Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Time Well Spent… You want to do *everything *skillfully.” That distinction between skillful and unskillful is one of the most basic in the Buddha’s teachings—it’s one of the two teachings that he said are categorical. And it wasn’t just the distinction between the two, it was also that skillful actions should be developed and unskillful ones should be abandoned. In other words, the …
- Survival Dhamma… What kind of survival skills will we need when ecological disaster happens, economic disaster happens, political disaster happens? It really depends on the nature of the disaster. But the survival skills that apply across the board—your alertness, your mindfulness, your concentration, your discernment, your virtue— those are things you’ll need regardless of the particulars of the disaster. So those are the things …
- Varieties of Mindfulness… But you also need to learn how to balance it with interactions with other people in a peaceful way, so you can get skilled at consciously changing your frame of reference as appropriate. This is why we live in a community. Our ability to live together is an important skill in the meditation, for it’s in the changing of our frame of reference …
- The Return of Chickens from Hell… Another way is simply enjoying your skills. When you’re a good cook, the cooking in and of itself is fun. Also, there’s the anticipation of what you’re going to get, and the actual final taste. If the ingredients were all good, and our skills and our cooking were all good, and the final product was all good, there wouldn’t be …
- The Dhamma Wheel… So you focus on what you’re doing, and then you ask yourself, “Is it skillful?” If it’s not skillful, you do your best to make it more skillful. There are the three qualities the Buddha has you bring to right mindfulness. First is mindfulness itself, which is the ability to keep something in mind. Like right now: you keep in mind the …
- The Armored Car… What does the Dhamma have to say about what’s skillful, what’s not skillful? Those teachings are never out of date. After all, the Buddha said they’re *akāliko, *timeless. Then you remember the Sangha. Sometimes the Buddha seems far away, 2,600 years ago, on the other side of the world. But we do have the noble Sangha still alive, still practicing …
- Circumspection… The first thing is to try to develop a particular meditative skill, with whatever the technique you’ve chosen. If you’re going to stay with the breath, be really skillful about staying with the breath. Try to be as sensitive as possible to the breathing: how it feels when you breathe in; how it feels when you breathe out; what ways of breathing …
- Self View & Conceit… We have to figure out for ourselves where we’re lacking skill. That’s one of the definitions of avijja: The cause of suffering is a lack of skill. We’re being unskillful, so what are we going to do to get past it? We have to depend on ourselves. Nobody can give us a skill. We have to learn it ourselves. So as …
- Light Merit… So instead of putting blinders on yourself, you’re simply settling in, in the area where the real work has to be done in understanding what is your mind is doing, how it’s shaping its experience, in what ways it’s shaping things in a skillful way, in what ways it’s doing it in an unskillful way. You can tackle that right …
- Inner Strength, Inner Wealth… You keep it up as a regular part of your day because you see that this is an important skill to develop. You’re willing to give it that regularity: every day, every day, every day. That’s how it develops momentum. And keep in mind all the other issues that come around developing a skill: that there are going to be good times …
- Stay with the Knowing… Whereas if you just leave it at the contact, then you have time to stop and think of an appropriate response—a skillful response that doesn’t involve bad karma. So give the mind some space. This is why the ajaans talk about being with the knowing. In other words, you stop things right at the contact. Notice, that’s being* with. *They don …
- Refuge for All Beings… That’s what we’re learning as we meditate—the skills that can enable us to deal with painful sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas without suffering from them. That’s the skill that the Buddha wanted to make available to all. And he’s willing to be a refuge for all who decide that they want to take on his training …
- Bursting Bubbles… You’ve got the potentials for unskillful qualities, but you’ve also got the potential for skillful ones. And you can emphasize the skillful ones. They are there. So no matter how all-encompassing your worries and irritations are, remember they’re not totally all around you. Think of them as being like a holograph. There’s always one spot in the holograph that …
- Settling In… We live with stress and suffering but something deep down inside tells us that it’s necessary: “This is the way things have to be.” Well, it’s simply the mind’s lack of skill. If it were really skillful, it wouldn’t be creating any suffering. It doesn’t have to. When you can see that, that’s how your skill develops. And …
- The Current News… You want to be as skillful as possible in what you do, able to rely on yourself as much as you can. Because all those reports that come from the world outside may be interesting right now, but as you get older, as death approaches, they won’t be able to do much for you at all. The skills you’ve learned in watching …
- The Buddha’s Lists… There are skillful and unskillful qualities in the mind—that’s the beginning of discernment and the seven factors for awakening: seeing that distinction. Then you work with it. You try to develop what’s skillful, abandon what’s not. How do you know what to abandon and what to develop? You see where these things fit in with the four noble truths: “This …
- Tranquility & Insight… And to undercut it, you have to do it in a skillful way. Again, you shouldn’t deny that it’s happening, where you say, “I couldn’t possibly think a thought like that.” That’s not going to help. The thought’s there, but you simply have to learn how to say No to it in a skillful way. The Buddha lists five …
- Protecting Yourself Against Yourself… Whereas thoughts imbued with renunciation, lack of ill-will—i.e., goodwill—harmlessness, compassion, would lead in a skillful direction. These are basically the thoughts of right resolve. But then he noticed that even the skillful thoughts, if you thought them for a night and a day, wouldn’t cause any trouble for the mind, but the would get the mind tired with all …
- Evaluation… There are people out there doing lots of unskillful things in the world, and you’re going to be putting up with a lot of their lack of skill that you can’t change. But what you can change is how you respond to all that, and the extent to which you actually make yourself suffer from other people’s lack of skill. The …
- Discernment: Commit & Reflect… What’s skillful in the mind? What’s unskillful in the mind? If you don’t actually try to develop some skill, you’re not going to know. You won’t have a basis for comparison. So you’ve got to do these things if you’re going to understand, if you’re going to gain some discernment. You have to do the path …
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