Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. For the Survival of True Happiness
     … So you want to make sure you use the body and your mind to act in ways that’re going to be skillful, that will lead to happiness. This is where happiness lies: in the training of the mind. So this is what you want to make sure survives. The Buddha talks about five kinds of loss. There’s loss of health, loss of … 
  3. Solo Practice
     … basically analyzing the qualities of the mind, seeing what’s skillful right now, what’s not skillful right now. And when you get a sense of what’s skillful, then you work at augmenting it, bringing it into being and strengthening it until you get a sense of fullness. That, too, is energizing. When the breath comes in, it doesn’t squeeze any parts … 
  4. Treasures from the East
     … But some people will tell you, well, you should also be content with whatever comes up in your mind, skillful or unskillful, and just let it be. Yet Buddha never taught that. He said being discontent, even with his skillful qualities, was the secret to his awakening. So, if you know that he taught that, it’s good to hold in mind. That way … 
  5. Perceiving the Breath
     … As in developing any skill, you find that you perceive the things that you’re working on in lots of different ways, because you’re encountering more issues and learning how to deal with them. So the way you perceive the breath is an important part of gaining the skill over the breath and using that skill to train the mind in skillful qualities … 
  6. Beyond Inter-eating
     … These require the food of appropriate attention, which means looking at things in line with such questions as, “What’s skillful? What’s unskillful? What, when I do it will lead to long-term harm? What, when I do it will lead to long-term happiness?” You look at your actions, you look at your words, you look at your thoughts in this light … 
  7. How to Use the Three Perceptions
     … That’s when they’re beneficial, all within the context of the four noble truths and the question of what’s skillful, what’s not skillful. Those are the teachings that are always true, always applicable, always beneficial, always timely. If you start dealing with thoughts and perceptions that are not beneficial even though they may be true, you can get the mind all … 
  8. Exploring Fabrication
     … And, in this context, all kinds of things that you might have rejected as not belonging to the path are actually admitted back in—but, on the condition that they be skillful. Venerable Ananda talks about using craving and conceit on the path. It has to be a skillful craving; it has to be a skillful conceit, but these processes, which eventually we’re … 
  9. Joy in Effort
     … What makes the effort right is that it’s skillful, appropriate for right here, right now—and you’re up for the challenge. In the Buddha’s description of right effort, you’re told to generate desire. And one of the best ways of generating desire is to learn how to enjoy the effort—in other words, to take joy in abandoning unskillful qualities … 
  10. Mindfulness the Gatekeeper
     … If you can’t, then keep watchful for the next time when concentration arises so that you can see the connection between what you do and how the mind settles down, so that this becomes a skill. Now, part of the skill in creating a state of concentration is that we’re creating a state of becoming. Becoming is an identity you take on … 
  11. Goodwill for Safety
     … You don’t have to like the person or like the being, but you have to think about that person or that being’s well-being—so that your actions are skillful. If you repeat this theme to yourself often enough, and dig up all the resistance, you find that it does come more and more easily. It becomes more and more of a … 
  12. Steal the Dhamma
     … In other words, instead of teaching the Dhamma as a body of information, he was teaching it as a skill. And part of the skill is ingenuity, figuring things out on your own. He himself told me about the time when he was young and starting out meditating. The instructions back in those days were just, “Bring your mind down.” This was before Ajaan … 
  13. Four Bases of Success
     … Really pay attention to what you’re doing and what’s coming out as a result.” And then use your powers of judgment to figure out what’s going well, what’s not going well, so that you can make your practice more of a skill. For instance, with the breath, it’s good to remind yourself of why you want to be with … 
  14. Discipline
     … This is considered to be one of the hallmarks of people who really master a skill: They see that there’s a lot of advantage to mastering the skill, and a lot of danger in not mastering the skill. So we have a very live sense of what the mind needs for its own true well-being. That’s the self as a governing … 
  15. Samvega
     … Our own lack of skill is what has us entangled here, so we’re going to have to develop skill to get out. And nobody else can develop skill for us. It’s something each of us has to do for ourselves. So the Buddha devised ways of bringing us into the present so that it’s not that scary, so that we’re … 
  16. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … What does the Dhamma have to say about your thoughts? What does it recommend that you do with those thoughts? What are the standards for deciding what’s skillful and what’s not? Be willing to hold yourself to that standard. There’s that old saying from the third Zen patriarch that the great way isn’t difficult for those with no preferences. There … 
  17. Doing Your Duty
     … The Buddha said that heedfulness lies at the basis of all skillful action, all skillful attitudes: the realization that there is danger, but that your actions can make a difference. Now, in some cases your past karma may be such that no matter what you do, you’re going to get sick. But do you know your past karma? Do you know that it … 
  18. Skillful Papañca
    The word papañca has come into our vocabulary. In most practice centers it’s called a type of thinking where your thoughts run rampant, out of control. But when the Buddha talked about papañca, it was not so much the amount of thinking, it was the kind of thinking. He said it starts with the perception of “I am the thinker.” From there it … 
  19. Large Perspective, Small Focus
     … Beings go around and get born in different places, and sometimes they work, work, work hard at developing skillful qualities and then they reap the benefits of those qualities and they tend to get complacent. Or they find suddenly they have power. There was that cartoon in the *New Yorker *once: two Congressmen walking out of the Capitol and one of them is saying … 
  20. Right Speech, Inside & Out
     … One was the distinction between what is skillful and unskillful behavior—that skillful behavior should be developed and unskillful behavior abandoned—and the other was the four noble truths. The truths about yourself as a meditator don’t fall into those categories. In other words, the question of whether you’re a good meditator or a bad meditator is never true across the board … 
  21. Dignity in the Face of Hardship
     … Now, it’s not the case that you have an infinite set of choices—the raw material available to you at any one time is based on your past choices, and sometimes is quite limited—but you can choose to do the skillful thing. Keep the Buddha’s graduated discourse in mind. The good things in life do come from virtue; they do come … 
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