Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Conviction in Charge… the fact that he wouldn’t rest content with skillful qualities. In other words, as long as he hadn’t reached the ultimate level of skill, he wouldn’t say, “This is enough.” He kept looking for ways to improve his skill. He actually called this a form of discontent. He was not content with how skillful he had been so far. He wanted …
- Something New… a skillful thought, a skillful intention. Once there is a skillful intention, then you can continue it. That could be new, too, even though it’s the same skillful intention—as when you’re doing concentration practice. The fact that you’re continuing it is something good that you can keep bringing into the world, and then you learn how to reflect on yourself …
- The Karma of Narratives… That involves mastering two skills. One is simply the skill of learning to turn off a thought when it’s bad, and the other is the ability to develop your discernment as to which thoughts really are worth thinking and which ones are not. For the time being, put everything aside, every thought except the thought for what you’re going to be doing …
- Dhamma Medicine for Free… You’ve been watching them, observing them, taking notes, developing a skill. Ajaan Lee uses the word vijja, which means a combination of skill and knowledge that comes from experience and from experimenting. You learn the basic principles and then you apply them to what’s happening right here, right now, so that the skill becomes your skill, not just something you’re imposing …
- A Master of Your Thoughts… That’s a necessary skill in the maintaining. Then in the using, you start developing that skill even further. You begin to realize: This thought that came from who-knows-where—you’re going to find out where, what triggered it, and how the mind gets involved in these thoughts. What are the stages of a thought developing? For instance, there’s a little …
- Strong & Heedful… That leads to the second strength which is persistence—you just keep at the practice of getting rid of unskillful qualities in the mind and fostering skillful ones. The skillful ones are the ones that determine the quality of our life, and make it a quality life. This is why we’re sitting here meditating: our conviction that the quality of the mind is …
- Look after the Source… We have our skill and lack of skill at the moment in how we handle these things. And it’s our present karma, the new karma, that really makes all the difference. When bad things happen in the world, you can take them as an opportunity either to suffer or to not suffer. The skill lies in not suffering. You’re protecting the source …
- Independent of the World… As he said, if it weren’t possible for people to develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones, he wouldn’t teach them to develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones. But because we can do it, that’s why he taught. Think of the verbs that the Canon uses to describe his style of teaching: There’s informing, but there’s also exhorting …
- The Kamma of Meditation… Those who acted on skillful intentions with right view tended to go to higher destinations. The important word there is “tend,” because, as the Buddha saw, you can do skillful things but then have a change of heart—decide that you don’t believe in the principle of good kamma anymore. If you hold that change of heart all the way to the time …
- Heedful, Attentive, Mindful… So mindfulness is associated with heedfulness in every way, every form—skillful or unskillful. What makes it skillful is that you apply it to the right things. Here, you keep in mind what appropriate attention has taught you. At the same time, you try to be alert. This, too, is a quality that goes with heedfulness of any kind—you’re alert to what …
- Invest in the Breath… A skill that you used to have and all of a sudden it’s going away: It’s as if your arm were cut off. We tend to identify ourselves around our skills: the self as the producer, the part of us that’s able to do things so that we can have some pleasure. And the skills that we worked so hard to …
- Resisting the Germs of Defilement… When you’re alert to what’s there in the mind, it can analyze it as to what’s skillful and what’s not skillful. Sometimes this quality is equated with seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. And that doesn’t mean just knowing what the four noble truths are, but remembering what they’re for: They’re for dividing up …
- Mindreading… That’s where the real skill in meditation lies. Fortunately, there’s one quality that is always applicable, always appropriate, and that’s mindfulness, combined with alertness. In other words, keeping in mind the fact that you have to look after your mind and also remembering the various skills you’ve learned from meditation, being alert to what works and then remembering that: All …
- Effective Self-Discipline… As a meditator you need these same skills. The Buddha’s teaching comes in a lot of lists. And it’s interesting to notice the role that persistence has in almost all of them. But it’s also important to realize that persistence is not just brute effort. It’s an effort to be skillful—to figure out what works in helping the mind …
- Delusion… So it’s useful to read up on what’s skillful and what’s not, and on how to work with the mind and how to work with skillful actions in general, because it gives you a body of concepts to work with. For example, mindfulness: It’s very important to learn that mindfulness doesn’t just mean just being aware of something or …
- Honesty… A lot of the practice is a question of skill in how to act in such a way that avoids suffering, and then finally cuts through the causes of suffering. That requires a lot of precision, a lot of dedication, all the qualities that you need in developing a skill. So when you come to the practice—say you’re going to focus on …
- The Flamethrowing Mind… People suffer because of their own lack of skill. You can’t make somebody else skillful, but you can show people that it is possible to behave in a skillful way. It’s like the ways in which manual skills develop. Back in the time of the European Enlightenment, they made an encyclopedia. The encyclopedia contained a lot of articles on the manual skills …
- Escape Routes in the Present… So what this comes down to is that you have to learn these skills for finding space and well-being inside when things outside are confining, when things outside are difficult, so that you’re not constantly feeding on the thought of how difficult the conditions are. Conditions are conditions. You’ve got this alternative skill. And as you focus on the skill, the …
- Protection from Fools… So the skills you need to learn are skills to be learned right here. The place to stand to watch things is right here. The breath provides the space you can use to get out of some of the obsessions of the mind, so that when fools come into the mind, you can step back. You don’t have to go consorting with them …
- Selecting from the Teachings… The useful question is, “Okay, what is the skillful teaching to apply there?” You’re dealing with your sense of love for the person, your sense of loss. What’s the best you can do in that situation? What’s the best thing you can do with that love? Sitting around moping and feeling sorry for yourself is not a skillful application. You do …
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