Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. sBeyond Acceptance
     … This is a skill you want to take with you when you leave the monastery. You can’t take the monastery with you, but you can take the skills you’ve learned here. One of them is the skill of knowing how to make a good difference—that, and the skill of having the right attitude that you’re not going to know where … 
  3. Suffering Starts Before Life
     … that if you act on skillful intentions, you get good results; if you act on unskillful intentions, you get bad results. And you can learn how to make your intentions skillful by acting on the best intentions you can think of. When you find the results are not good, you talk it over with those who are more advanced on the path. You reflect … 
  4. Social Anxiety
     … That was the best you could do at that time, but now you’ve got more skills, better skills, more understanding. Learn how to reason with those voices: “Here’s a good solid place, a good safe place, a secure place to be — right here inside the body — and you’re operating from a position of strength.” And just that much is not only … 
  5. Timeless Practice
     … Sariputta gives an image, saying that just as the footprint of an elephant can contain all the footprints of animals that walk on land, in the same way the four noble truths contain all other skillful dhammas. So if you want to understand the Buddha’s teachings, you have to understand this framework. Then other teachings come in. The question is, where do they … 
  6. Restlessness & Anxiety
     … Take any unskillful thought apart in terms of these fabrications and fabricate new thoughts in a much more skillful way to take its place. That way, you can induce more concentration and more discernment in the mind. These hindrances are obstacles not only to concentration but also to discernment. To deal with them, you’ve got to first borrow the Buddha’s discernment. Then … 
  7. The Brightness of Life
     … But you’ve also got skillful qualities, skillful identities you’ve assumed in the past. You try to strengthen those. If they haven’t arisen, you try to give rise to them. Once they’re there, you try to maintain them, develop them. All this comes under the factor of persistence. When you continue working with the mind in this way, the mind does … 
  8. What Are You Doing Right Now?
     … The purpose of the practice is, one, to learn how to be more skillful in those intentions, and then two, to learn how to look at the process of intention in and of itself to understand action. This is why the teaching starts with teachings on virtue. Learn how to abstain from acting on unskillful intentions, and you’ll learn a lot about your … 
  9. Sweat the Small Stuff
     … those little movements of the mind that head off in a skillful or unskillful direction. How do you nurture the skillful ones and how do you get rid of the unskillful ones? That’s the big question. So if you’re dealing only with larger abstractions, you’re going to miss the details because the larger abstractions say that the big deals are more … 
  10. Heirs to Our Actions
     … This is why the Buddha encourages you to be skillful in everything you do, not just as you’re meditating but also in all the activities of your life. With every opportunity to do good, he said: Take the opportunity. Even simple little things, like keeping the place clean. Ajaan Mun was an extremely clean and orderly person. Ajaan Lee was. So was Ajaan … 
  11. Hindrances
     … The Buddha says the best way around doubt is to pay attention to what’s skillful in the mind, what’s unskillful in the mind, and what happens if you develop the skillful qualities and abandon the unskillful ones. You don’t overcome doubt by just swearing on a stack of the Pali Canon, saying, “Yes, I believe.” It’s more that you look … 
  12. The Power of the Mind
     … Some of the voices in the mind are more skillful than others, so try to side with the skillful ones and let them hold the power inside your mind, so that the power of the mind as a whole will be well used. Think about it. When the Buddha’s talking about the four noble truths, he’s talking about your mind. All the … 
  13. Ardency
     … This is what defines what’s skillful and what’s not skillful. Appropriate attention means seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. You see that there is stress, there is a cause for stress—something arises along with it, something you’re doing right now that creates the stress. There’s the basic stress that’s in everything that’s compounded, but … 
  14. Heedfulness for the Holidays
     … In your case, you’re mindful to do what’s skillful and to avoid what’s not skillful. You keep that in mind. Hold that value, hold that standard in mind, so that when people do things that are threatening, you know that the best way to respond is not to threaten back. Maybe you can just put up an internal wall of energy … 
  15. Food Insecurity
     … Given that human life is so hard to come by, what would you do?” And Pasenadi had the good sense to say, “What else could I do but Dhamma practice, skillful practice?” That’s where your true security lies. Even though you’re still feeding as you’re on the path, you’re feeding on something that’s a lot more secure, so even … 
  16. Potentials Past & Present
     … No matter what people have done in the past, what karma comes in from the past, there is a skill that enables you not to have to suffer from it. The pain may be there, but you train the mind so it doesn’t have to be pained by the pain. can That’s what’s so special about the Buddha’s skill. So … 
  17. The Wrong Uses of Right
     … And from our understanding of the importance of action and choosing skillful actions over unskillful ones, we’re led to a higher level of right view – the right view about the four noble truths – learning how to look at our own actions, look at our own minds to see where we are causing stress. Where is the stress to begin with? And then, we … 
  18. Developing Discernment
     … So, every time you can talk yourself out of doing something unskillful and into doing something skillful: Regard that as an exercise for your discernment. That principle of focusing on your actions, trying to make them as skillful as you can: That will carry you through.
  19. An Admirable Friend — In Memory of Luang Loong
     … In the same way, the Buddha said, when you have mindfulness as your gatekeeper, you develop skillful qualities, and you let go of unskillful ones. So for mindfulness to perform these functions, there has to be more than just bare awareness or receptivity or nonreactive awareness. You have to keep certain things in mind, certain standards. Have a basic frame of reference and then … 
  20. Basic Stuff
     … When the mind feels soothed and comfortable, then it’s more likely to act in a skillful way. Sometimes you notice that the mind affects the breath. When there’s a sudden thought of anger or of fear, there will be a catch in the breath, a tightness, say, in your stomach or your chest. When you sense that, allow that tightness to relax … 
  21. Walking Meditation: Stillness in Motion
     … It develops an added skill, the skill to be centered in the body not only while the body is still, but also while the body is moving. Walking meditation teaches you to be still in the midst of movement, to get a stronger sense of the mind as the observer that doesn’t move along with the things it observes. Remember that chant about … 
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