Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Discernment Through Ardency & Evaluation
     … Ardency is the quality of doing it right, trying to be skillful, noticing when things are not going well, how you can improve them, and when they are going well, how you can maintain them and develop them further. Not all three qualities deal exclusively with the present moment. Mindfulness is helping you remember useful lessons you’ve learned from the past that you … 
  3. The Tools of the Path
     … You develop the desire to get rid of any unskillful qualities that are there in the mind, and then to develop skillful ones in their place. Here right view comes in to inform you of how and why you do that. As the Buddha said, some of the causes of suffering that you should learn how to abandon will go away simply by looking … 
  4. Feel-Good Religion
     … As for skillful qualities, you try to maintain them. The skillful ones here are alertness and mindfulness. Alertness means knowing what you’re doing while you’re doing it, along with the results of what you’re doing. Mindfulness means keeping all this in mind. You keep the body in and of itself, you keep “breath, breath, breath” in mind. As you really get … 
  5. Glad to Be Here
     … Ajaan Suwat would talk about this very often. “Come with a sense,” he would say, “of conviction that this is a good thing to be doing, and confidence that if you master this skill, it’ll take you far. And that you do have the ability to master it.” This is why it’s important to have a cheerful attitude as you do this … 
  6. The Mind Set Tall
     … When you are going to get on to the real stuff? Well, you’re building the skills you’re going to need for the real stuff. You’re going to need to be able to tap into that sense of well-being, you’re going to need to be able to pull the mind out of any train of thought that’s beginning to … 
  7. The Fortress
     … If skillful things haven’t arisen yet, you try to give rise to them. As for unskillful things that haven’t even come into the mind yet, you do your best to prevent them. And when skillful qualities do come, you do your best to maintain them and develop them. You don’t just sit there and watch the enemy come in and take … 
  8. Determination
     … You have to stick with your perception of what’s going to be skillful and what’s not. In other words, discernment is strategic. It’s not just a matter of knowing about emptiness or not-self or dependent co-arising. It’s looking at your mind, figuring it out: What are the obstacles? What’s the allure of the things that are unskillful … 
  9. Training Your Minds
     … What we’re trying to do as we meditate is to find which members of the committee are most skillful, who actually do have the ability to bring about some happiness, a happiness that doesn’t have any bad side effects. If your happiness involves the suffering of other people, there are going to be a lot of problems down the line. So you … 
  10. The Goldsmith
     … This is why you approach the training of the mind as a skill, but as a skill that hasn’t been totally set in stone. After all, the Buddha taught and transmitted basically the main principles. But your mind is not composed simply of main principles. It has all its details. And so you have to learn how to adjust the main principles to … 
  11. Forging a Path
     … But it requires skill to find it. That’s what we’re doing right here: We’re learning the skills needed to find genuine safety. As the Buddha said, once you hang onto the body, the body leaves you open to all kinds of things: fists, clods, knives, and that’s just what human beings can do to you. So we’ve got to … 
  12. Effortlessness Through Effort
     … It’s equanimity—and not necessarily skillful equanimity at that. The other effortless meditation comes after you’ve actually put in a lot of effort to solve the different problems that come up in the mind until you’ve worked through the various hooks of the different thoughts and emotions that pull you away from the present moment, so that the next time that … 
  13. Skillful Distress
    I know a psychologist who has a map of emotions in terms of where you are in your head, in your intentions, and in your gut feelings. She’ll put you on the map, try to identify where you are, and then look at where you want to go. The map then lays out the steps from where you are to where you want … 
  14. Strength for Stillness
     … This is a skill that comes more and more with practice. Then there’s the strength of mindfulness. You try to remember: This is really what you want to do. Remember all the various reasons you have for wanting to be here. And those reasons point you to what’s happening with the breath right now. If you’re going to see anything about … 
  15. An Auspicious Night
     … For the monks, we have three months when we live in the rains retreat, and we’re often encouraged to live together so that we can learn from one another, encourage one another, benefit from one another’s mindfulness, discernment, wisdom, and skills. If you want people to be happy to share their skills with you, you have to show respect, but you also … 
  16. Painful Feelings, Hurtful Words
     … It’s a necessary part of our survival skills in the world, because the Buddha talks about two things in particular in the world that we have to develop this quality for. One is dealing with unpleasant speech from other people, and the other is dealing with physical pain. And the instructions he gives for dealing with each of these have some patterns in … 
  17. Calm
     … Think of images that stir up energy—like the forest ajaans, who use images of going out into battle or working on a skill to remind you that you’re not here just trying to have a moment of calm and relaxation. There’s work to be done here, problems to be solved, battles to be won. So hold helpful perceptions in mind. What … 
  18. Responsible for Your Actions
     … The same thing with figuring out what’s skillful and what’s unskillful in the mind: You’ve got to get the mind as clear as possible, as still as possible, to see clearly, operating on the principles of conviction in your actions and right view about what you want to look for in terms of what the problem is inside the mind i … 
  19. Push Yourself
     … And the stress of skillful qualities is not there. Notice the implication of that: that developing skillful qualities will sometimes involve stress. But when you finally can master all the obstreperous voices in your mind, all the lazy voices in your mind, and gain some well-being that comes through the mastery of the mind, that’s when you’ve deserved your rest. That … 
  20. A Graduated Discourse
     … It’s remembering what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, so that when you recognize what’s coming up through your alertness, you’ve got a framework for deciding what should be done. Ardency is what then tries to do it. So, right now we see that the mind wandering around is in a place of danger and the mind that settles down … 
  21. Near to the Buddha
     … If you let go of unskillful things, skillful things will come in and take their place. As the Buddha said, loss of friends and relatives is not all that serious. Loss of wealth is not that serious. Even loss of your health is not that serious. The serious losses are when you lose your right views and when you lose your virtue. With things … 
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