Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Right Inner Speech… That’s the skill we’re working on right now: taking the raw materials we’ve got right here and learning to use them as tools, getting a sense of which perceptions are true, which ones are beneficial, and having a sense of time and place for using them. This sense of time and place, of all the skills in the practice, is probably …
- A Refuge from Karma… There’s our own karma, and there’s the karma of other people; our own past karma, our own present karma; skillful karma, unskillful karma. We need refuge from all these things. We need a place of safety, and yet we’re driven by bewilderment. As the Buddha said, that’s one of our reactions to suffering. We’re bewildered inside, we don’t …
- Pure Action… It does develop new skills. This is what the Buddha’s teachings are all about. They’re skills. We’re all looking for happiness but we end up causing suffering and pain because we don’t act in a skillful way, we don’t think or speak in skillful ways. You can read the teachings and think about them and even teach other people …
- Accepting the Buddha’s Standards… You’re trying to master a necessary skill, a skill with standards that the Buddha set very high. You want to have respect for that fact. People talk a lot about developing acceptance in the practice, but the main thing you have to accept is that you’re constantly acting on intentions. The way you experience things is shaped by your intentions. And those …
- Wearing the Breath… I’ve talked to some anthropologists and they say that when they try to learn the skills of the various societies they go to study, so that they can get an inside sense of what it’s like to be in that society, there is one skill they’ve never been able to master, and that’s hunting. You have to be extremely sensitive …
- Learning from the Precepts… It’s when you act on impulses that are skillful that the mind is a lot more open to itself, more open to judging the results of acting on those impulses, to see how harmless they really are. In this way, you’re training both the heart and the mind at the same time. You’re training the heart in the desire to be …
- Wisdom & Compassion… He doesn’t way that we’re basically anything at all, but he does say that we can develop skillful actions, or if we want, we can act in unskillful ways. It’s our choice, simply that it makes a lot more sense to act in a skillful way, to try to develop all the good qualities of the mind for the sake of …
- Birth Is Suffering… You’ve done skillful things and unskillful things. And only a very well-trained mind can be sure to focus on the skillful things at the moment of death and rebirth—and what you focus on is what creates a state of becoming. There will be a desire of one form or another. Around the focal point of that desire, there will form either …
- Things as They’ve Come to Be… That’s the skill we’re working on here. Sometimes it seems like an impossible skill. The mind seems to have a mind of its own. That’s when you have to learn some patience so that you can watch it and figure out what’s actually going on. How do things come into being? When a bad mood comes in, where did it …
- Concentration Food… You’re not coming to any new understandings.” Just tell yourself you’re learning an important skill that you’re going to be using. It’s not the whole skill, but it’s a really important piece. So, learn to encourage yourself to want to stay here, to appreciate the stillness, to appreciate the sense of well-being that comes as the mind settles …
- Customs of the Noble Ones… That’s the ultimate skill. So there in that question are seeds with a lot of implications, leading to the implication that you want a happiness that lies outside of any conditioning at all. It’s going to require skill. The skill is nourished by three other qualities that complete the determination. Your discernment lies in your ability to develop those qualities. One is …
- Equanimity in Action, Equanimity at Rest… So it’s immeasurable in that way—as a skill where you can give rise to equanimity when you have to, regardless. At the same time, it’s selective. You focus it on certain things and not on others. For example, when you’re trying to get the mind to settle down in concentration, you have to have equanimity for the world so that …
- If These Walls Could Talk… I mean, how are you going to know what’s skillful and what’s not skillful unless you pass judgment? The important point is that you have to have a healthy, mature, attitude both in the judging, and in receiving the judgments. In making the judgment, remember: Your purpose is to judge a work in progress, and not to come to a final verdict …
- The Power of the Mind… skillful reflections out of skillful mind-states. So, put the mind first. Then, from there, think of the breath as being first in terms of the body. And here again there’s a problem. We tend to breathe around our pains, or up to our pains. We let the pains act as a wall or an obstacle to the breath. But actually, the breath …
- Who Are You Trying to Please?… Not to the point where you get depressed or discouraged, but you want to encourage yourself to keep on trying to do things in a skillful way. If you find yourself doing things in a way that’s not skillful, you want to figure out what went wrong. Was it the intention? Was it the way you tried to implement the intention? You’ve …
- Shaping Your Breath, Shaping Your Life… It’s to get a handle on how we can create a path out of all this—a path where we feel secure, and the mind is in a much better position to make skillful choices in what it says, what it does, what it thinks about, how it gets more skillful in its meditation. It’s all a seamless whole. The Buddha’s …
- Right Resolve & Right Concentration… And then as you’re able to start thinking in more and more skillful ways, it’s easier to get the mind into concentration. At the same time, concentration helps give strength to your resolve. As the Buddha pointed out, you may see very clearly that sensuality is unskillful but you still go for it. What you need to resist the desire to go …
- The Equanimity of a Winner… He admits that the practice of abandoning unskillful qualities and developing skillful qualities will cause stress. It’ll be painful sometimes. But he says that even if it involves having tears running down your cheeks, you still want to stick with the practice. There is stress that’s just useless, that serves no purpose, but then there’s also the stress that leads to …
- Perfection in an Imperfect World… But even with skillful qualities, the Buddha said, he would not rest content. What he meant was that he was looking for the ultimate skill, the skill of the noble eightfold path that would lead to the deathless. And with anything that wasn’t up to that standard, he wouldn’t rest content. That’s how the Buddha gained awakening. And the message of …
- Intelligence of the Heart… Each time the potential comes up to do something unskillful, you say, “Nope, not going there.” Each time the potential for doing something skillful comes up, “Yes, let’s give it a try”—unless you can figure out something that’s even more skillful. This is why when Ajaan Lee listed the qualities for mindfulness practice—mindfulness, ardency, alertness—he pinpointed ardency as being …
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