Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Put Your Books Back on the Shelf
     … Learn how to make that a skill. There’s a skill to learn how not to talk to yourself and yet still be alert. It’s a good skill to have. It’s like when I was learning Thai boxing, back when I was a lay person. The very first thing they taught was how to get out of a clench. In other words … 
  3. May All Beings Be Heedful
     … And what is the middle? Remember, the Buddha said that all skillful qualities come from heedfulness. What makes them skillful? They’re the proper answer to that question that lies at the beginning of discernment: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term harm and suffering? What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” So … 
  4. True Honesty
     … This is why the issue of skillfulness is so important. It’s not a distraction. I think I’ve told you the story about the young man at the meditation retreat earlier this year who complained that the emphasis on skillfulness was a distraction from the deathless. All you had to do was open up to it and there it was, he said. Actually … 
  5. Heedfulness Is Auspicious
     … But if you have the skills of meditation, they can help you when you most need them. So that’s what you want to take. That’s what you want to develop, and of those skills, thoughts of universal goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity are really important. As you encounter thoughts of what things you did that were not skillful, or things that … 
  6. Cut Through the Narratives
     … You can focus on the fact that it’s going well and develop skillful qualities of mind or you could develop unskillful ones. The unskillful ones include getting complacent. There could be a sense of pride that goes around this, especially in places where people start comparing their jhānas. When the meditation is not going well, you can either use that as a skillful … 
  7. Timeless
     … After all, the only thing you’ll have as you face death will be the skills you’ve developed in the mind. Everything else will leave you. And as with any skill that takes time and requires practice, you do it again and again and again. There will come a point, though, when something takes hold in the mind. There are moments, experiences, that … 
  8. Mindfulness of Death
     … Finally, there’s discernment—seeing what’s skillful in the mind, what’s unskillful in the mind, and knowing how to talk yourself into doing what’s skillful and out of doing what’s unskillful, regardless of your likes or dislikes. When you reflect on the fact of your own death, remind yourself, “These are the qualities I’ve got to develop in myself … 
  9. A Happy Tradition
     … Learn some skillful humility. And some skillful pride. We have traditions that tell us not to take any pride in the fact that we’ve done good, that somehow all the good we’ve done has to be attributed to some higher power working through us. Again, that comes from a very unhappy tradition. The Buddha’s tradition is a happy one, where everybody … 
  10. Don’t Be Afraid of Mistakes
     … Where’s the territory of what’s skillful and where’s the territory of what’s not skillful? Where’s the dividing line between the two? When a particular problem comes up, how do you go about finding a solution? The people who’ve had trouble getting the mind into concentration are the ones who can tell you all the ins and outs, at … 
  11. The Rivers of Karma
     … The other skills you need, as the Buddha said, are learning how to keep the mind from being overcome by pain and being overcome by pleasure. And again these are among the skills you learn as you’re meditating. Pain comes up in the body, and you learn the appropriate ways of dealing with it. In some cases that means focusing on another part … 
  12. Undividing the Mind
     … They say that people who excel at a physical skill—and we’re not just talking about doing it well; we’re talking about doing it exceptionally well—are the ones who have a very strong sense that if you master the skill, there are a lot of benefits that come. But if you get sloppy even the least little bit, there are going … 
  13. Nobility Through Inner Strength
     … So mindfulness takes the lessons you’ve learned about the importance of your actions and whatever skills you’ve developed when developing skillful qualities in the mind and abandoning unskillful qualities, and it keeps those lessons in mind so that you can apply them all the time, not just when you’re sitting here with your eyes closed. The fourth strength is concentration, the … 
  14. Respect as a Sign of Intelligence
     … That means the realization that there are dangers out there in the world, but you can avoid those dangers if you develop skills, and so you want to learn those skills. If you try to pretend that there are no dangers out there at all, you’re going to get hit over the head pretty easily by all kinds of unexpected things. But if … 
  15. A Thread Out of the Maze
     … You can learn to make your choices more and more skillful. This is why the path is a gradual one, because it’s like developing any skill. You work at it again and again and again, gradually becoming more skillful and observant, and suddenly you see something you didn’t see before, and the only reason you see it is because of what you … 
  16. Thinking About Rebirth
     … That requires a lot of skill, more skill than most people are willing to put into a situation. Look at how the Buddha handled Angulimala. Angulimala had killed all those people. According to the Canon, it was hundreds: according to the commentaries, it was one short of a thousand. If we look at karma as a deterministic teaching, then the appropriate thing to do … 
  17. Non-Reactive Judgment
     … The Buddha said one of the functions of mindfulness on the path is to remember what right view tells you about what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s skillful and what’s not. Then you use your ability to keep that in mind to direct your efforts, to get rid of what’s unskillful and to encourage what’s skillful. Think of … 
  18. The Allure of Self
     … In the meantime, work on trying to identify with what’s skillful in the mind. Disidentify with what you can see is not skillful. As when you’re practicing concentration: Anything that comes in to interfere with the concentration, see it as not-self, not-self. If there’s any sense of self lingering in the concentration, okay, make it skillful. That way, you … 
  19. King Asoka’s Vow
     … Alertness is being alert to what you’re doing, and again, you can be doing something skillful or unskillful. But ardency is where you try to get rid of what’s unskillful and develop what’s skillful. This is where the real discernment comes in and applies both to the mindfulness and to the alertness. It’s the ardency that makes you eager to … 
  20. It’s All about Action
     … Can you focus on them and relax them at the same time? That’s an important skill: the skill that helps you stay with the body without putting undue pressure on different parts of the body. This way, you can stay here longer and longer. In this way, you get to see your mind in action: where its intentions are, what counts as an … 
  21. Not-self, Not No Self
     … In this way, you can use this sense of self in a skillful way as you’re meditating. The practice is all about learning to have a more skillful way, a more systematic way, of defining who you are, what you are, what’s your responsibility and what’s not. You’ll find that that changes as the practice progresses. This is what the … 
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