Search results for: "Form"

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  2. Refuge
     … So these different forms of becoming—even though eventually, some day, you’ll have to abandon them—are necessary parts of the path. After all, the path is not the goal. That’s something that has to be stated over and over again. Some people say, “I’ve got to let go. I’ve got to see that there’s no self or whatever … 
  3. Pride in Your Craft
     … When you first pour cement, you need the forms. If you take away the forms before the cement has hardened, it flows out all over the place. There comes a point, though, when the cement is hard enough that you can take the form off, and the cement stays where it is. So it’s in this process of trying to get the mind … 
  4. Perceptions of Self & Not-Self
     … On the one hand, there’s the teaching that, as we chanted just now, form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness are all not-self. The six senses are not-self. The eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind are not-self. But then, as he pointed out, there’s the phrase another passage that we chant again and again, “I am the owner … 
  5. The Six Properties
     … Name-and-form comes before contact. Perceptions are part of name-and-form. And there are perceptions in the factor of fabrication that comes before that. So you can use these topics on various levels: as means to gain a sense of dispassion and saṁvega, to induce a sense of solidity in the mind, to solidify your concentration, and to learn lessons about the … 
  6. Goodwill Plus
     … You can think of it in terms of the factors of name in name-and-form. On the side of form, you’ve got the different elements or properties of the body. Of course, you’re focusing on the breath element, to get it steady, easeful, nourishing. Then you look at the mental factors. There are perceptions and feelings, and here the Buddha adds … 
  7. Breathing Easy
     … The Buddha calls it the pleasure of form, the pleasure that comes from inhabiting your inner sense of the form of the body. It’s like that old Peanuts cartoon where Linus comes up to Lucy and says, “Feel how cold my hands feel.” She says, “Oh yeah, they are cold. But how do you know how cold they are when you’re inside … 
  8. Curious About the Process
     … The Buddha lists one factor he calls name and form. Form is how you sense the body from within in terms of the four properties. And you want to get sensitive to that. We move the energy around in the body, but oftentimes we move it around in a way that’s going to cause trouble because we’re not paying attention. But as … 
  9. Happiness Without Conflict
     … It’s based on your inner sense of the form of the body, which can be very intense—the pleasure that comes as you focus on the breath like this—but it doesn’t conflict with anybody else. Nobody else is going to try to come in and get your sense of your breath. Other people can see you breathe. They can hear you … 
  10. Feeding Frenzy: Dependent Co-arising
     … Prior to contact you’ve got the senses, and prior to the senses you’ve got name and form. Name and form are crucial here, particularly name, for it includes feelings, perceptions, intentions, attention, and the contact among these things in the mind. This is why the Buddha focuses the practice of the path right here, at the processes of name. You’ve got … 
  11. The Pleasure of Concentration
     … As Ajaan Mun used to say, any form of goodness that’s without drawbacks is genuinely good. And there are so few forms of goodness in the world that are good in that way. Now that you found one of them, make the most of it.
  12. Goodwill as Right View
     … But there’s an interesting passage where the Buddha says that ill will is also a form of wrong view, the implication being that goodwill is a form of right view. The view underlying ill will, of course, is that you would gain something by seeing somebody else suffering. Right view is that you gain something by wishing everybody to be happy. We live … 
  13. Focus on Your Intention
     … In other words, there is a potential for form coming from your past actions, there’s a potential for feeling and so on, and through our intentions, we take that potential, and turn it into an actual aggregate for the sake of having that aggregate. Of course, that aggregate then is for the sake of what? Well, it depends on the intention. As the … 
  14. The Four Biases
     … In English, they’re often translated as four forms of bias, four forms of prejudice. I think bias is probably the best translation. It gives a sense of getting off course, looking at things at a slant, doing things in a slant way. It’s not straightforward. The only way the mind can do things in a slant way like this is if it … 
  15. When the Mind Is Still
     … You want to see how your thought worlds are formed. The best way to see how they’re formed is to try to interrupt their formation as quickly as you can. One image you can think of is a spider on its web. It’s sitting very still, waiting for the web to move. When the web does move, it has to figure out … 
  16. Learning by Doing
     … You can recreate weather patterns and begin to understand, “This is how this kind of cloud forms and that kind of cloud forms.” In other words, you manipulate things. Sometimes you run into some resistance. Sometimes you learn that you can do things o that you didn’t expect you could do. So, we are trying to make a difference here in the mind … 
  17. Patience & Consistency
     … How does a mind state form? How do skillful states form? How do unskillful states form? In the case of the skillful ones, you have to stick with them for long periods of time, get them going so that they’re solid and dependable, so that you can understand them. As for the unskillful ones, it takes a lot of good steady concentration so … 
  18. Clinging to Karmic Diarrhea
     … The concentration we’re doing right now has form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness—all right here. We want to get to see that when we put these aggregates together in this way, even though they do involve effort and there is some pain in the practice, it’s worth the effort so that we can look dispassionately at other, more blatant forms of … 
  19. Recollection of Hell
     … That’s a form, one of the elements of form. You direct your thoughts to the breath and evaluate the breath: That’s a type of fabrication. You hold the perception of breath in mind, all this so you can create a sense of feeling that’s pleasant, easeful. You want to spread that throughout the body. Then you’ve got a consciousness that … 
  20. To Know the Unconditioned
     … You’re just left with the form of the body, in which the breath is very still. Then the perception of form begins to dissolve as the image you have of where the body’s boundary lies disappears. You’re left with space. The perception of space dissolves. You’re left with consciousness as an object of your awareness. The perception of the oneness … 
  21. Meaning & Purpose
     … And then there’s contact at the senses—the sense doors, or the sense media—where you see forms, hear sounds, smell aromas, taste flavors, make tactile contact with things outside, or think about ideas. As he focuses our attention to meditate, he wants us to focus attention on that first kind of contact, our immediate sense of the body as we feel it … 
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