Search results for: "Fabrication"

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  2. Verbal Fabrication
     … The Buddha talks about three kinds of fabrication, and we’re engaged in all three as we put the present moment together. There’s bodily fabrication—the i-and-out breath. Verbal fabrication—directed thought and evaluation; how you talk to yourself, focusing on a topic, making comments, asking questions. And then mental fabrication—your perceptions and feelings. As Ajaan Lee would point out … 
  3. The Tools of the Path
     … In that case, you have to exert a fabrication. Now, what are the fabrications? The Buddha talks about three fabrications: bodily, verbal, and mental. These have to do with the five aggregates that are suffering when you cling to them. So, you actually learn how to use these aggregates. You get hands-on experience with them in using them to get rid of unskillful … 
  4. Change Your Perceptions
     … There’s an awful lot of emphasis on the different kinds of fabrication: bodily fabrication—the way you breathe; verbal fabrication—technically, it’s directed thought and evaluation, but in plain terms, it’s the way you talk to yourself; and then mental fabrication—perception and feelings. As you look at the Buddha’s teachings, you can see that a lot of them have … 
  5. Accepting the Way Out
     … And it’s important that you learn how to translate the abstractions into the immediacy of what you’re doing, so that you can see, “Oh yeah, there is a fabrication going on.” The breath, that’s fabrication right there. It doesn’t come ready labeled, so that when you first breathe in as a baby, something tells you, “Okay, here’s bodily fabrication … 
  6. Dispassion Isn’t Depression
     … Ultimately, you get to the point where the mind doesn’t fabricate anything: Its sensitivity gets greater and greater until you realize that any kind of fabrication, even skillful fabrication, involves stress. It’s inconstant. So you ask yourself, “Why do I keep engaging in this?” When your sensitivity is developed properly, then you can see that there is an escape. The fact that … 
  7. Fourth Truth, First Duty
     … Feelings feel, perceptions perceive, fabrications fabricate, consciousness cognizes. They’re defined by the activity they do. And you can begin to see how you constantly hold on to those activities, which is what suffering is. Now, for the sake of concentration, you do want to hold on to them for the time being. But an important part of both right mindfulness and right concentration … 
  8. A Divine Seat
     … Bodily fabrication, as I said, and then verbal fabrication: directed thought and evaluation itself. That’s the Buddha’s term for how you talk to yourself: the comments you make, the questions you ask, the answers you give to those questions. You direct your attention someplace and then you discuss it with yourself. Then there are perceptions and feelings, which are mental fabrications. Perceptions … 
  9. Two Kinds of Defilements
     … Now to understand the Buddha’s term, “exerting a fabrication,” you have to think about the three kinds of fabrication. There’s bodily fabrication, verbal and mental. Bodily fabrication is the breath. That gives you one of your primary tools for digging around: learning how to change your breath around a particular issue. When anger comes and there’s a catch in the breath … 
  10. Focus on Your Intention
     … Form deforms, feelings feel, perceptions perceive, fabrications fabricate, and consciousness cognizes—the point being that these are activities. The word “aggregate” has an unfortunate connotation. It sounds like gravel, little bits and pieces of rock. The aggregates probably got that name in English from a convention in early modern European philosophy which said that groups of things were either systems or aggregates. Systems were … 
  11. Looking after Yourself with Ease
     … Evaluate it. “How is it? Is it good? Is it not good?” So you’ve got the verbal fabrication right there as you’re working with bodily fabrication. And then with the perceptions and feelings: You have the feelings of ease that you’re trying to create and trying to maintain. And the perceptions are the images you hold in mind—in this case … 
  12. Brahmaviharas & Noble Truths
     … realizing that there’s more you’ve got to do, because the brahmavihāras are fabricated states. If you just stay with those fabrications, you’re never really free. Freedom comes when you can look at the mind as it fabricates things, and then step back from its fabrications. We do that as we develop the path, because right view, which is part of the … 
  13. The Food of Feelings
     … All of that is a product of our own fabrication in the present moment. So as long as we’re fabricating things in the present, we might as well learn how to do it skillfully. That, in particular, is what the practice of concentration is about. In the various analogies given in the Canon for the different aspects of the path, concentration often shows … 
  14. Free Not to Suffer
     … With those the Buddha says you have to exert a fabrication, and there are three kinds of fabrication he’s talking about here. The first is the breath: That’s bodily fabrication. The second is what he calls directed thought and evaluation, his terms for the way you talk to yourself. That’s verbal fabrication. Then there are perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are labels … 
  15. Heart & Mind
     … As the Buddha said, this process of fabricating emotions, if we do it with ignorance, will cause suffering. If we do it with knowledge, it actually becomes part of the path. There are three factors here. There’s bodily fabrication, which is the breath, and “breath” here is conceived in very broad terms as the energy flowing through the body. It courses along the … 
  16. Right Here, Right Now
     … The Buddha talked about sankharas, fabrications, as being the main focus of insight. It’s when you understand fabrications, he says: That’s the knowledge that’s going to clear away all the bonds of the mind, all the fetters on the mind. Now, what are those fabrications? There’s the bodily fabrication, which is the breath. Verbal fabrication: directed thought and evaluation. When … 
  17. Analyzing Anger
    When the Buddha describes the steps for breath meditation, he words them in a way aimed at making you to be sensitive to three kinds of fabrication, or saṅkhāras, that you’re doing right now and that you’re doing all the time: First is bodily fabrication – the in-and-out breath. Second is verbal fabrication – the way you talk to yourself. In his … 
  18. The Five Aggregates
     … So the question is, what are you going to do with these functions? There’s an interesting spot where the Buddha talks about the functions of the different khandhas, and one of them, fabrication, is the most basic. Because, he says, our experience of all the khandhas depends on fabrication. There’s a potential for form, a potential for feeling, for perceptions, for fabrication … 
  19. Strong Through Commitment
     … So a lot of the Buddha’s teachings are specific instructions in how to fabricate more skillfully. They’re all pretty basic things: bodily fabrication—the way you breathe; verbal fabrication—the way you talk to yourself; and then, mental fabrication—the perceptions, the labels and images that give meaning to things, as when we say, “This is this and that’s that.” As … 
  20. Protest Your Virtue & Right View
     … How do you process things? How do you fabricate things? This is why, when the Buddha gave breath meditation instructions, he talked about bodily fabrication and mental fabrication. Bodily fabrication is the way you breathe. Mental fabrication has to do with the feelings and perceptions, the images you hold in mind. He uses these technical terms like fabrication, sankhara, even when he’s talking … 
  21. The Power of Attention
     … One of them is fabrication. In fabrication, there’s the directed thought—the act of choosing something to focus your thoughts on, which counts as part of verbal fabrication. In name and form, there’s attention, how you pay attention to things, the questions you ask. These two go together. As you’re focusing on the breath, that’s the first choice you’ve … 
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