Search results for: "Skillfulness"

  1. Page 95
  2. Becoming
     … And no matter how skillful you are at building an elaborate house with lots of gingerbread and balconies and whatever, it’s still frozen meat and it’s going to thaw. So when you develop dispassion for what’s come to be, you find true freedom. You stop this process of fabricating, building, creating states of being. You don’t have to destroy the … 
  3. Ask Yourself the Buddha’s Question
     … That’s what’s really special about the Buddha, not only that he was trying very carefully to make his actions more skillful, but that he was also very demanding in what he was going to accept as a desirable result, a result that he could be content with. Sometimes we hear about meditation as being all about accepting, accepting, accepting. Well, the things … 
  4. Right but Wrong
     … After all, the whole point of teaching about kamma is to realize there are actions that are skillful, actions that are unskillful, and actions that are mixed. If you were to say that all action ends in stress, then why bother with skillful actions? It defeats the purpose of that particular teaching. As for the teaching on all feelings being inconstant, stressful, not-self … 
  5. A Position of Strength
     … If your actions are going to be skillful, they have to come from a place where the mind can consider things carefully, clearly, and quickly. The more the mind is still, the more it’s able to do these things. Above all else, the mind needs strength, and it gathers its strength from meditation. When you sit here with the breath, tell yourself that … 
  6. No Who or Where
     … Try to put them together in a skillful way, but keep it on the level of events as best you can. This is a state of becoming that we’re creating as we get the mind into concentration, but the more you can keep it at the level of events, it’s a transparent* *becoming. You get to see the process as it’s … 
  7. Sanity for the Holidays
     … It’s from your family that you learn how to speak, how to walk—all your basic skills that you now take for granted. So when members of the family are difficult, remind yourself that you do have a debt of gratitude to them. That makes it easier to put up with some of the outrageous things that people will do and say. In … 
  8. The Joy of Monotasking
     … We’re working on a skill here, like learning how to weave a basket or to make clay tiles. You learn from the object you’re dealing with, and you learn best when you’re focused on what you’re doing. Otherwise, you have no way of making any connections. If you were sewing a shirt but not paying careful attention to the thread … 
  9. Deconstruct Your Emotions
     … Can you leave it there and not suck it in; not elaborate stories around it? These are important skills: learning how to recognize how you fabricate an emotion and how you do it unskillfully; and how you can deconstruct it and construct something more skillful in its place. It may sound artificial, but the whole process of constructing an emotion is artificial in the … 
  10. Meditating When You’re Sick
     … Think about what good things you can think about, what skillful things you can think about, even in your limited state when you’re sick. And simply because you can’t sit up in the meditation position doesn’t mean you can’t meditate. You can meditate lying down. You just have to be extra careful that you don’t fall asleep too easily … 
  11. An Auspicious Day
     … We try to do our best to make skillful choices here in this lifetime, but there are some possibilities of unskillful choices we’ve made in the past that might get in the way. So you want to do your best as soon as possible to put yourself in a place where the mind is really safe. From the Buddha’s point of view … 
  12. Four Noble Truths to One
     … But as the duties get developed, as you get more and more skillful at them, they do converge. If you denied the dualities at the beginning, the problem would never get solved. It’s when you admit the dualities and master the skills that go with them—that’s when you can bring things to one.
  13. The Psychology of Virtue
     … So you learn how to judge your thoughts as skillful and unskillful, and decide that you’re going to identify only with the skillful ones. This is the pattern that got the Buddha on the path to begin with: judging his thoughts not as to whether he liked them, whether they were entertaining, whether they were fun to think, but basically by where they … 
  14. To Be Worthy of the Dhamma
     … This applies both to skillful and unskillful aspects of the mind. When you’re trying to get the mind concentrated, the first thing to focus on, of course, is the unskillful side. What’s getting in the way of allowing the mind to really settle down and really be honest with itself? What’s the allure of that kind of thinking? When you see … 
  15. Maintained by Fabrication
     … that our intentions really do matter, and that intentions can be developed to a level of skill that can take us all the way to the unfabricated, and that it’s the ultimate happiness where you don’t have to intend anything anymore. You want to keep that in mind. Otherwise, we get tied up in the affairs of the day. “This person said … 
  16. Faith as a Virtue
     … We have to have faith in the potentials of the mind; conviction that the Buddha discovered them—they really are true—and in the principles of action—that if you act on skillful intentions, there are going to be good results; if you act on unskillful intentions, there are going to be bad results. Yet when you look around you, sometimes it seems it … 
  17. True, Beneficial, Timely
     … Your habit of talking to yourself is a pile of twigs and branches, and you can make that into a raft if you’re skillful. What the Buddha’s teaching us is that we can master these habits as skills, so that instead of creating suffering for ourselves, we can use them to put an end to suffering. And then we can let them … 
  18. Determination
     … He said what he really wanted more than anything else was something that wouldn’t die, and he sought what was skillful—in other words, actions that were skillful in leading there. What would work? We have to reflect on our own practice in the same way. There are a lot of things we have to give up, not only in terms of material … 
  19. How to Read Yourself
    One of the most necessary skills you have to develop as a meditator is learning how to read your own mind. Where is it right now? What shape is it in? What does it need? In Pali, this is called attaññu, having a sense of yourself. Often we’re pretty bad at it. When things are going well, we get complacent. We think nothing … 
  20. Riding an Elephant to Catch Grasshoppers
     … Pick them up only when they’re skillful—in other words, when they’re helpful for directing yourself back to watching the mind. Think of the Buddha on the night of his awakening. His knowledge fell into three modes. The first mode was the narrative mode, the mode of stories: thinking back all of his many lifetimes: how he’d been born this way … 
  21. Maintaining Goodwill
     … The most important thing is to learn how to develop the skills you need in order to keep the mind still right here: mindfulness and alertness. Learn how to be very skeptical of the mind’s claims when it says that this or that thought about the past or the future is really important, you’ve really got to think about it. You’ve … 
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