Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- Things that Arise & Pass Away… One of the really radical premises he has you take on as you practice is that if you sense any change—any arising, passing away or, while something is subsisting, any change in that thing—then it’s a sign of fabrication. Fabrication is another word for intention. There’s an element of your intention in that experience. The Buddha’s concerned with not …
- At Home in Jhana… The mind has a habit of fabricating things, so have it fabricate right concentration. You’ve got the breath, which is bodily fabrication. You’ve got directed thought and evaluation, which are verbal fabrication. And you’ve got feelings and labels or perceptions, which are mental fabrications. So instead of fabricating worlds outside, thought worlds that can go who knows where, you fix up …
- Jhāna & Discernment… It’s called fabrication, or saṅkhāra in Pali. The Buddha wants you to see the extent to which the present moment is not just a given—it’s something you put together through the processes of fabrication. You put it together, one, by the way you breathe. That’s called bodily fabrication. Two, verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself. You choose a …
- The Brahmaviharas on the Path… As the Buddha said, you fabricate your emotions through three kinds of fabrication: physical, verbal, and mental. The breath counts as physical fabrication. Directed thought and evaluation count as verbal fabrication. And feelings and perceptions count as mental fabrication. The breath is what actually takes an emotion and makes it real in the body. So a good way to start with the brahmaviharas is …
- The Role of the Observer… You’ve got a battle going on in the mind, and that’s the area where the Buddha says that you have to “exert a fabrication.” Now, we know the different kinds of fabrication. There’s the breath, which is bodily fabrication; directed thought and evaluation, when you set a topic in mind and then think about it, ask questions, make comments—that’s …
- Seeing Through Your Defilements… That, as the Buddha said, is when you have to exert a fabrication. In other words, you have to work with those unskillful thoughts, using the processes of fabrication. The word “fabrication” here, sankhara, refers to three things. The first, bodily fabrication, is the breath. The way you breathe around certain defilements keeps them going. When anger comes, you breathe in a certain way …
- On the Path of the Breath… On the inner level, he said to notice what things can provide what level of happiness, and to see how far you can push this process of fabrication. Because that’s what you’re doing as you breathe in this way: You’re exploring the potentials for bodily fabrication, verbal fabrication, and mental fabrication to see how far they can go. Once you’ve …
- Not Getting What You Want… Those are the ones that will sprout first—and the act of paying attention is part of what the Buddha calls fabrication. We take these potentials and we turn them into a present-moment experience. Fabrication has three types: There’s bodily fabrication, which is your in-and-out breath. Verbal fabrication, which the Buddha defines as directed thought and evaluation. This is basically …
- Lessons from Jhana… The fact that you’ve arrived at the dimension of nothingness having gone through those stages, taking them apart, primes you to see things in terms of the different kinds of fabrication: the aggregates or the types of fabrication listed in dependent co-arising. Whereas the two other ways that you can get into the dimension of nothingness are simply by repeating a mantra …
- What Are You Taking into the Future?… This comes from the process of fabrication. In the Buddha’s analysis of suffering, fabrication comes before your awareness of the six senses. So even before sensory contact comes, there’s a fabricated thought or a process of fabrication that wants things to go in a certain direction, that has a purpose. The Buddha talks about how the mind fabricates form for the sake …
- Brahmaviharas & the Breath… Universal goodwill is something that’s fabricated. You have to put it together. And how do you fabricate attitudes? There are three kinds of fabrication and they all have to work together. There’s mental fabrication where you think about things through your perceptions. You hold certain perceptions in mind, like the perception of goodwill, or that you would want to spread goodwill to …
- Feeling & Intention… When you practice with the breath, you’re practicing with these different kinds of fabrication so you can gain a sense of confidence that you can change them if you want. You practice with good fabrications so that when unskillful fabrications come into the mind you realize that you don’t have to take them as your real feelings or your real thoughts on …
- A Connoisseur of Happiness… This is when you can let go of the jhana and, through insight into the process of fabrication, allow the fabrication to stop. You no longer try to fabricate anything out of what you’ve got in the present moment. That’s when the mind opens up in an unexpected way to something that’s not fabricated. And the realization hits: that when the …
- All Fabrications Are Stressful… What the Buddha said is that “Everything that’s fabricated is dukkha.” What does fabrication mean? It’s the process that we use to experience the world, to experience ourselves. That gives you the answer right there. If you realize that everything that comes through the six senses has to go through your process of fabrication, then you can legitimately see how all things …
- Noble Right Concentration… After all, it is a fabricated thing. We’re trying to put the path together. So we tweak that sentence that all things are subject to change and make it: All fabrications are subject to change. Remember—where do fabrications come from? They come from intentions. Intentions come from where? They come from the mind. So you’re not interested in things in general …
- The Primacy of the Mind (2)… The fourth step is to calm bodily fabrication. Bodily fabrication is basically the in-and-out breath. You may want to know: Why does the Buddha bring in a technical term here? It’s because he wants you to see the extent to which the mind’s intentions play a role in how you breathe. We learn from other places that when you get …
- Nurturing Your Inner Adult… There’s the breath, which is bodily fabrication; directed thought and evaluation—in other words, the way you talk to yourself about an issue—are verbal fabrications; and then there are perceptions and feelings, which are mental fabrications. Feelings here are not so much emotions. They’re more feeling tones: pleasure, pain, neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Perceptions are the images that underlie the thoughts …
- No One Size Fits All… The breath is bodily fabrication, in that it creates your sense of the body right now. Then there’s mental fabrication: perceptions and feelings. In both cases, the Buddha says, once you see that process of fabrication, you learn how to calm it. In that way, you’re doing both insight and tranquility at the same time. Then there’s verbal fabrication in the …
- A Diffuse Light… You’re calming bodily fabrication by calming mental fabrication. It’s in this way that you can begin to see how all four tetrads—the tetrad related to the body, the tetrad related to feelings, the tetrad related to the mind, and the tetrad related to dhammas—help one another along. As you get more sensitive to the process of fabrication, energize it in …
- Goodness Comes from Heedfulness… You can start developing the bodily fabrications, the verbal fabrications, and the mental fabrications that lead to greater compassion, that lead to greater happiness, that enable you to feel unlimited goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, when these things are appropriate. These are just a few of the ways in which heedfulness helps you develop the right attitudes, not only in the meditation, but …
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