Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Admirable Friendship
    Admirable Friendship November 13, 2002 Practicing the Dhamma is primarily an issue of looking at yourself, looking at your own thoughts, your own words, your own deeds, seeing what’s skillful, seeing what’s not. It’s not so much an issue of self-improvement as one of action-improvement, word-improvement, and thought-improvement. This is an important distinction, because people in the … 
  3. Tap, Tap, Tap
     … Right here you begin to sort out which parts of the mind really are skillful, which ones look skillful but actually are not, and vice versa. Then you remind yourself: You’re *doing *these things. It’s not that they’re happening on their own. So you have to look and see, “Where’s the intention? How do I filter these things? How do … 
  4. To Begin the Day
     … Other people will be doing other things, sometimes skillful, sometimes not. You hope that they’ll act in a skillful way, again for their sake as well as for yours. But you realize that your primary responsibility is your actions, so you have to protect your goodwill. There’s an image in the Canon of a mother protecting her child. Sometimes it’s misinterpreted … 
  5. Your Inner Mob
     … But there is an aspect of your awareness that’s separate from these voices, and finding it is a really important skill in the meditation. There are states of mind that the Buddha called “hindrances,” which can come sweeping through the mind. The problem with each of them — sensual desire, ill will, torpor and lethargy, restlessness and anxiety, or uncertainty — is that it blinds … 
  6. Potentials
     … After all, even though the aggregates are not fully under your control, still as the Buddha said, if people couldn’t develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful qualities, there would have been no point to his teaching. So we can do something with our body. We can do something with our feelings, with our perceptions, with thought fabrications, and with consciousness. That’s how … 
  7. Good Eating
     … In the meantime, though, you’ll find there are skillful and unskillful identities that you can develop around this kind of meditation-eating too. The skillful identity is simply: “Other beings can do this, why can’t I?” As you see that you’re able to do that, it gives you a sense of self-worth, responsibility, self-respect. The unskillful “I” you might … 
  8. Breath Meditation: The First Tetrad
     … One of the key factors to his awakening was his unwillingness to settle for second best; an unwillingness to be content, as he said, with skillful qualities. If he felt that there was a way in which he could possibly be even more skillful, he’d go for it. So he studied with two teachers. The teachers didn’t satisfy him. He subjected himself … 
  9. Understanding Goodwill & Equanimity
     … If you see people who are doing things that are skillful and will lead to happiness, or are already experiencing happiness, you’re happy for them. There’s no resentment, no jealousy. These attitudes all go together. Equanimity stands a little bit apart. It’s the realization that if you want for there to be happiness but it’s not happening, there’s going … 
  10. The Wall of Discernment
     … As he said, the secret to his awakening was being discontent with skillful qualities. In other words, as long as his mind hadn’t reached the ultimate level of skill, he wasn’t going to rest content. So the value judgement of discernment is that the peace of mind you can find through the practice is the most important thing to work for. And … 
  11. Two Hands Washing
     … You’re getting more and more skillful in your thinking. That’s something a lot of people don’t like to hear. We like to think, “I’m pretty good at thinking things through, all I need to do now is to learn how not to think.” And with some people that is the case. They do have a tendency to analyze things pretty … 
  12. The Five Faculties Confirmed
     … But if you realize that it is in your best interest to adopt the principle of conviction so that you’ll be more careful in your choices, then, based on the conviction, the heedful path is to work on developing skillful qualities of the mind and abandoning unskillful ones, to develop mindfulness, to develop concentration, to develop discernment. Heedfulness underlies all of these things … 
  13. Being Responsible
     … Meditation is a skill. You learn by doing it and then looking at the results, and caring enough that, if the results are not good, you’ve got to go back and change what you did. Like weaving a basket—if the first basket doesn’t come out well, you don’t just sit there and complain about the materials. You’ve got to … 
  14. Intoxication
     … It also means remembering what you’re supposed to be doing in the present moment, remembering where different kind of actions lead, remembering where skillful actions lead, remembering where unskillful actions lead, remembering when you look at something attractive, someone attractive, that you have to ask: Where is the person’s body going to go? It’s going to go toward aging, illness, and … 
  15. Protection Through Mindfulness Practice
     … It reminds you not only what you’ve read in the texts or heard from teachers, but also what you’ve learned on your own in your practice, as to what works and what doesn’t work in giving rise to skillful qualities. That’s how your power of memory is a protector. Then there’s alertness. Alertness watches what’s actually happening—and … 
  16. Evaluation: The Voice of Heedfulness
     … That, the Buddha said, is the basis for all skillful behavior. It’s not that we’re innately good. And, of course, he doesn’t say we’re innately bad. But the reason we behave well is because we see there’s a need for it. If we don’t behave well, there’s going to be danger. Some people don’t like the … 
  17. The Mind Undefined
     … not resting content with skillful qualities. In other words, he kept asking, “Is there something more skillful than this?” Sticking with that question requires a lot of determination. This is one of the reasons why a lot of people didn’t make it to awakening ahead of the Buddha. It’s all too easy to say, “This is as far as I can go … 
  18. Dedicating Merit
     … That has to be gained by skillful methods. And other people benefit at the same time. There are the two ways they benefit. One is automatically. If you have less greed, aversion, and delusion in your mind, you’re not the only one who’s going to benefit. Other people will benefit from the fact that they’re not the victims of your greed … 
  19. Mountains Moving In
     … So learn how to encourage the ones that are skillful. Even though you may have unskillful attitudes in the mind, you don’t have to regard them as your true nature. They’re no more true than your good motives, and they certainly don’t take you in a good direction. So encourage the good ones, discourage the unskillful ones. Keep careful watch over … 
  20. Beyond Likes & Dislikes
     … Learn how to develop this skill — and it really is an important skill — this willingness to give up on your normal inner conversations and try something really new. It requires some imagination to try it. And it requires a lot of mindfulness and a lot of alertness to stay there because we’re so good at creating little worlds right away, letting these things … 
  21. Breath Energies
     … So this approach of looking at the breath, working with the breath, making it more comfortable, is basic training in the skills that are going to lead to awakening. You’ve got yourself started on the skills right away. So do your best to perfect them.
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