Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Metta Can Hurt
     … When is it skillful and when is it not skillful to hold to mettā? When is it more skillful to hold to upekkhā, equanimity? And how do you make sure that your actions are based on mettā* *for others? When thoughts of greed come into the mind, when thoughts of lust come into the mind, and you think, “Well, that’s okay. It’s … 
  3. Taking Responsibility
     … They’ve got a mixture of skillful and unskillful impulses. So when you’re looking for friends, looking for people whose advice you can trust, the same issues come up. How to distinguish the people you can trust from those you can’t? If you come to the Buddha, his advice is the most encouraging. He says he’s going to teach you how … 
  4. Guarding Against Trouble
    Heedfulness, as the Buddha said, is the basis for all skillful qualities. There are only two passages I’ve been able to find, though, where he defines heedfulness. One is not resting content with what you’ve got in terms of your skillful qualities, and the other is guarding your mind against what he calls the effluents and things associated with the effluents. Of … 
  5. The Flow of Time
     … What little things are not included in the precepts? What are the areas where the skillful course of action is not so absolute and depends instead on time and place? It’s because of these issues that we have to develop mindfulness and alertness so that we can see for ourselves what’s skillful—and to remember that we’ve got to look for … 
  6. Recollecting the Buddha
     … You’ve got to familiarize yourself with these processes ahead of time, so that you can exert some skillful control over them. And that’s exactly what breath meditation is for: getting you familiar with these things, so that you’re not overcome by feelings, and so that your perceptions don’t pull you away to places that, if you had any sense at … 
  7. Watch the Mind at the Breath
     … Then you use your alertness and your ardency and all your other skillful qualities to help make sure that the unskillful state doesn’t take root. It’s the same as when your head is on fire. You don’t just sit there and look at the flames and notice, “Oh, there’s the red and there’s the yellow and there’s the … 
  8. Firm in Your Intent
     … As for skillful qualities that are not there yet, you work to give rise to them. And when they’re there, you develop them as far as you can. Our problem is that we’re with the program sometimes and we change at other times. Unskillful qualities come and we enjoy them, we nourish them. Skillful qualities get pushed off to the side. So … 
  9. Fabricating with Awareness
     … This is how your knowledge becomes a skill. It’s interesting that the word the Buddha uses here, avijja, is the negative of vijja. Vijja can mean not only knowledge, but also the kind of skills that, say, a doctor or an animal trainer would have. And the Buddha often compares himself to a doctor and to a trainer. Basically, you want to become … 
  10. Friends with the Breath
     … working on skillful kamma, the noble eightfold path, which is the path we’re trying to follow right here. As the Buddha said, that’s the ultimate in skill, the highest form of kamma. It harms no one, and it’s beneficial for ourselves, not only in terms of developing happiness within the world, but also in taking us beyond the world. This path … 
  11. Goodwill Permeates the Dhamma
     … As he noted, the secret to his awakening was that he didn’t rest content even with skillful qualities, to say nothing of unskillful qualities. If skillful qualities hadn’t reached the point where they put a total end to suffering, he wouldn’t rest content. He’d keep on going. But he would take joy in the fact that he was making progress … 
  12. The Gift of Discernment
     … What makes one state more skillful than another? What makes one mental skill more appropriate than another? These are things you can see in action because the questioning and the thinking that are involved in appropriate attention are mainly aimed at what you’re doing right now. They’re not meant to get discursive, thinking back to last year or the last decade or … 
  13. Instructions for a New Monk
     … He looked at his thoughts, words, and deeds, and kept bringing them into line with the things he had learned by examining them and realizing what was skillful, what was not, abandoning what was not skillful, developing what was skillful. Regardless of whether they were actions that he liked or not, he was able to look at the long-term results of his actions … 
  14. For Your Good the Good of Others
     … We come to a quiet place like this to engage in this practice, not so that we can stay in a quiet place all the time, but so that we can have a skill to take out with us. You know that sign they have in national parks: Take only memories. When you leave here, take more than just a memory. Take a skill … 
  15. Intelligent Equanimity
     … That’s part of what it means to say, “Whatever you do for good or for evil, to that will you fall heir.” You have to accept the principle of karma if you’re going to be skillful in using what you’ve got. The teaching on equanimity is not counseling cold indifference. It’s simply reminding you of where your priorities are, where … 
  16. A Message for the Universe
     … As for skillful mental qualities, if they’re not there, try to give rise to them. If they’re already there, try to maintain them and develop them further. Our problem is that we tend to sit with our unskillful thoughts—they’re “okay.” They’re creating a lot of trouble for ourselves and for the people around us, and yet for some reason … 
  17. Motivation
     … But the question is, what did they awaken to? When the Buddha awakened, he awakened to understandings about intention, action, cause and effect, skillfulness, lack of skill. In the process of reaching the deathless, he really did have to take apart bit by bit by bit very subtle and very pleasant states of mind, very subtle mental activities so that he really understood what … 
  18. Inner Refuge Through Inner Strength
     … that actions have results, and that the results depend on the intentions inspiring the action and the skill with which you carry it out. And you really do have the choice—you have the choice to change the way you’re acting. You’ve got to have that conviction, that you have it within you: If you see that you’re doing something unskillful … 
  19. Right Resolve, Right Concentration
     … Then you can reflect on the fact that if you think in these skillful ways, you can think all day and it wouldn’t cause you any harm, aside from the fact that thinking a lot wears you down. So the mind needs to rest. And when you’ve been thinking skillful thoughts like that, it’s easy to get the mind to settle … 
  20. Suffering Is a Feeding Addiction
     … In other words, it recognizes what’s skillful and what’s unskillful; keeps the unskillful things out; lets the skillful ones in. So mindfulness has to be choosy. It’s not just accepting whatever happens. It just has to remember: Who’s the enemy and who’s the friend? And when you recognize the friend, how do you treat the friend? When you recognize … 
  21. Light Your Way
     … So, as we meditate, we’re developing a light in the heart, able to watch our actions and see what’s skillful, what’s not skillful. We don’t just have conviction of what the Buddha had to say, but we begin to see it in ourselves. This is how you overcome doubt. The Buddha said, by looking into your mind and seeing for … 
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