Search results for: "Skillfulness"

  1. Page 94
  2. The Uses of Concentration
     … And although the path leading there involves some harsh lessons in looking at our own ignorance, our own craving and clinging, our own unskillful intentions, it also involves developing skillful intentions: realizing that we do have the potential for skillfulness as well, and learning to use that potential wisely, developing a sense of ease and wellbeing that enables us to do this work in … 
  3. Evaluation
     … It’s just that you’ve learned the skills to bring out other potentials. Well, it’s the same with your mind—and with your body. Sit here watching your breath and you’ll see: Where’s the potential for ease? Where’s the potential for rapture or refreshment? It’s there. Look for it. Where in your mind is the potential for stillness … 
  4. In the Driver’s Seat
     … In other words, if there’s something skillful that you haven’t given rise to yet, you give rise to it. Once it’s there, you maintain it. You make sure it doesn’t fall away. This is different from the popular notion of mindfulness, which simply watches things arising and passing away. Mindfulness as a governing principle means, one, you keep things in … 
  5. Protection Through the Practice
     … You can watch things arising and passing away in the mind, good or bad, and not give in to their power unless you see that it’s something really skillful to do. That’s the kind of quality you’re trying to develop, that kind of stability—along with the alertness to see clearly what’s happening. Because all too often, the unskillful things … 
  6. Sensitive to the Breath
     … And ingenuity is an important skill you want to develop on your own as a meditator. You work with the basic principles and then you stretch them to see how far they stretch before they reach the breaking point. There are times when you experiment too much and you go too far away, and then you’ve got to recognize that and come back … 
  7. Respect Your Center
    One of the most important skills you want to develop as a meditator is to find where your home base is: the place in the body where the breath feels good, and the mind feels at home when it’s focused there. You want to know that spot and learn how to work with it, learn how to come back to it as quickly … 
  8. Standards for Thinking
     … In other words, you work with what you’ve got, but you work with skill. Bring some knowledge to these processes and they can form a path away from the suffering that they’ve been causing up to now. So much of the path depends on how you talk to yourself: giving yourself encouragement when you need it, coming down hard when you need … 
  9. The Three Perceptions as Tools
     … He’s more concerned with how are you creating a sense of self? And is it skillful? When it’s not, how can you stop clinging to it? Now, there is a provisional sense of self that you need to use on the path: the sense that you’re competent to do the path, and that you’re going to benefit from it. That … 
  10. Worldly Equanimity & Its Uses
     … It’s a series of skills you have to develop. And, as with any skill, you’re going to be running into difficulties. So you’re going to need the kind of equanimity that allows you to face them down and—from a calm, cool state of mind—figure out what’s going on and what can be done about it. So it’s … 
  11. Using Your Many Minds
     … But if you look around in this committee you have in the mind, you find that you have all kinds of selves in here, some of which are skillful in one area, while others are skillful in another area. So you want to learn how to train them to work together. Take advantage of the strengths of the individual members. Years back in high … 
  12. Taking the Long View
     … So the question is, which side do you want to take with you—the skillful side or the unskillful side? Because these are the things that you can take with you. The things of the world cannot be taken. The position you’ve gained in the world, the power you’ve gained in the world, even the wrongs that you’ve righted in the … 
  13. Your Territory
     … How long can you stay here? You’re working on a skill. Now, the mind can think about anything it wants to at any time. But having time to work on this skill, that’s a real privilege. So here’s the time. Make the most of it. You’ll come away refreshed and with a new perspective on things. The combination of the … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. Understanding Through Developing
     … There’s the potential for skillful and unskillful thoughts in the mind, and you want to see the distinction, explore that distinction. See what skillful thoughts lead to, what unskillful thoughts lead to. There’s a potential for rapture. The Buddha doesn’t say what it is, but it’s there in your body and you can find it. You can start with that … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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