Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Motivation… As the Buddha said, heedfulness is the basic motivation for all good things we do, all the skillful actions we do whether in thought, word, or deed. We realize that if we act in unskillful ways, there’s going to be suffering down the line. Our actions really do make a difference. If our actions didn’t make a difference, heedfulness wouldn’t be …
- Stillness & Clear Seeing… You’re going to stand above them, lift the mind up to a higher level where it can look at its thoughts and decide which ones are skillful, which ones are not, which ones should be encouraged, and which ones should be discouraged. Remember, we’re working on the noble truths here. What’s noble about them is that they lift the mind to …
- Home Schooling Your Inner Children… I hope you take a skill, the skill of training your mind—like we’re doing right now: focusing on the breath, being mindful to stay with the breath, being alert to the breath, and developing a quality called ardency, in which you see the disadvantages of having an untrained mind, so that you get earnest and active in doing your best to train …
- Resourceful… Be resourceful.” But actually, there’s no paradox at all within the parameters of what’s skillful and what’s not. You have to use your ingenuity to figure out what’s skillful right now with this particular problem. Because sometimes, when you’re dealing today with lust, say, or anger, a certain approach will work, but tomorrow the same approach doesn’t work …
- Dealing with Pain… But you don’t have to worry about it, because you’re working on your skills in this part of the body—the comfortable part where you’re focused. Once you can maintain that sense of well-being, even though there may be a pain in some other part of the body, then the next stage is to start spreading that sense of well …
- It’s Up to You… So he doesn’t know how many people are going to come in and out of the fortress, but he does know that those who go in and out of the fortress have to go through the gate.” In the same way, the Buddha knew the principle of the Dhamma that all those who would gain awakening would have to develop skillful qualities, practice …
- Capture Your Imagination… So what kind of effort involves joy? Think of some activity—a game, a sport, a skill—that has captured your imagination. You find yourself working at it, not because anybody’s forcing you, but because you enjoy doing it. That’s the kind of effort, the kind of attitude the Buddha recommends that you bring to the practice. Ajaan Fuang used to say …
- The Creator of Worlds… You’re feeding the mind on skillful pleasures. You’re going to be holding on to this, but it’s a skillful thing to hold on to. You’ve got a sense of well-being that nourishes the mind, so that you don’t have to go feeding in hidden corners, feeding off of other people’s scraps. So this is food for the …
- Guilt & Shame… Whereas Buddhism doesn’t talk about justice at all—it talks about being skillful in your behavior. Now, sometimes skillfulness does involve punishing people who are wrong, but you’re not necessarily trying to get justice done. Think of the case of Aṅgulimāla: all those people he’d killed, and yet the Buddha saw that he had a potential. So he taught him. Aṅgulimāla …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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