ve got to keep these things in mind in a way that’s appropriate to what you’re doing right now. For instance, with … 
  5. The Lessons of Equanimity
     … The other direction of that teaching on karma is you have within you the ability to develop some skills so that whatever comes up, you don’t have to suffer from it. You can avoid doing unskillful things and actually do positively skillful things that will make a difference now and on into the future. In other words, it’s not the case that … 
  6. Perplexity
     … As for skillful thoughts, you encourage them. As the Buddha noticed, you can think some skillful things that are not involved in any sensual desire, not involved in ill will, not involved in harmfulness. But even then, sitting and thinking them for a long period of time can tire you out. So it’s even more skillful to bring the mind to concentration. So … 
  7. Fear & Anger
     … Learning how to figure out which one is appropriate right now and learning how to master it as a skill: That’s the meta-skill of the meditation. It’s the line of thinking that can set you free.
  8. Nimble with Your Questions
     … This is why the Buddha mentioned that one of his skills as a teacher was skill in questions: knowing how to deal with different questions, knowing which questions are not worth asking and which ones are. And it’s important that we bring that understanding to the practice as well. If you expect that a particular technique is going to do the work for … 
  9. As Days & Nights Fly Past
     … You can still use your skills, because all the skills of meditation are going to be useful at that point: the ability to stay focused, the ability to detect unskillful currents in the mind and then say No, the ability to maintain your right view, that your actions really are important.” And you remind yourself: Even though you may have some bad karma from … 
  10. Resistance
    Resistance October 25, 2004 The chants we do in the evening, before the meditation, are meant to put you in the right frame of mind to do the meditation, pointing out skillful ways of thinking. Whether we’re contemplating the body; issues of aging, illness, death, and karma; thoughts of goodwill; reflection on the nature of the world: All of these thoughts are designed … 
  11. In Training
     … Your skillful actions based on skillful intentions will lead to good consequences. Unskillful actions based on unskillful intentions will lead to bad consequences. It’s a simple-sounding principle, but it gets pretty complex in the working-out, especially given that there are times when an unskillful action will give pleasant results in the immediate present. Even though acting on greed, aversion, and delusion … 
  12. Dependable Friends
     … This is one of the primary skills you want to develop as you focus on the breath: how to get the breath comfortable. Focus on the breath and then explore it, learning how to get on good terms with it. This is called directed thought and evaluation, two of the factors of right concentration. When you’ve got them going well, then the other … 
  13. How to Feed Mindfulness
     … The practice of meditation is learning how to put aside the unskillful potentials, how to develop the skillful ones, and how to take advantage of the skillful ones—learning how to feed them, to give them strength, so that they basically take charge and help put an end to suffering and stress. You could, if you wanted to, sit here and spend the whole … 
  14. Cross-questioning
     … Ask yourself, “How is the way I’m thinking about the problem actually getting in the way? What if I thought in a different way?” Try to think of some skills you have, manual skills, like cooking or carpentry, playing a musical instrument, and ask yourself, “When you developed the skill, how did you approach it? What made you more skillful in that skill … 
  15. Encouraging Perceptions
     … Now, in many areas of life, we may not have many skills, in which case that second kind of self may be pretty underdeveloped. But you have to think about the fact that you do have some skills, there are some things that you do well, and so think of those as the strong members of your committee. Then learn to take the lessons … 
  16. Skillful Desire
     … What you’re doing here is that you’re taking your desire and you’re combining it with skill. As with every skill, that fact that you develop it comes from having preferences: We prefer lack of suffering over suffering, lack of harm over harm. It’s inevitable that we’re going to have preferences and desires around the path. And to develop the … 
  17. Right Resolve
    Right Resolve November 22, 2007 The more skillful you are in your search for happiness, the lighter you tread on this Earth—because you realize that happiness, to be true and lasting, has to be harmless, something that doesn’t take anything away from anyone else. Which means that it has to come from within. So that’s what we’re doing as we … 
  18. The Stakes Are High
     … You learn new skills in the present moment. And the more clearly you see what’s going on in the present moment, the more precise those skills are going to be. There are lots of different things happening here. When we focus on the breath and try to get the mind to a sense of being one and concentrated, we want to bring things … 
  19. A Safe Space Inside
     … Whatever is going to be skillful, you try to give rise to it. Whatever is not skillful, you try to abandon it. You also try to be mindful of the lessons you’ve learned about what’s right and what’s wrong. These are lessons you learn from outside, lessons you learn from your own practice. Once you’ve learned a lesson like that … 
  20. Ups & Downs
     … It’s also important to remember that discernment is not just a matter of knowing what’s skillful and what’s not skillful. It’s also a matter of learning how to talk yourself into doing what’s skillful, and talking yourself out of doing what’s unskillful. In other words, it’s strategic. Sometimes we get a sense that the Buddha’s wisdom … 
  21. A World Apart
     … And the skill with which you handle them is your responsibility. No one else can help you. Others can give you advice. They can try to comfort you. But the actual skill with which you deal with these things—the extent to which you suffer or don’t suffer—depends totally on you. And this is an issue that should take high priority in … 
  22. Load next page...