Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- The Lightened Mind… Etaṁ buddhāna-sāsanaṁ. “Not doing any evil, developing your skillfulness to the highest level, and then cleansing the mind so that it’s totally clean. This is the teachings of the Buddhas.” That’s how you get from patience and endurance to unbinding. That message is then boiled down to one line at the very end of the last verse: Adhicitte ca āyogo: Etaṁ …
- Contentment… Contentment here means having just a few tools and learning to content yourself with learning how to be skillful with them. So many skills in life grow out of this, the fact that you have only one or two tools, and so you’ve got to learn how to use them well in lots of ways. You develop unexpected skills. People who have too …
- Fix Your Views… pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain, the purpose being to point out that skillful actions lead to pleasure, and unskillful ones to pain. That way, you can motivate your listener to act on skillful intentions. It’s not the time to point out that even pleasant feelings, on one level, are painful, for then the listener would have no motivation to act on skillful …
- Truth in Action… In other words, we see that something is good, it’s going to be skillful, and we do everything we can to do it. We’re true to our knowledge; we’re true to our discernment. It’s when you make up your mind to do something good and skillful, and you stick with it, maintain that determination. Being true to that determination: That …
- Between Either & Or… But skillfulness doesn’t work that way. In some areas there’s a very clear right and wrong. Just like those “Bear Awareness” signs in Alaska. There’re some areas with very clear dos-and-don’ts. For example, as the Buddha pointed out, killing is never skillful. Stealing is never skillful. Illicit sex is never skillful. Lying is never skillful. Divisive speech, coarse …
- True to the Practice… As with any skill, it’s the people who have a strong sense of the dangers that come from not mastering the skill, and the advantages that come from mastering it: Those are the people who will work hard at the skill and have a real chance of mastering it. As the Buddha said, there is a happiness that’s timeless, that doesn’t …
- Significance… On the one hand, the teaching that skillful actions should be developed and unskillful ones should be abandoned. And then from that, you can draw out the four noble truths and their duties: comprehending suffering, abandoning its cause—the cause there, of course, would be an unskillful action; developing the path, which is a skillful action; and realizing the cessation of suffering. Everything you …
- Patience & Endurance… If the mind is well trained, then it’s going to do things skillfully, to have more skillful intentions—to at least be able to hold its unskillful intentions in check, and to develop more skillful ones in their place. So as we meditate, we’re working on skillful intentions. What’s skillful right now? Try to get the mind to settle down. We …
- Balancing the Bases for Concentration… Insight comes from your ability to look at what you’ve done and to decide whether it’s skillful or not—or, if it’s somewhat skillful, how it might be more skillful. So learn to balance the times when you simply focus on the breath without asking too many questions, aside from asking yourself what kind of breathing would feel good now, and …
- Ready to Evacuate… Or as the passage from the Canon says, “We’re the owners of our actions.” Those are the things you want to hold on to—your actions—in the sense that you want to hold on to your ability to do skillful things, to make skillful choices. So right now the skillful choice is to stay in the present moment. Stay with the object …
- Free Not to Suffer… You commit yourself to doing the skillful thing, and then you reflect on how well you’re doing. It’s in this way that you take advantage of that freedom to choose in the present moment, to choose what you’re going to do. Focus in on doing the most skillful thing possible, and that way you get sensitive to the mind. The mind …
- To Be Trustworthy… So right now you’re ardent to develop only skillful qualities, skillful thoughts around the body, and to abandon unskillful ones. You’re alert to what’s actually going on in the mind with regard to the body. And you keep in mind the determination you want to get the best things out of the body before you have to let it go. The …
- Your Highest Aspiration… Some of them are skillful, some of them are not, and they tend to pull in opposite directions. If someone were to appear in front of you right now and say, “Okay, you have three wishes,” what would you say? What would you wish for? Do you have skillful intentions already well formulated? It’s a huge help to the practice if you can …
- Lift Your Mind… There is a skill that can be developed, but each of us has to develop for him or herself. No one else can make you skillful. You’re the one who has to learn—from trial and error, and being really observant—that you can really lift the quality of your mind. The Buddha’s image for discernment is a person who climbs a …
- A Sucker for Random Memories… Knowing that you face difficulties that are going to be a lot more difficult than, say, a pain that you have to endure while you meditate, requires you to be stricter with yourself about the skills you develop as a meditator. It’s like learning a foreign language. If you plan simply on traveling for a while in a foreign country, you pick up …
- Mindfulness as Refuge… This relates to another teaching that he has on duties, which is to abandon unskillful qualities in the mind and to develop skillful ones. As he said, it’s through following these duties that you find true happiness and true safety. After all, his definition of true happiness—nibbana—is also a place of supreme safety: no conditions that can change, nothing that can …
- Look after Yourself Happily… The Buddha calls it “I-making and my-making.” And you look through the Canon there are areas where the Buddha says it really is in your interest to be skillful in your I-making and my-making. In the same way, you want to be skillful in figuring out what is not-self. In other words, there are some areas where, if you …
- The Third and a Half Noble Truth… The Buddha himself said that the secret to his awakening was that he would not rest content with skillful qualities. What this means is that if the skillfulness in his mind had not reached the level where it put an end to suffering, he would keep working at it more and more. He wouldn’t just stop. This is why he left his first …
- Goodwill Plus… You’re wishing for them to be skillful. You don’t necessarily have to make them skillful. In fact, you can’t. Your only responsibility is that you’re not going to act in a way that’s going to interfere with their becoming skillful or with their true well-being. That’s a good promise to make to yourself, and it’s a …
- Bases of Success… And the first factor for success is wanting it, desiring it, in a skillful way. In other words, you have to learn some skill in how you apply your wants, how you motivate yourself, and where you focus your desire. You focus your desire on the causes. If you focus simply on the kinds of results you want to get—if you read in …
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