Search results for: "Skillfulness"

  1. Page 84
  2. Starting from Within
     … Learn how to take more advantage of this opportunity you have in the present moment to act in a way that doesn’t cause suffering, to act in a way that’s skillful. Now this is a gift, not only to yourself but also to the people around you. When you’re not burdened down, you can help other people shoulder their loads. If … 
  3. Little Decisions
     … One was to be not content with the skillful qualities he had developed. In other words, he didn’t just say, “Well, this is good enough for now, I’ll just stop here.” He said that if there was something better for the mind to attain, something higher, something more refined, he would keep going for it until there was nothing more to attain … 
  4. The Wear & Tear of Life
     … You can be engaged—and engaged in a skillful way. So take your time. Try to be meticulous in watching over the mind., because it’s the little things that drive you off the breath. When you deal with them properly, then when aging and illness and death and separation come, you’re in a much better position to deal with them. You realize … 
  5. Think Calmly about Death
    We meditate so that we can be more skillful in the way we live—but also so that we can be more skillful in the way we die. Death, after all, is a part of life. Once there’s birth, it’s written in the contract. There’s going to be some aging and some illness and then finally death. We don’t like … 
  6. The Brightness of Life
     … Remember the Buddha’s statement about how any teacher’s duty with regard to a student is to give the student a clear idea of how to figure out what is skillful and what is not skillful, and give the student a teaching that allows the idea of what should be done and what should not be done to make sense. After all, if … 
  7. Getting Untangled from Thorns
     … In other words, it’s easy to lose your sense of what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s skillful and what’s not. You can’t regain it until you can pull back and observe these things a little bit from the outside. In fact, the more you can observe them from the outside, the better. So staying with the body gives … 
  8. In the Mood
     … They’ve done studies of people who develop skills, and they’ve discovered that the ones that are really proficient at particular skills are the ones who, on the one hand, really take to heart the benefits of developing that skill, and on the other, are very alert to the dangers of not developing it, the harm you could do. Years back, we were … 
  9. Mindfulness & Effort
     … So it begins by learning how to support the mind with its good intentions, its skillful intentions. Right now the skillful intention is to stay with the breath, explore the breath, get to know it. Allow your awareness to fill the body. And notice how the breath feels in the different parts of the body. In any place where it feels tedious or tiresome … 
  10. How to Listen to the Dhamma
     … Appropriate attention basically asks two kinds of questions with regard to your behavior in general: “What’s skillful and should be developed, and what’s unskillful that should be abandoned?” Then, as you get into the mind: “Where is the suffering right now? What am I clinging to, how am I clinging to it, and where is the cause? What’s the craving that … 
  11. Patience & Urgency
     … If you rush through things, discernment doesn’t have its chance to develop its skill, doesn’t have its chance to develop its powers of observation. What happens all too often when you’re in too great hurry is that you go for the shortcut, and the shortcut can often lead you astray. You need to be very careful in what you do. Now … 
  12. Take Heart
     … the desire to keep unskillful qualities from arising, or if they have arisen, the desire to abandon them; the desire to give rise to skillful qualities if they’re not there, and if they are there, then the desire to maintain them and develop them further. That kind of desire the Buddha praised. The image that Ven. Ananda gave was of going to a … 
  13. Mindfulness Gets Intimate
     … Mindfulness as a factor for awakening is present in me.” “Me, me, me.” But you’re using “I” and “me” in a skillful way, because it’s on this level that you’re making an effort to get the mind into right concentration. In fact, you could read that instructions for keeping track, say, of the breath—ardent, alert, and mindful—putting aside greed … 
  14. Goodwill, Gratitude, No Guilt
     … If you have goodwill for yourself and goodwill for others, it’s a lot easier to act on skillful motives, to do skillful things. So how do you develop goodwill? You remind yourself of where happiness comes from: It comes from the mind and it gets expressed through your actions. Your actions can have an influence on your happiness and the happiness of others … 
  15. Lessons from Stilling the Mind
     … But when you’ve gained some control over your unskillful thoughts and you’re thinking only skillful thoughts, you’re like a cowherd who doesn’t have to worry about the cows getting into the rice, because the rice has been harvested. They can wander as they like, and nobody’s going to get upset. The cowherd can just be mindful of “those cows … 
  16. Better to Give than to Consume
     … First you give up your unskillful selves as you develop the skillful ones, but then after you’ve worked so hard on developing the skillful ones, the Buddha said you’ve got to give those up, too, for the sake of your long-term welfare and happiness. There’s a reward that comes from not hanging on. You’re always trading up—but you … 
  17. Loving Yourself Wisely
     … When there’s a skillful impulse, you can see that it’s there as well. The second gift that comes from the meditation is the strength to let go of the unskillful impulses and to develop the skillful ones. And to remember these things: what’s skillful and what’s not, and what you should do with these things as they arise. That’s … 
  18. An Island above the Flood
     … If something unskillful comes up in the mind, your duty is to comprehend it and abandon it, and then to give rise to skillful qualities in its place. So again, you’re not just “being the knowing,” you’re not just accepting whatever comes. You’re applying appropriate attention. Bare attention, by the way, is not appropriate. Bare attention is just aware of what … 
  19. Clinging & Feeding
     … In other words, he has you look at your feeding habits for the mind and notice where they’re unskillful and how you can replace them with more skillful feeding habits—particularly in terms of your views, your habits and practices, and your sense of who you are. You try to develop those in a skillful way, so that eventually they lead you to … 
  20. The Karma Snake
     … What are you doing right now? Is it skillful? What will its results be? What can you do to make sure that you get better and better at your skill? For instance, as you’re staying with the breath, how you can get more stably concentrated, and more reliably concentrated, and not get worked up about the things that eat away at your concentration … 
  21. A Genius about Your own Mind
     … So whatever skills can get you here, either by taking an interest in the mind in the present or by taking an interest in the breath in the present, you want to develop them. Sometimes, though, when people can settle down in the present moment, they’re in a great hurry to move on, saying, “What’s the next step?” Well, the next step … 
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