Search results for: "Skillfulness"

  1. Page 79
  2. It’s up to You
     … This is why the practice is one of focusing on what you’re doing, getting sensitive to what you’re doing, and getting more skillful in what you do. The fact is, your suffering is not caused by anybody else. It’s caused by your own lack of skill. This is why each of us has to practice. When the Buddha first approached the … 
  3. Transparent Becoming
     … So he recommends another way out, which starts with creating a skillful kind of becoming, where the process of becoming is transparent. You can see what it is and how it happens. And that’s what we’re doing now as we meditate, as we develop a state of concentration in the mind. You’ve got that one focus on the breath. In the … 
  4. The Purpose of Empathetic Joy
     … There are also cases where people have done things that lead to happiness, who acted skillfully in the past, but they’re not skillful anymore. In fact, they’ve taken the results of their past skillful actions and now they’re abusing them—and you don’t like it, you don’t want to see them be happy, you feel they don’t deserve … 
  5. Befriending the Breath
     … You want to train the mind in a new skill, the skill of staying with something really useful, something really skillful, something taking you deeper inside. It’s unlike a lot of the thoughts we think. The breath is here all the time. As long as we’re alive, the breath is coming in and going out, or even when it’s a still … 
  6. At Play
    Ajaan Lee has a lot of Dhamma talks where he portrays the practice as a development of skills, and he makes a lot of analogies with manual skills: sewing a pair of pants, weaving a basket, making clay tiles. We can take those images in, adopt that approach, but sometimes we can get too grim about it. We read books that say that to … 
  7. Kill Your Anger
     … He’s saying that the anger is what makes it difficult to do something skillful around what’s wrong. In other words, when you see that there’s something you’d like to correct but you’re angry about it, then you can do, say, and think things that can be very harmful and actually get in the way of solving the problem. So … 
  8. The Complexity of Pain
     … Even though the line between physical pain and mental pain is not all that clear—because after all, your experience of physical pain will be related to some extent to your mental perceptions and the way you talk about it—there are some cases where you can talk about it in the most skillful way and your perceptions can be the most skillful perceptions … 
  9. The Taste vs. the Reality
     … Your skill in talking yourself into doing what would lead to long-term happiness and into avoiding things that would lead to long-term pain: That’s one of the most important skills you can develop, not only in meditation, but in life as a whole. So remember the difference between the taste and the actual emotion. The taste of the emotion is always … 
  10. Training Your Cynical Voices
     … As for skillful mind-states, they’re good things to develop. The mind gets clearer, sharper. This is a path where you’re asked to do nothing but good things. Try to be aware of your body. Again, you’re not being asked to be aware of something that’s far out there in the abstract. It’s something right here, right now. And … 
  11. Developing Absorption
     … And also remembering to recognize when something comes up in the mind, how you can tell whether it’s going to be skillful or not. You’ve seen your greed and distress before, and hopefully you’ve gotten some insight into them. You’ve also seen the thoughts that help you stay with the breath. They keep reminding you that this is a good … 
  12. Circumspection
     … Looking around like this, you begin to see that some things that may not seem all that skillful to begin with can be put to a skillful purpose. There’s a case where the Buddha talks about getting rid of anger basically through spite. As he says, you think about your enemy and you can’t tell yourself that the person is not an … 
  13. The Trick to Staying in Place
     … As you get more and more skilled at breathing in a comfortable way, that enables you to stay with the breath for long periods of time, because it’s both interesting and enjoyable. If you notice you have any stress, feelings of dis-ease, or any sort of habitual patterns of tension or tightness in the body, you can learn how to breathe in … 
  14. Look at Yourself
     … There’s the intention, then there’s the result of the intention, and then there’s your reaction to it, and the reaction can either be skillful or unskillful. There can be a defilement there, and if there’s a defilement, then that colors your next action, your next intention. If the defilement is really strong, you can start going in a really downward … 
  15. The Flowing Mind
     … One of the main skills you want to learn as a meditator is that even though there may be currents in the mind that want to go out, you don’t have to go out with them. In the beginning this means that when there’s a very strong push from inside, you say, “No.” The best thing to do is get out of … 
  16. Strong Against Anger & Fear
     … What are you going to do?” “What else can I do but focus on the practice of the Dhamma?” This is our refuge—it’s called the strength of conviction—realizing that the most important thing you can focus on is being skillful in your thoughts, skillful in your words, skillful in your deeds. You maintain that conviction, and you see that it’s … 
  17. Not Siding with the Hindrances
     … Think of any skill you’ve developed that has required that ability to watch consistently. Like a potter who has to be totally concentrated on the clay and the movement of the hands up the clay, who can’t let herself think of anything else at the time. Or the photographer who has to be totally involved in the shot. That’s the kind … 
  18. Ask the Right Questions
     … The question is, “Is this a skillful action or is this not a skillful action?” Sometimes, especially in some Buddhist circles, we hear that “Well, you don’t have a self, but you are the five aggregates.” But then again, that’s defining what you are; and again, it’s placing a limitation on you. If you’re just the five aggregates, the five … 
  19. A Good Path to Be On
     … He says you can develop the skills of virtue, concentration, and discernment so that they can lead to total freedom. Think about that. Whenever you’re getting discouraged, remind yourself that there is this opening. There’s a possibility for you to become more and more skillful. And it doesn’t have to depend on anybody else. You don’t have to go around … 
  20. Determined to be Happy
     … If you don’t see any harm, take joy in the fact that your practice is advancing, and continue to practice in skillful qualities day and night. That was his instruction to his son. That’s how we find purity. In other words, we don’t simply go on good intentions—we try to go on skillful intentions, and that means we have to … 
  21. Equanimity on the Path
     … What role does equanimity play on the path? The first thing to notice is that sometimes it’s regarded as skillful and sometimes it’s not. When it makes you lazy, it’s not part of the path. But when it’s skillful, it actually has several functions on the path. One is to apply it to anything that’s not directly related to … 
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