Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. To Gladden the Mind
     … You look into the mind to see what’s dark and what’s bright there, what’s skillful and what’s unskillful. In other words, any mental states that, when you act on them, lead to long-term happiness—those are the skillful ones. Any mental states that, when you act on them, lead in the opposite direction—those are the unskillful ones. This … 
  3. The Culture of the Practice
     … Focus on learning from other people who are skillful how to act skillfully, how to talk to yourself, to behave more skillfully, how to stick with the path. Those things are worth thinking about. That’s how the Buddha progressed. He tried to find what was skillful, and he didn’t rest content until he found a level of skill that brought him to … 
  4. An Examined Life
     … In other words, there are skillful and unskillful ways of living, skillful and unskillful ways of dying. I’ve seen this in my own life. I’ve seen two teachers of mine approach death, and I’ve also seen my father approach death. The people who’d been meditating approached death with a lot more mindfulness, a lot more alertness, and a lot less … 
  5. Put Some Heart into Your Practice
     … And these skills are a necessary part of training the mind as well. As the Buddha said, if you’re not generous, there’s no way you’re going to get the mind into the right concentration. Generosity requires a certain breadth of heart, where you’re not concerned only about yourself but you also want to think about other people, too. You realize … 
  6. The Perception of Inconstancy
     … It notices that something is skillful and so encourages it to come, and then tries to keep it from going. So when they talk about accepting the present moment, don’t think it means simply accepting and going with whatever comes up. You want to bring some skill to this. The skill lies in knowing where the potentials are with the different factors of … 
  7. Worry
     … When you’re facing uncertain situations, you need mindfulness to keep in mind what’s important, what’s not important, what’s skillful, what’s not. You need alertness to notice what has actually happened as the situation changes, becomes unexpected. And you need ardency, the strength to keep on wanting to do things well. Those are precisely the qualities you develop as you … 
  8. Right Action
     … This means having a strong sense that what you’re doing right now is important, and you don’t know how much time you’re going to have to do skillful things, so you’ve got to develop as many skillful habits as you can—which means you have to do them right now. The Buddha once talked about having the monks develop mindfulness … 
  9. Is the Buddha’s Wisdom Selfish?
     … Each person suffers because of his or her own lack of skill. So it’s actually an act of kindness to develop your skills because then, one, you’re less likely to weigh other people down because you‘ll be more self-sufficient, you’ll able to take care of yourself better. And two, you become a better example for other people. Through your … 
  10. Training for Dispassion
     … As Ajaan Lee would put it, you learn how to abandon what’s unskillful and develop what’s skillful, and then you finally move on to abandoning even what’s skillful. A lot of us want to go right to the end and say, “Well, I’ll just abandon all actions, abandon all sense that I’m doing anything.” That aborts the process. There … 
  11. The Buddha’s Letter
     … One is the principle of action, that unskillful actions should always be avoided, skillful actions should be developed. That’s one of the few teachings the Buddha identified as categorical. The other categorical teaching was the four noble truths. Where does suffering come from? It comes from within the mind. It’s an action in the mind that leads to suffering. So again, the … 
  12. True Freedom of Speech
     … For the Buddha, freedom of speech means the freedom to say skillful things. In other words, you’re free from the influence of your defilements: free from the influence of wrong view, free from the influence of wrong resolve. You’re free to be wise in what you say. That’s true freedom. And that’s a freedom that has to be earned, not … 
  13. Wise About Mistakes
     … It’s more concerned with learning how to be skillful. For this reason, the judgments it recommends are not final judgments on how good or bad a person was or is. The judgments are of a work in progress. Think of a carpenter working on a chair. He’s using a plane and he realizes, “Whoops, made a mistake.” He doesn’t just throw … 
  14. Karma as an Island
     … But they realize that it’s something that requires skill, and that each person has to develop that skill for him or herself. The advice is there; the examples are there. You want to remember those and learn how to apply them so that you can make the most of this ability you have to shape the present moment with your present intentions. You … 
  15. Three Types of Equanimity
     … Well, yes, the Buddha taught contentment with material things, your physical situation, but he taught discontent with regard to skillful qualities. In other words, as long as there’s still suffering or stress, even the slightest bit in the mind, you can’t rest content with the level of your mental skills. There’s got to be some way around that problem, some new … 
  16. Three Stages in the Practice
     … Those little tiny seeds can destroy whatever skillful qualities you’re trying to develop. So the ability to let go, to abandon, to cut away, is an important part of the meditation. On the other side, there’s the need for establishing,of giving rise to skillful qualities in the mind. In terms of right effort, there are actually three levels to developing skillful … 
  17. Is It Worth It?
     … Some of them are skillful desires. They can actually take us away from suffering. Acting on that kind of desire is an effort that’s really worthwhile. Life builds on our own actions, and our actions are built on our state of mind, which is why we’re sitting here meditating, to see if we can master the skills that allow our desires to … 
  18. Conviction & Persistence
     … We can interpret it in all kinds of ways, but the Buddha wants us to look directly at it so that we can learn how to act in more skillful ways. As we act in more skillful ways, we begin to understand what it means to act, what it means to make a choice. What is this element of freedom that we have in … 
  19. Thinking & Not Thinking
     … But then you’ve got the issue of when skillful thinking is useful, and when even skillful thinking has to be put aside. After all, the first jhana requires directed thought and evaluation. You try to bring the body and the feeling of pleasure and the mind together here in the present moment so that they stay together. With the body, it’s the … 
  20. Cutting New Paths in the Mind
     … learning how to prevent unskillful habits or unskillful qualities from arising, and if they have arisen, learning how to abandon them; learning how to give rise to skillful qualities, and how to develop and nurture skillful qualities when they have arisen. You want your right efforts to be all-around, because only that way can they give you all-around protection.
  21. Faith in Karma
     … Because you see that if you do, you’re more likely to act in skillful ways. If you don’t, you’re more likely to act in unskillful ways. If your actions don’t matter, why bother being careful about them? So that’s the basic premise—that your actions matter, that you’re making the choices, and that the quality of the result … 
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