Search results for: "Skillfulness"
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- Vows… through developing our own minds, all the good qualities, the skillful qualities that we have in potential form. So keep these thoughts in mind as you make your vow and as you try to keep your vow for the next three months. Begin with discernment in choosing the right vow, learning how to read yourself to see what would be a good vow to …
- The Values of Stillness… So as you develop this skill of getting the mind to be still, allow there to be a sense of identification with that, that this is where you really want to be, this is where your center of gravity is. As for all the other ways that you’ve been identifying yourself that are not so skillful, let them be the intruders, let them …
- De-thinking… this going?” “Or, if I can’t even get there yet, what can I do to get there?” So learning how to ask questions is an important skill in the practice, as it is in any skill. You have to be observant. You have to notice things, and a lot of times that means framing questions in the mind. The questions deal with issues …
- Caring Without Clinging… Might there be something better than those ups? After all, what are we getting out of them? When he calls for equanimity as a skill in the practice, is he saying that we should have no emotions at all? Or is he talking about our relationship to happiness and sadness, as they come? The answer is the second alternative. There are things that we …
- Training Heart & Mind… You want to test your good intentions to make sure they’re actually skillful. So if you see any harm, stop. If you don’t see any harm, you go ahead. Then, when you’re done, you ask yourself, “This action that I did: Did it lead to harm over the long term?” If it did, go talk it over with someone who’s …
- The Reasonable Path… a certain amount of holding on, a certain amount of letting go—letting go of unskillful things, holding on to things that are skillful, things that work. From a logical point of view, it may seem deficient, but it actually works. It gets the mind into a position where it can see what’s actually going on, particularly in terms of its intentions. Right …
- Feeling & Intention… And in talking to ourselves in the right way, we can give ourselves lots of good reasons for why acting on skillful intentions really is in our own best interest. It’s a lot easier to convince yourself of that and to actually act on those understandings if you have that sense of well-being inside. This is why we start with the breath …
- Anchored in the Present… But in all these cases, your best way of dealing with problems in terms of feelings, your problems in terms of the mind, or your problems in terms of distraction is, “What’s the breath like?” Ajaan Fuang used to say that this is the key to our skill here. Whatever problem comes up, your first question should be, “How does it relate to …
- A Mind Like Earth… Your intentions have to be skillful. And you can’t expect that just because you have good intentions everybody will honor those good intentions and that things will come out okay. You have to be circumspect and careful about what you do. Remember the teachings to Rahula. You start out with good intentions, but then you have to test them. You have to act …
- Inner Poise… And to do it rightly, to keep one thing in mind steadily, is really an important skill because it gives balance to the mind so that the mind doesn’t go floating off after things, doesn’t get blown around by things. It’s what gives the mind strength. It’s also what helps us live together with one another. If you’re paying …
- To Discern Suffering… This is how any kind of skill is developed, realizing that this is something important that you’ve got to learn to master. And whether it’s easy or not is not the issue. It’s something you’ve got to master, because otherwise you’re going to suffer. You’ll see the suffering, you’ll feel it, but you won’t discern it …
- Greed for Outer & Inner Wealth… The purpose of the meditation is to give you some satisfaction, to find some well-being simply by breathing in a comfortable way, learning to develop skillful qualities in the mind, to abandon unskillful qualities, and to have a sense of how much lighter the mind feels when it’s trained, how much better it feels. Then you can look back at the qualities …
- Beyond Inter-eating… to keep reminding you that sitting around and thinking about whatever kind of thought you like to feed on—whether it’s thoughts of kindness or thoughts of anger; skillful thoughts or unskillful thoughts—you’re continuing the mind’s old habits. It likes to take on an identity in these thought worlds, and that taking on an identity is precisely what needs to …
- Goodness… Once you see that the qualities of the mind are important, you have the desire to prevent unskillful ones from arising and to let go of unskillful ones that have arisen; to give rise to skillful qualities and to develop the ones that have arisen so that they become fully developed. And you’ve got to keep this in mind. This is where mindfulness …
- Honest & Observant… We’re looking for patterns—patterns in our behavior that are unskillful—and for ways in which we can change our behavior so it’s more skillful. For that, you have to look at your actions over time and try to do them well, which is why there’s the ardency in there. There’s a strange passage in the Commentary, where it tries …
- Practical Wisdom… When you start worrying about the future, you can remind yourself that as long as you have the mental qualities you need to ensure that your intentions are skillful, then you’re going to be okay, no matter what. This is how you invest in the future. This is how you prepare for the future, by developing good qualities of mind, and trying to …
- Complexities of Karma… I talked about how understanding karma is an important part of understanding how and why you’re meditating, because when you meditate you’re trying to develop a skill, and the way the Buddha taught karma—the principle behind karma—is that what you experience in the present moment is a combination of two things: results of past actions, and then current actions and …
- Pleasure Has a Price… But if you feel well-nourished and at ease—the mind is in a good mood, the body feels strong from good breathing—it’s a lot easier to master some of the more difficult skills of the path and to pry your mind away from a lot of its other attachments. Many of us come to the meditation thinking that we’re just …
- In Training… Ajaan Lee, of a different forest ajaans, seems to be the most explicit in stating that we’re working on a skill. First, you learn from the teachers outside. But then you have to learn how to be your own teacher, set a task, do the task, and then look at the results. If the results are not good, ask yourself, “What could I …
- Renunciation Isn’t Deprivation… What this means of course, is that when you’re giving up your pursuit of pleasure in thoughts of sensuality, you’ve got to replace it with skill: the skill of getting the mind centered, getting the mind to settle down, and to find satisfaction in being with one thing—undisturbed, just being able to enjoy the pleasure of having the mind settle in …
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