Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Right Speech
     … One of the ways you learn how to be skillful in your internal chatter is to be skillful in your external chatter. This is why right speech is a factor of the path. The way we talk to ourselves has a lot to do with the way we’ve heard other people talk, and the way we’ve been talking to others. So if … 
  3. Alone & Together
     … So there’s a skill to being alone and a skill to being together—and you’ve got to find the balance that works for you.
  4. Owners of Our Actions
     … to strengthen the mind’s ability to create good intentions, to abandon unskillful ones—and then once we’ve created skillful intentions, to maintain them, so that we can have a better and better idea of what “skillful” means. This is our refuge. This is what we can depend on. In the time of the Buddha, someone once asked a junior monk, “What are … 
  5. Four Mountains Moving In
     … Given this horrible destruction of human life, and realizing how valuable and how rare the human state is, what would you do?” The king responds, “What else can I do but good conduct, Dhamma conduct, meritorious deeds, skillful deeds?” Then the Buddha goes on to say, “In that case, great king, I inform you: aging, illness, and death are rolling in, crushing all living … 
  6. The Buddha’s Narrative
     … When they were reborn, they were reborn in line with their actions, skillful or unskillful. The skillful ones were done under the influence of right view, i.e., seeing that your actions are important, that what you do in terms of body, speech, and mind really does shape your life. Unskillful actions were done under the influence of wrong view, i.e., the view … 
  7. Preparing to Die Well
     … This is why the skill of discernment is also a matter both of developing and letting go. You have to develop the right sense of values so that you can really let go of unskillful things. As you develop this skill in your meditation, you’re closer and closer to having a skill that’s capable of facing death and handling it well, so … 
  8. Your Inner Coach
     … So you have to make sure that your internal coach, at the very least, is encouraging, telling you, “You can do this.” After all, as the Buddha said, if human beings couldn’t abandon unskillful qualities and develop skillful qualities, he wouldn’t have bothered to teach. So you have to tell yourself, “Human beings can do this. You’re a human being. Other … 
  9. The Need for a Purpose
     … identifying which actions are skillful and then raising your sights from just skillful thoughts, words, and deeds, to actions that can actually lead to a goal that’s beyond long-term, beyond ordinary welfare and happiness, something that’s outside of space, outside of time, free from all limitations. That’s the one thing that doesn’t have a purpose. Nibbana itself doesn’t … 
  10. Skillful Thinking
     … The Buddha points out the ways to think, the questions to ask, that will make your thinking useful, helpful, skillful, a part of the path to the end of suffering, rather than a cause of suffering. You notice his instructions on right concentration: The first jhana has directed thought and evaluation. In other words, he teaches you where to focus your thoughts and he … 
  11. Painful Thinking
     … As you get more and more skilled at not adding extra suffering onto the suffering of the pain that’s already there, you begin to realize what an important skill this is. And what an important problem it’s focusing on. This is why the Buddha started his teachings with the four noble truths. There’s suffering in life and there’s a cause … 
  12. Bojjhanga: Discernment Fosters Concentration
     … Now the analysis here doesn’t have to be very elaborate, just the recognition that some qualities in the mind are skillful and others are not skillful, based on whether they give good results. So this is another one of the ways you can analyze your thoughts to bring the mind into concentration. Just see where they’re going. The Buddha describes this in … 
  13. A Good Dish of Concentration
     … It puts us in a position where we can get more sensitive to what is actually unskillful about them, and our standards as to what qualifies as skillful and unskillful will go higher. So try to get your mind still. Where do you get your mind still? Well, you get them still within the aggregates or using aggregates. But you’re trying to use … 
  14. Set Your Heart on the Breath
     … This is an important skill. It doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but the ability to stay consistently with one object is a really important skill to have mastered. And it’s a skill both of the heart and the mind. You set your mind on the breath. You set your heart on the breath. It has to be something you … 
  15. The Third Frame of Reference
    The Third Frame of Reference October 15, 2009 One of the important skills we need to learn to develop as meditators is how to read our own mind. This comes in the third frame of reference, keeping track of the mind in and of itself. Keeping track here means not only watching the mind, but also figuring out what the mind needs. This is … 
  16. Guardian Meditations
     … For them to be happy requires that they act in skillful ways. So if you can think about someone who’s been really unskillful, thoughtless, cruel, behaving in outrageous ways, goodwill for that person means, “May you see the error of your ways and be willing and able to become more skillful.” That’s what you would want other people to wish for you … 
  17. Choices Now & at Death
     … Yet in the fourth noble truth, he points out that the desire to develop what’s skillful and abandon what’s unskillful is part of the path to the end of suffering. So not all desire is bad. You want to get to know your desires really well and be able to sort them out. This is a useful skill to develop not only … 
  18. Even Common Animals Can Be Trained
     … As the Buddha said, if we couldn’t abandon unskillful qualities and develop skillful qualities, he wouldn’t have bothered to teach. The fact that we have a Buddha and a Buddha’s teachings means that we can change our habits. So try to hold yourself in check when you see yourself slipping into old habits that you know are wrong. Don’t just … 
  19. When Things Regress
     … It’s in this way that the meditation finally does become a skill. It requires patience and that quality of making your mind like earth, so that you’re not upset by whatever happens. You’re not excited by whatever happens. You take a matter-of-fact attitude. Then, based on that, go back to your basic skills. That’s how the meditation deepens … 
  20. Descartes’ Error
     … You’re gaining a skill. Otherwise, all you have are thought-worlds. They’re like bubbles. You blow bubbles and they stay for a while and then they pop. Then you have to blow some more. Then you’re left with not much of anything at all, just the gooey residue of the bubble solution, and that’s about it. So you have to … 
  21. Separate
     … People are going to be genuinely happy when they’re doing skillful things. So you’re actually wishing, “May all beings be skillful.” Of course, that’s something you can’t bring about through your own efforts. You can’t make other people skillful—but what you’re doing is setting your intention in the right direction. What you’re contributing to the world … 
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