Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Good at Thinking
     … Right now is a good time to practice this new skill: the skill of bringing the mind to stillness, to oneness. And it takes thought—mindful thought—combined with alertness, to get the mind to settle down and be still. As these skills get stronger, the Buddha changes the names he gives to them. He calls them directed thought and evaluation. In other words … 
  3. A Skillful Heart
     … So virtue has to go along with the goodwill to make it genuinely good, to make it skillful. We’re working not only on a good heart here. We’re trying to develop a skillful heart—a heart that not only wants good things to happen, but also goes about acting and speaking and thinking in ways that will make them happen. And that … 
  4. The Story-telling Mind
     … You want the mind to become very skillful in all its activities. Ajaan Fuang once said to me, when I went back to reordain, that being a meditator requires being skillful in everything, not just sitting here with your eyes closed. You approach everything as an interesting challenge: “What’s the most skillful way of dealing with this? What’s the most skillful way … 
  5. The Kamma of Self & Not-Self
     … What are the skillful ways of selfing? What are the skillful ways of acting? We’re working on a skill, and learning how to be skillful in choosing who in this committee of your mind you identify with and who you don’t, is going to make a huge difference. So remember, the issue is not what you are, it’s what are you … 
  6. Sort Things Out
     … But our minds have lots of different things going in them inside, skillful and unskillful. So we need some way of sorting them out. First to see what’s the big issue: How do we decide what’s skillful and not? We can be skillful at robbing banks or we can skillful at cheating people, but that’s not the skillfulness we want. We … 
  7. The Choice Not to Suffer
     … It’s because they’ve developed a skill and they see a wider range of choices. This is your most important skill: the skill that allows you not to suffer from pain. Some people look at pain and all they see is suffering. Other people look at pain, and they see an opportunity to go beyond suffering. So pose that question in the mind … 
  8. Hindrances Based on Delusion
     … Try to figure out what way of breathing is skillful right now, what way is not skillful. That’s the Buddha’s basic recommendation for how to analyze qualities: to ask that question of what’s skillful and what’s not. A couple of years back, I was talking to a group of people from up at Spirit Rock. They’d learned that “analyzing … 
  9. A Post for the Heart
     … You’ve got the skills that go around breath and awareness. They can give the mind the stability to see things more clearly, the strength to follow through on what we know is skillful or what we see is skillful, and the ability to make sacrifices. That’s another thing that gets in the way of our doing the skillful thing: our fear of … 
  10. The Practice of Right View
     … He teaches what’s skillful and what’s not skillful.” Afterwards, the man reported this conversation to the Buddha, and the Buddha praised him. He said, “That’s the right answer, the right way to deal with those people.” When the Buddha was critical of other teachers, it was most frequently over their inability, one, to explain what is skillful or unskillful, or two … 
  11. At Home in Your Own Skin
     … Sometimes your motivation is skillful. Sometimes it’s good but not skillful. Sometimes it’s neither good nor skillful. But going out is so much second nature that we hardly stop to think or to check what our motivation is. We just go out, go out, go out, and when we come back in, we drag outside worlds back in. So we don’t … 
  12. Skills of the Dhamma Wheel
     … All of this requires skill. In fact, one way of translating ignorance, avijja,is “lack of skill.” The knowledge that replaces it, vijja, is skilled knowing, which comes from having developed the skills. Note that there is a doing and a gradual perfection, a gradual mastery, of these different imperatives. When you’ve got the framework firmly in mind, then when things come up … 
  13. Choosing to Believe in Your Choices
     … There’s a skill to learn how not to suffer from illness. There’s a skill to learn how not to suffer from dying. And as with any other good skill out there in the world, when you learn the skill, you avoid a lot of dangers. The skill can bring a lot of benefits. So try to avail yourself of this skill while … 
  14. Free Like a Wild Deer
     … Here the Buddha’s talking about skillful and unskillful qualities in the mind. Taking delight in developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones means that you’re not simply content with whatever level of skill you have. This is the area where the Buddha actually encourages you not to be content. If you see something in the mind that’s not skillful, you try … 
  15. Skillful Intentions
  16. Skillful Attachments
  17. Skillful Selves
  18. Fighting Skills
  19. Survival Skills
  20. Housebuilding Skills
  21. Four Roles to Play
     … Right effort requires you to generate desire, exert persistence, uphold your intent to develop what’s skillful and abandon what’s unskillful. You have to use your discernment to figure out what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, and how to encourage what’s skillful and discourage what’s not. So concentration always requires all four. The difference among the different types of … 
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