Search results for: "Skillfulness"

1. Page 94
2. Play AudioGradually Sudden
    … They say that anthropologists, when they try to learn the skills of the various tribes they study, have found that hunting is the hardest skill to learn because it requires a lot of patience and a lot of alertness: unrelenting alertness, steady alertness, all-around alertness. Which is precisely the quality we’re trying to develop here. As you maintain that alertness, you’ll … 
3. Play AudioBoxed Stories
    … So this ability to see these boxes as fabricated, and the realization that you can create a more skillful box to encompass a less skillful box, or get you out of the unskillful box: That’s an important ability in the practice. In addition to mindfulness, it’s useful to have a sense of humor. You can laugh at some of the dialogs or … 
4. Play AudioStake Out
    … We’re going to settle in here.” One of the reasons why we work with the breath is to give us something to do, partly so that we can settle in comfortably, and also so that we can have a few skills up our sleeve. That way, when thoughts do begin to appear, you’re sensitive to them not only on the mental side … 
5. Play AudioAccepting the Way Things Function
    … Now, that might take some talking to yourself and using some skillful perceptions. You’ve been learning how to breathe in a way that feels good so that you can have a sense of well-being that you can then wish for other people. If you don’t have any sense of well-being inside, it’s hard to think of the well-being … 
6. Play AudioPassion for Nostalgia
    … You want to master this as a skill: how to step out of mind states, how to take them apart, so that you can end this process of wandering into them—creating worlds and then wandering into the worlds. It just goes on and on and on, and never really arrives anywhere. As the Buddha saw on the night of his awakening, if you … 
7. Play AudioGladden, Steady, Release
    … And again, you’re going to need these skills. This is something a lot more reliable, a lot more dependable. You’re training yourself to be a more dependable person, more trustworthy to yourself. Those are thoughts that can help steady you. As for releasing: What are the burdens that weigh you down? What are the things you carry around with yourself all the … 
8. Play AudioIn Tune
    … Another source of joy is when we follow the teachings and find that we’re able to act in more skillful ways, more harmless ways. That gives rise to a sense of joy. Another source of joy is living in harmony. The Buddha defines this as living in harmony together in terms of our virtue. The monks all adhere to the Vinaya. The lay … 
9. Play AudioMindful All the Way
    … As you train the mind in this direction, it’ll be more and more likely that, as you go through life, it’ll maintain these skills. However, they can be lost, so you have to be careful not to get heedless. This is one of the reasons why, when people are approaching death, the people around them in Thailand try to remind them of … 
10. Play AudioWhat’s Important
     … doing what you know is skillful and having trust in the Buddha when he says that it is skillful. Whether it shows its results immediately or it takes time, that’s not the issue. This is why the teaching does require conviction. When we read that its aim is the end of passion and desire, that may seem discouraging. But, actually, there’s a … 
11. Play AudioShame Yes, Guilt No
     … You get more and more used to thinking in skillful ways, more and more used to seeing the times when you really stick with the precepts where you hadn’t before as a victory, and you take joy in that. This is when you learn how to enjoy the training: that you can keep it alive and you’re more likely to get quicker … 
12. Play AudioClinging
     … Remember that you’re learning a skill here as you meditate that you don’t use just while you’re meditating. It’s useful in all circumstances: You can focus on something and disperse the tension wherever you’re focused. It may be because of this reason that some people object to the idea of calling samadhi “concentration,” because they think concentration has to … 
13. Play AudioTo Get Ourselves
     … This relates to the Buddha’s statement that discontent with skillful qualities was the secret to his awakening. In other words, contentment is not a blanket principle of putting up with whatever comes by, both outside and inside. With things outside, you learn how to adapt. If it’s good enough to practice, it’s good enough. With things inside, though, if anything unskillful … 
14. Play AudioGuarded
     … What are the skills that that person has mastered? What are that person’s ways of looking at things? And as you pick those up, you find your attitude changing as well. This way, you learn how to think in ways that undercut any bitterness or irritation or sense of being threatened by people or situations outside. Because a lot of times it’s … 
15. Play AudioThe Gift of Goodwill
     … When you act on skillful intentions with right view, the results are going to be good. The results may come slowly, but they’re going to come. If you act on unskillful intentions and wrong view, believing that your actions don’t matter, then the results are going to be bad. It was seeing that larger pattern that the Buddha was able to come … 
16. Play AudioTruths of the Will
     … Whatever skill is needed to pull away from any disturbances, any hindrances, any distractions, you apply that skill. You keep at it. Of course, truths of the observer require a certain amount of will for you to know them. In other words, if you don’t want to know these things, you’re not going to conduct the experiments to find them. Similarly with … 
17. Play AudioWhat You Sense Directly
     … So you’ve got unskillful causes, the different kinds of craving, and skillful causes, the different factors of the path, and then the results of those two. That gives you the four noble truths. That right there is enough, because these truths point you to what you’re doing right now and where you may want to look to improve what you’re doing … 
18. Play AudioJoyous Endurance
     … And again, the best way to offer them protection is to let them know what skillful action is and encourage them in developing skillful karma. So these things are the right directions you want to go in. But you want to make sure you don’t get deflected by attractive sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, or painful sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations … 
19. Play AudioAn Auspicious Birth
     … You want to be clear on the fact that you want to keep your focus on what you’re doing right now—that’s what your present karma is—and make sure that it’s skillful because the other things, whether they’re good or bad, are karmicly neutral. Painful feelings can come up. Pleasurable feelings can come up. Painful emotions, desires: These are … 
20. Play AudioThe Sport of Wise People
     … Because that’s the only way you’re going to be able to develop skill. You read about people who are really good at a particular sport or a particular instrument. They learn all the basic steps, but then they use their imagination to figure out how they can be better—and to figure out what things might be done with that skill that … 
21. Play AudioChanting Before Meditation
     … If something skillful comes up, you remember to encourage it. Again, you’re learning to think in terms of that framework—the search for a happiness that doesn’t die. The word skillfulness relates to whatever leads in that direction. Unskillful is what leads away, causes harm, put limits on the mind, puts limits on the happiness you can find. So keep that perspective … 
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