Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Respect
     … If you notice any skillful qualities, you try to develop them. You don’t just simply watch them arise and pass away. You try to nurture them, giving rise to them if they’re not there, and maintaining them when they are, so that they can grow. Among those skillful qualities, two really important ones are alertness and mindfulness. Mindfulness is the ability to … 
  3. The Dhamma Channel
     … what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s skillful, what’s not skillful, where true happiness lies, where long-term suffering lies. If you’re properly tuned, it’s crystal clear. So try to tune your mind to the breath energy right now. Tune your mind in to this channel where all the breath channels in the body are connected and everything’s nourishing … 
  4. What Am I Becoming?
     … This is your nourishment for skillful becomings. The more you engage in the practice of the precepts and the practice of meditation, the more you become a meditator, the more you become a practitioner—and that’s a good thing to become. The same with clinging to views: Views can cause you suffering or they can be part of the path, as when you … 
  5. On Being Non-reactive
     … it’s one of the mental skills you want to develop as part of a whole range of skills you’re going to need. When you know how to use it correctly, then it can do a lot for you.
  6. Basic Breath, Basic Insight
     … You’re trying to train the mind in new skills. While you’re with the breath, ardency means trying to be as sensitive as possible to how the breath feels, as sensitive as possible to how you can adjust the breath in a way that really does feel good, because sometimes when you adjust it, you can be too heavy-handed. You can force … 
  7. Up for the Challenge
    Years back, I was giving a talk at a meditation center back East, and I happened to mention that when you meditate, when you practice, there has to be the desire to practice, the desire to develop skillful qualities and to abandon unskillful ones. It’s part of right effort. One of the people in the audience raised his hand and said, “Wait a … 
  8. Generating Energy
     … They’ve done studies of people who are really expert in physical skills and they’ve discovered that these people have the ability to motivate themselves using both types of motivation: a strong sense of the harm that can be done if you don’t master the skill, and a strong sense of the benefits that can come when you do. So you have … 
  9. Appropriate Attention
     … The first is that unskillful action should be abandoned, skillful actions should be developed. These include actions in thought, word, and deed. So that there are some shoulds there. The other categorical teaching builds on that: the four noble truths. Craving, the second truth, is an unskillful action. The noble eightfold path, the fourth truth, is a skillful way of acting. And here, too … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. Purity
     … trying to play our hand in such a way that ultimately we’re not dealt hands anymore, where we’ve got a happiness that doesn’t depend on either the hand dealt to us or our skill in playing it. That’s the goal. But in the meantime, we have to learn the proper skill and take it in the proper direction. The elements … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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