Search results for: "Perception"

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  2. Focus on What You’re Doing
     … Part of that has to do with your perception of exactly what’s happening when you breathe. So one of the important parts of meditation is learning how to play with your perceptions. Think of the breath energy coming in and out of the pores. See what that’s like. Think of it coming in at certain spots in the body where there’s … 
  3. Broad, Tall, & Deep
     … After you were used to staying with that perception of space, Ajaan Fuang would then have you focus on the awareness of the space, which likewise had no limits. There was just the perception of knowing, knowing, knowing. Ordinarily, he’d have you wait until your concentration was strong so you could stay with these perceptions, and the mind would have the precision, stability … 
  4. Streams of Anger
     … What are the perceptions you hold in mind? How true are those perceptions? And again, the best way to see these things is to put the dam of mindfulness across the stream. In other words, you’re not going to act on the anger, you’re not going to act on the irritation—and then see how the mind complains. That’s when you … 
  5. Arising & Passing Away
     … The point is to notice that there are all these things in the body, and yet we can still have the perception that the body is beautiful. That perception is really persistent, really tenacious. There are doctors who work in hospitals,doing autopsies, yet they can still go home and sleep with their spouses. What they see about the body in the hospital stays … 
  6. Analysis of Qualities
     … So experiment with different perceptions and see which ones are the most calming. This is in line with the Buddha’s instructions where he says you want to be sensitive to mental fabrication, i.e., feelings and perceptions, and then to calm them. Which perceptions are most calming? One that I find very calming is, instead of thinking of the breath coming in from … 
  7. Feeding Instructions
     … Then there’s the perception. You go through life finding what you can feed on. Here, for the time being, we’re talking about physical food: Think about children crawling across the floor. They see something new. What do they do? They put it in their mouths to see if it’s edible. That seems to be their first perception. They don’t yet … 
  8. Truth with Boundaries
     … Then you start taking it apart—and that’s when the three perceptions get applied to the concentration itself. So even the three perceptions have their time and place to be used. In other times and places, you’ve got to block them. It’s good to think about this when you find yourself obsessed with a particular thought. Have you found the fifth … 
  9. In Touch with Your Fabrications
     … Then there’s mental—your perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the mental labels you use for identifying this as this and that as that. Sometimes these labels are individual words. Sometimes they’re pictures. Then feelings, in this case, are feeling tones: pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. These three kinds of fabrication are the basic elements we put together to create an emotion … 
  10. The Buddha’s Rules of Order
     … But those perceptions can speak to your subconscious mind, and they can worm their way into your attitudes. So you have to be very careful about the perceptions you hold in mind. And it’s good to learn new perceptions. This is why the Buddha gives so many similes, stories, analogies, for you to stock your mind with new perceptions. Then there’s verbal … 
  11. The Wisdom of Incongruity
     … So it’s always useful to learn how to question your perceptions: your perceptions about your body, your perceptions about your relationships with other people; your perceptions about your mind. And remember that sanity lies in stepping back. One of the things I especially appreciated about the ajaans in Thailand was their sense of humor: the type of humor that comes from being able … 
  12. There is This
     … neither perception nor non-perception,” or whatever the state may be. That’s one of the tools for getting around this habit of building a self all the time. This is a theme that recurs many places in the Canon. The monk who’s dwelling in emptiness and practicing concentration looks at the perception in his mind—it might be the perception of the … 
  13. Twigs & Branches
     … This is when you use perception, any perception that helps dissolve the blockages. As you hold that perception in mind and as you’re conscious of how the breath feels in the body, you evaluate how it’s going: That’s the fabrication part. If it doesn’t feel comfortable, what do you need to change? Do you need to change the rhythm of … 
  14. Analysis of Qualities
     … directing your thoughts to an object and evaluating it—asking questions or commenting on it. “Mental” covers perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the labels you apply to things. Feelings are feelings of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain. If you want to gladden the mind or steady the mind, to get rid of unskillful qualities and develop skillful ones, you have to work … 
  15. Counter-cultural Values
     … The perception of pulling in is a perception of hunger. The perception of the breath rising up from each little cell, swelling up, and in that way getting the air to come in through the lungs: That’s a different kind of perception of the breath—a perception of fullness—and it’s going to have an effect on the way that you breathe … 
  16. Mindfulness & Perception
     … The perception might just be a word, like “breath” or “in, out,” or it could be a picture in the mind, something that acts as a label. Without that label, you wouldn’t know where to focus. You’d lose your train of thought. You’d lose the thread. So these two things go together: mindfulness and perception. Perception is like a little arrow … 
  17. Enlightenment is Not a Hot Dog
     … That’s one perception of breathing. But then you can perceive the breath as an energy field that picks up energy not only in the lung area but also anywhere in the body. The whole nervous system gets involved in the breathing process. And if you hold that perception in mind for a while, you begin to see that it really does work that … 
  18. sBeyond Acceptance
     … Then, look at the perceptions and feelings you have around that particular mind state: How do you change those perceptions so that you can see that it’s not all that attractive? Last night we were talking about sensual fantasies. You have to identify the allure of these things. Then can you poison the fantasy? Can you change the perception? Put something in the … 
  19. Levels of the Breath
     … With that perception you can get the mind to a much more solid level of concentration. Just maintain that one perception. There will still be some in-and-out breathing, but it grows more and more subtle, and impinges less and less on your awareness. This is how you can get more in touch with that sense of the really still breath that’s … 
  20. Borrowed Goods
     … How do *you *analyze them? What’s *your *experience of the breath? And when you perceive it in a certain way, what does that do to the breath? What are the best perceptions for when you’re sick? What are the best perceptions for when you’re tired—for when you’re nervous, upset? How do you perceive the breath in a way that … 
  21. Mud Houses
     … The perception that holds the notion of body in mind: You can put that down and replace it with more refined perceptions—perceptions of space, perceptions of knowing, of nothingness. You begin to wonder how far you can take this process of refinement, because you see that this is a really good way of dealing with these aggregates. It’s like the little kids … 
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