Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. The Thinking Heart
     … So to arrive at the result of putting an end to suffering, you need to start with skillful causes: skillful desires, skillful actions. If suffering is the result, the causes are unskillful desires, unskillful actions. So there are two things—actions and results—divided into two types: skillful and unskillful. That’s why the truths are four. Why are they noble? The word for … 
  3. Feeding on Ardency
     … You can watch yourself doing all kinds of skillful and unskillful things, and it would still count as alertness. It’s ardency that makes mindfulness and alertness skillful. You want to do these path factors well. You want to do them skillfully, in such a way that you can put an end to suffering. The intention there is what you feed on. So the … 
  4. Delight in Striving
     … The other was not resting satisfied even with his skillful qualities, to say nothing of unskillful qualities in the mind. He didn’t practice “radical acceptance.” If something in his mind was unskillful, he would try to get rid of it. If he had done something skillful, he would take joy in that fact but he wouldn’t rest satisfied. He would try even … 
  5. Calm
     … When you figure out what your mind is doing that’s skillful and what’s not, then you can move on to persistence. Put forth the effort to encourage what’s skillful, discourage what’s not. There should come a sense of refreshment as you’re able to do that. That refreshment is your food for the practice; it gives you energy—it’s … 
  6. The Primacy of the Mind (2)
     … What are you doing? What do you expect to gain from your intentions? Which ones should you act on? When you act only on skillful intentions, what happens? If something bad comes up as a result, you have to ask yourself: “Maybe my intention was good, but it wasn’t skillful.” Go back to the drawing board. So you reflect. Remember the Buddha’s … 
  7. Contemplating the World You Create
     … As the Buddha said, the secret to his awakening was discontent even with skillful qualities, to say nothing of unskillful ones. It’s that sense of discontent that drives the practice. So we get the mind to settle down because we realize that we don’t really understand it well and we’re not content with our lack of understanding. We want to figure … 
  8. Choices
     … Realize that the mind is making choices all the time, so make them as skillful as possible. At the very least, tell yourself that you’re going to sit here and watch the breath, and you’re going to stick with that choice. Any other choices that would pull you away, say, “No, no, no, I’m choosing to stay here. I’m going … 
  9. The Lessons of Good Kamma
    The Lessons of Good Kamma April 14, 2016 We look around us and we see a lot of people who have mastered a particular profession or a particular skill, who are very good at that one thing, but whose lives otherwise are a mess. They can be real bastards, horrible in their dealings with others or in the uses to which they put that … 
  10. Right Fear
     … If you can train yourself to be consistent in making what you see as the skillful choice at any given time, the mind has a lot less remorse, a lot less self-recrimination afterwards. Even if it turns out that you made a mistake, as long as you act on what you see are good motives, skillful motives, you’re doing the best that … 
  11. Long-Term Welfare
     … That’s the skill that you need to develop in concentration. A lot of people think there’s one state of concentration or one way of experiencing, say, each of the levels of jhana, but that’s not the case. Depending on what state the body is in, what state the mind is in, you’re going to need different types of concentration, different … 
  12. Strategic Thinking
     … The difference here is that you learn how to use these things in a skillful way. You try to engage with these processes with knowledge, and not through ignorance, and that makes all the difference. Ajaan Fuang used to say there are three steps in meditation. First is learning how to do it. Second is learning how to maintain it. And third is learning … 
  13. Habits of Perception
     … You may not seem to be suffering much, but there’s always some stress that you’re creating through a lack of skill. And this is precisely what we’re trying to uncover as we meditate. Some of the baggage you’re bringing into the present moment consists of issues you’ve picked up in the course of the day: things this person said … 
  14. Training Your Inner Teacher
     … You learn how to pass skillful judgment on what you’re doing. If things aren’t working, you try to figure out what’s wrong. There are lots of things you can be doing with the mind. Sometimes it needs simply to rest. Other times you need to push it, to be extra strict with it. In other words, when the breath is comfortable … 
  15. Mindfulness in the Driver’s Seat
     … But there are skillful and unskillful ways of getting out. The unskillful way is to deny it. The skillful way is to be willing to watch it, but from the outside. See where it came from, see where it’s going, and ask yourself, “Is this really where I want to go?” You’re going to need this ability to step out as much … 
  16. Your Goodness is Your Protection
     … And it’s worthwhile when it allows you to maintain skillfulness of your mind. Then, of course, there’s the principle that whatever good you do is going to go with you wherever you go. So you benefit now, you benefit on into the future by working on your genuine protection, which is also your genuine inner wealth. So think about that: generosity, goodwill … 
  17. Sensitive to Fabrication
     … This, as the Buddha said, is one of the skills you develop as you meditate. Something comes up in the mind and you don’t want to think about it, you have the skill not to think about it. You can drop it—and really drop it, not just push it underground. If something is worth thinking about, you can think about it. The … 
  18. Rehab Work
     … This new way of acting also leads to the end of intention, but it does this through understanding and through the mastery of skills: how to breathe, how to perceive things, and how to think about things. These are the skills with which you heal yourself. As you look back on your life, you’re bound to see lots of times when you acted … 
  19. Permission to Play
     … The less you worry about wealth outside, the more you can trust yourself to do the skillful thing, to say the skillful thing, to think the skillful thing in any situation. If you can train the mind to the point where it’s found something that can’t be touched by anything in space and time but can be touched through inner awareness—as … 
  20. Worlds
     … I want sudden Awakening.” Well, some things can happen suddenly, but no understanding, no skill comes with sudden things that happen haphazardly in the mind. We’re working on a skill here, the skill of learning to stay centered, keeping this frame of reference, not shifting to others. Just that skill in and of itself can cut through a lot of suffering. So as … 
  21. Indecision
     … Of course, the question was, were they going to trust the Buddha? He gave them some standards for deciding what’s skillful. If you put a teaching into practice, what results do you get? Then you measure the results by whether they harm yourself or they harm other people. We live in a pluralistic society, very much like that in the time of the … 
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