Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Always in Training… So working with the breath here as you’re meditating is a skill you should take with you as you go out into daily life. Whatever the chores may be, whatever your work may be, wherever you are, you need to have a sense that you’re always in training, like that story they tell of the sword master teaching a new student. The …
- Bigger than the World… There’s a skill in not taking these things on. In fact, it’s one of the first skills you want to learn as you meditate. It’s like when they teach Thai boxing. The very first skill they teach you is how to retreat, how to back out of a clench, how to back away from your opponent without exposing yourself—in other …
- Wake Up from Addiction… You’re developing some skills that you can use in a lot of different situations that you might not expect, but the skills are there, ready to be put into use. The Buddha taught things that are useful. Sometimes his lists seem dry and foreign, but as you get more and more acquainted with your breath, acquainted with the mind as it circles around …
- After-work Meditation… So at the end of the school day, she didn’t ask him, “What did you learn?” She asked him, “What questions did you ask?” Think about what you’re able to do in the course of the day, and what actions you did that were not all that skillful, and make the resolve that you’re going to try to be more skillful …
- The Buddha’s Cure… When you’ve decided you’re going to act on skillful intentions, you have to learn which intentions that seem good are actually skillful, and which ones are not. Sometimes you mean well, but if you’re acting out of ignorance, or you haven’t really thought the issue through carefully, that would count as an unskillful intention. So, as the Buddha said, you …
- Faith in the Buddha’s Awakening… As for skillful qualities, if they haven’t arisen yet, you try to give rise to them. When they have arisen, you do what you can to develop them as fully as you can. So there are four types of effort: abandoning unskillful qualities that have arisen, preventing unskillful qualities that haven’t yet arisen, giving rise to skillful qualities and then developing them …
- Sober Up… The Buddha says that as you reflect on that, it helps you to abandon unskillful actions and to develop skillful ones in their place. Then he has you go on to reflect that it’s not just you. Everybody, wherever you go, and wherever you could go, wherever you could be reborn, any level of the universe: Everybody is still subject to aging, illness …
- How to Look, How to Listen… But why? For what purpose? The Buddha says that when you look at other people, it’s mainly to see: “This is what skillful behavior looks like; this is what unskillful behavior looks like.” Then you turn around and ask yourself, “Do I have that?” If someone has some skills that you don’t have, you might tell yourself, “Well, this is a good …
- Proactive with Pain… These are some of the skills you need to survive aging, illness, and death. Learn how to develop them now while you can, and they’ll hold you in good stead. There will come a time in your life where the skills of other people can’t help you, no matter how talented your doctors and nurses may be. There comes a point where …
- Moral Intelligence… You keep bringing the mind back, bringing it back, trying to develop skillful qualities. That’s a moral victory. I was reading a meditation guide recently that started out by saying, “Meditation is not a matter of giving rise to particular mindstates. It’s just uncovering the natural goodness and peace that’s already there.” Which is pretty appalling when you think about it …
- Strengthening Conviction… Notice which qualities of the mind the Buddha says are unskillful, which are skillful. Learn to recognize the skillful ones, recognize the unskillful ones in your own mind, so you can develop skillful ones and abandon the unskillful ones, and see what happens. This is not the sort of thing that you just try on weekends. You ask yourself: If you don’t give …
- The Karma of Self & Not-Self… Altogether, the Buddha has you nurture three kinds of skillful selves. First there’s the self that feels competent to follow this path and actually makes the effort to develop the skills that are needed. Then there’s the self that’s going to enjoy the results. You want that self to be a real connoisseur of what happiness is, so that you don …
- A Doctor’s Strategies… He knew that curing a patient required not only medical skills, but also psychological skills. And it’s the same with the meditation. You need to psych yourself out, learn how to read your mind and think strategically. We focus on the breath not because breath is awakening, but because it’s a means to get us there. We use our desire for comfort …
- All Fabrications Are Stressful… So, reflecting on the fact that your life is marked by these things, you want to become more skillful, more heedful. But then, when you reflect that it’s everywhere—everybody is subject to these things, even the devas and Brahmās—that’s when you get on the path, realizing that you’ve got to get out. So we look directly at the processes …
- Remembering Ajaan Suwat… In other words, you abandon unskillful actions, and you take delight in it, you’re happy to do it; you’re happy to develop skillful qualities. You take pride in your work. Look at this as a skill that you’re working on. Take joy in being able to master it. Because the pleasure that comes from working on the skill is much greater …
- How to Change… This is how you can talk to yourself in new ways, more skillful ways. You may say, “That’s not the way I usually talk to myself.” But again, do you want to keep on talking to yourself in your old ways, or do you want to try something better? Think of the ajaans in Thailand. They liked to focus on the tendency for …
- Karma in the Present… When we meditate, we try to get quiet so that we can see these intentions and bring more knowledge to them, because if you fabricate these things out of ignorance you’re going to suffer; if you bring skill and awareness to the process of fabricating these things, that turns them into a path, the path to the end of suffering. So fabrication: What …
- Beyond Natural Suffering… Learn how to cling to skillful assumptions, skillful fabrications, as part of the path. Learn how to let go of the unskillful ones. Whenever you find yourself suffering for one reason or another, turn around and look at what it is that you’re feeding on. The simple fact it’s making you suffer means that it’s not an innocent process. So always …
- Vows… But this has to be done with skill. That’s why the Buddha said that a good determination involves four qualities: discernment, truth, relinquishment, and peace. Discernment here means two things. To begin with, it means setting wise goals: learning how to recognize a useful vow, one that aims at something really worthwhile, one in which you’re pushing yourself not too little, not …
- The Kathina… This is the time when the monks can pass on their sewing skills. The older monks can teach the younger monks how to cut the cloth, how to sew, how to dye the robes, all of which are very important skills, given that the robe is one of the basic requisites, the one that’s most likely get torn, the one that’s most …
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