Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Freedom, Conditioned & Not
     … But then he began to realize that you can think skillful thoughts all day long, and although there may not be any bad karmic consequences, it is tiring to the mind. So it’s even more skillful to get the mind into concentration. When you’re in the various levels of concentration, getting the mind deeper and deeper into absorption, the level of skill … 
  3. Inner Voice Lessons
     … Instead he said, “You’ve been living like sheep, like dumb animals.” This inner conversation doesn’t become more skillful just by stopping your talking. To improve your inner conversation, you get a lot of help by learning good examples of outer conversation. The first thing to learn as you live together is how to talk to each other in skillful ways — which may … 
  4. Recovery Skills
     … But that requires that you develop some skills. And it turns out that precisely the skills you need are the ones that you develop by meditating. And the Dhamma throws in a few other extra skills as well. The first is having the right attitude toward mistakes. When the Buddha was teaching his son, the very first principles were: One, be truthful; and two … 
  5. The Gift of the Practice
     … The more skilled you are at the basic skills of meditation, the more skill you’ll be able to bring to the rest of your life. Some people think that we come here to meditate to get a particular experience, a particular kind of high, but that’s not the case at all. There are experiences that you’re going to encounter in the … 
  6. Protection
     … There’s a real skill in being truthful. In fact, all the teachings that the Buddha gives are matters of skill. You have to be skillful in being generous. In other words, acting on the right motivation, giving gifts that will be useful, giving gifts to people who use them well. You have to be skillful in being virtuous, ss in the case of … 
  7. When You Don’t Like Your Selves
     … As the skillful ones do their work, then you can put them aside, too. So look at the issue of self. It’s not as if you’re talking about a thing. You’re talking about actions, skills—or unskilled actions, but we’re trying to make them more skillful and to expand our repertoire of skillful selves. As for the unskillful ones, you … 
  8. Commit & Reflect
     … The implication here is that you want to focus not only on the present moment but also on developing skillful qualities in the present moment, because that’s what the four noble truths are all about. You see that you’re suffering because of a lack of skill in terms of your craving and ignorance. In fact, the word ignorance means, “lack of skill … 
  9. Anger
     … Just try to be more skillful in what you say, more skillful in what you do. Develop that habit of being very clear about what your intentions are, very clear about what your actions are, and about their results. When you develop that attitude in your external actions and then bring it into your meditation, you get more skillful in what you think. You … 
  10. Justice vs. Skillfulness
     … When is it skillful to interfere, when is it skillful to get involved, and what kind of interference would be skillful? What would be a wise way to be generous, virtuous, or to show goodwill? In other words, what would be a skillful way to alleviate the problem through acts of merit? Sometimes the answer is clear and sometimes it’s not. If you … 
  11. Warm Your Heart
     … It’s very much a skill. If you don’t like the idea of happiness or goodness as a skill, you’re placing a huge block in your way. Because that’s what the practice is all about. Happiness is a skill. It is possible to approach it as a skill, and to reach the highest happiness: unbinding. If you don’t want it … 
  12. Learning from Determination
     … I began to realize that his basic approach was that you learn a skill. In the course of learning that skill, you’re going to understand what the teachings are all about. In fact, it’s the skill that allows you to understand. You can’t just understand through thinking. There is some understanding that comes through thinking, but the primary emphasis was to … 
  13. Faith in Present Intentions
     … When you start thinking in that way, your heedfulness dies, and when your heedfulness dies all hope of developing any kind of skill, developing skillful qualities of the mind, will die as well. As the Buddha said, “The path to the deathless is heedfulness. When you’re heedless, it’s as if you’re already dead.” This is why we have to have conviction … 
  14. A Real Education
     … It’s the ardency that makes them skillful. In Ajaan Lee’s analysis, ardency is the discernment factor among those three. That’s because, if you’re really wise, you realize that your actions are going to make the difference between happiness and pain. So you want to do everything you can to get the mind skillful, to develop skillful qualities in the mind … 
  15. The Skills of a Hunter
    I was talking to an anthropologist one time, and he was telling me about a trend in anthropology, which is that if you’re going to go study a primitive village or tribe, you try to learn all of their skills: the weaving, cooking, building. But he added that there was one skill that anthropologists could never master, and that was hunting. It required … 
  16. Not-self in Context
     … You have to go through the process of seeing what kind of selfing is skillful and what kind of selfing is not—and when it’s skillful, when it’s not. What kind of not-selfing is skillful and what kind of not-selfing is not? When is it skillful, when is it not? You realize you that have choices for applying these perceptions … 
  17. Always Willing to Learn
     … What those types are, are the areas you tend to fall back on, the range of skills you’re already comfortable with. But you don’t want to be limited to those skills. You have to be willing to deal with uncertainties, which means being willing to develop new skills. There are certain roles that you’re comfortable filling, but things can’t progress … 
  18. May You Forever Be Well
     … That requires skill, and this is what we’re trying to develop as we meditate: the skill so that the mind is not shaken. We’re working on the skills of concentration so that the mind can stay with one object with a sense of well-being, and issues of the world can be put off to the side. So wherever you go, you … 
  19. Mastery
     … You want to be skillful all around. In this way, the Buddha takes the question out of the realm of ethics and into the realm of skill. As any craftsman or craftswoman knows, a good piece of art is accomplished not just by intending to do a good piece of art or by working from a good idea. It has to be good in … 
  20. The Safety of Dualities
     … You start developing discernment by noticing what in the mind is skillful, what in the mind is not skillful, and then pursuing greater and greater refinement in understanding what’s skillful and what’s not. You learn by comparing the two sides of a duality. In that way, you protect yourself. You have a basis for making that decision. If you believed that actions … 
  21. Doubt
     … But you do have to develop right view about what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, and the best ways to develop what’s skillful and to abandon what’s not. You can have a lot of doubt about that, because the only way you’re going to find out what’s skillful and what’s not is through the practice. If you … 
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