Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Circumspection… This is not simply a question of using skillful means as opposed to unskillful things means. There are many different skillful means, and the question is then: Which skillful means is appropriate right now? And how far should you use it? Sometimes it’s a question of balance, as in that image of holding a baby chick in your hand. If you squeeze it …
- The Five Strengths… The skills you learn here are not skills just for sitting with your eyes closed. They’re skills for relating well to your body in the course of all your other activities, too. It’s simply that when you sit here with your eyes closed, it’s easier to focus total attention right here, but then you want to be able to keep that …
- Calm in the Storm… Learn how to take an interest in this process of how you put your experience together, how you put your emotions and thoughts together—and how, if they’re not skillful, you can deconstruct them and put them together in another way. It helps you to step back both from the turmoil around you and from the turmoil inside, because this is the skill …
- Truthful & Observant… After all, we suffer from our own lack of skill, and we have to develop skill through our own powers of observation. As the Buddha said, “Let someone who is truthful and observant come, someone who’s no deceiver, and I’ll teach that person the Dhamma.” Those are the two requisites. One the one hand, you’re truthful and not deceptive. It means …
- Attached to Concentration… Throughout the practice it’s a matter of mastering a skill until you’ve explored the full range of possibilities that that skill can offer. That’s when you let it go. So there’s a skill in exploring the present moment, seeing what enthralls the mind in the present moment. Sometimes you may find that a meditation word gets interesting, so stay with …
- The Light of the World… As he said, wisdom or discernment begins with a series of questions: “What when I do it will lead to my long-term harm and pain? What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What’s unskillful, what’s blameworthy? What’s skillful, what’s blameless?” What’s wise about the questions about long-term welfare and happiness …
- Anxiety… And you do that by developing skills. Like the skills of the meditation we’re working on right now: We’re engaged in what’s called fabrication. We’re creating a good state of mind and also a good state in the body. When you work with the breath, the body gets calmed. When the energy in the body flows, the blood flows to …
- Delight in the Path… He tells us to delight in the Dhamma, to delight in the path of abandoning unskillful qualities and developing skillful ones. There’s work to be done, and it’s good work. It’s simply that for a lot of us, it involves more seclusion than we’re used to. We’re also learning to see the downside of a lot of things that …
- A Heart Wider than the World… And also persistence, where you work to get rid of unskillful qualities and to give rise to skillful ones. You focus your desires there. Here again, you’re measuring the skill of your actions not so much in terms of worldly success, but in terms of who’s harmed: You want to make sure that nobody is harmed. You’re taking responsibility for your …
- Goodwill as Wealth… It’s goodwill expressed in skill: the skill of how to breathe, how to relate to your breath, and how to think of others, that they may be happy, too. Think about how, regardless of where other beings are right now, you’ve been there before. You can start thinking of the beings of the world as not being strangers in any way. Those …
- Asalha Puja… When you look at these things directly, you begin to see that some feelings, for example, are skillful and some are not—in other words, pursuing a particular feeling would be skillful if it nurtures the good qualities of the mind. Some pleasures, when you pursue them, are good for the mind; some pleasures are bad. Some pains when you pursue them are bad …
- Things As They Function… You’re trying to get the mind to act in as skillful a way as possible in its thoughts, its words, and its deeds. Then you learn from what you’ve done in the quest to create even more skill, which is why the insights that you gain from acting in this way are insights about action: the power of action, the nature of …
- Merit: Goodness of the Heart… In other words, say, the skills of robbing a bank can be just as happy as the skills of going out and helping people. That’s where the author had it all wrong. If you’re looking for happiness, you have to think about the consequences of how you look for happiness: What impact do your actions have on other people? What impact do …
- From Heedfulness to Purity… When the Buddha was talking about the root of what is skillful in the mind, he didn’t say that it comes from any innate goodness, innate compassion, or innate wisdom, aside from the wisdom of heedfulness: seeing that there is danger out there and there’s danger in here, and that your actions are going to make a difference as to whether you …
- The Buddha’s Shoulds… There are skillful and unskillful things arising in the mind, but right view — in terms of the principle of kamma — reminds you that the unskillful ones will lead to bad results, and the skillful ones to good results. So you can’t just sit there totally passive as you watch them arise and pass away, because that doesn’t lead to concentration. You’ve …
- Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters… But that doesn’t give you any motivation to try to make skillful choices. Those people say you have to let go of every sense of “I” because it causes you trouble. Well, it’s actually necessary for certain skillful decisions. Their approach is like putting up a ladder on the side of your house, cutting out all the rungs, and saying, “Okay, float …
- Intro to Breath Meditation… It’s an important skill. In this way, you get centered all day, you get sensitive to what you’re doing all day, and that’s what’s important, because you can take the skills in meditation and apply them at any time, in any situation. At the same time, you also feel at home at any time and in any situation. Even when …
- Your Gyroscope… That’s the skill you want to take with you. You can’t take the monastery with you. You can’t fold it in a little package and take it home, spread it out and surround yourself with it. But you can take the skills you’ve been developing here. Try to maintain that center as you get up from where you’re sitting …
- Fabricating the Present… We’ve got to get the mind still and engaged in mastering a skill: the skill of being still. That’s when it’s easiest to see the mind, when the mind is clearest: when it’s aware of what it’s doing and of what the results are. Even if it’s not doing anything at all, you want to be aware of …
- Skillful Desire… That includes skillful and unskillful qualities in the mind. The only thing that doesn’t come from desire is nibbana. That’s not based on desire at all. But the path to nibbana is based on desire. Desire is part of right effort. And it’s the first of the four bases of success. In many ways it’s the most important of the …
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