Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- The Path of Adventure… We have to develop all the skills needed in order to defer gratification. In other words, be willing to put up with some effort right now, put up with some difficulties right now, for the sake of a pleasure and happiness that really is true, really is lasting, and doesn’t kill you—something that’s actually good for you. If you haven’t …
- Strong-hearted… It’s because we lack skill that we don’t get there. This is the crux of the problem: No one else can make us skillful. We have to learn how to be skillful ourselves. As Ajaan Lee points out, a teacher can give you the basic instructions in how to weave a basket, how to sew a pair of pants, or how to …
- Encouragement… Some potentials are skillful to focus on; others are not. In fact, as the Buddha points out, what you’re doing right now is what’s going to determine whether you’re going to suffer from, say, bad past actions. This is why we focus on the present moment in our meditation: to see what we’re doing, sensing where it’s not skillful …
- Negotiating with Death… So you want to hold onto the principle that you’re going to try to do what’s skillful. It starts from the outside and goes to the inside. Let go of things that are clearly not skillful. And have a clear sense of which things that you hold onto will get in the way of holding onto good things. Those are things you …
- A Good Place to Not-Self… The spaces of well-being inside that you can create very simply by being mindful and alert to the breath, relating to the body, relating to the mind in a way that’s a lot more skillful, give you a foundation for a lot more skillful actions as you go into the world.
- Practice All Day… That’s a skill you’ve got to develop, because that’s what restraint depends on: how you talk to yourself about the sights you’re going to look for, the sounds you’re going to listen for, and, with the ones that you do encounter, how you take them in: in other words, what you’re going out for, and what you bring …
- Mindfulness 2.0… As the Buddha said, if it were impossible to abandon unskillful qualities and to develop skillful qualities, he wouldn’t have taught it. Or if the process of abandoning unskillful qualities and developing skillful qualities led to pain and suffering, he wouldn’t have taught it, either. But because we are able to abandon these unskillful things and develop the skillful ones, and it …
- Useful Thinking… And the best way to do that is to develop skill in what you’re doing right now. Because as long as you’re shaping your experience willy-nilly anyhow, you might as well shape it well. It’s in the development of skill that you understand things. It’s like learning to be a pianist. As you work on the scales, you begin …
- Controlling… So if you want to control things in a skillful way, this is where you focus. Develop some skill here. This will affect your sense of who you are, because your sense of who you are and what belongs to you is very closely connected to control. If there’s something you can’t control at all, you realize right away, “This is not …
- Exploring the Basics… When the mind feels good, it’s a lot more likely to act in skillful ways—to be able to let go of unskillful intentions and to stir up the energy to act on skillful intentions. All of these are good reasons for coming here to focus on the breath. Then if, at some point during the hour, the mind starts rebelling, you’ve …
- Precept Meditation… They take your actions as your objects of meditation and they force you to develop many of the mental skills and attitudes you need in formal meditation: mindfulness, alertness, ingenuity, strategic discernment, and a scrupulous attention to detail. The precepts also teach you the power of your intentions. As you stick with a skillful intention, you’ll find it really does change your life …
- To Delight in the Path… It is a skill to be developed, and it’s a good skill. It may demand a lot. It may demand a lot of patience, but as in those prison break movies, when you finally get out, you’ll be glad that you went to all those pains—that you were that careful, that patient, that heedful. So learn how to be glad that …
- The Fangs of Conceit… But there have also been some skillful ones. If there weren’t any skillful ones, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be a human being. So you’ve got some potentials. Where do you use these potentials most wisely? In taking apart this problem of why you create suffering for yourself. After all, in creating suffering for yourself, it’s going to …
- Into the Cave with the Tiger… Thoughts that were not skillful—based on sensual desire, ill-will, harmfulness—he would try to keep in check, in the same way that a cowherd would beat back the cows that would try to get into rice fields when the rice was ripening. But then there were skillful thoughts based on renunciation, goodwill, compassion: Those, he said, he could allow to have free …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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