skillful and unskillful intentions

I wanted to do another post about "skillful and unskillful."

"People who tend to engage in a lot of self-recrimination find this hard. This is why it's good to think about that universal principle, that everybody has to go through this stage. And it's an important stage because you refine your discernment as you do this. Discernment is the quality that's going to purify the mind. It's going to lead you to awakening. You can't sit here and simply hope for awakening to come out of the sky and whap you across the head. It comes from refining your discernment so that you see what's going on. You see where your intentions are skillful, you see where your intentions are unskillful. And ultimately you see what lies beyond intention. Because it's in your freedom to make choices right here in the present moment: That's the spot where freedom should be investigated. The potential for freedom is going to be found right around here."

--from ePublished Dhamma Talks: III


love always,
Samuel