Search results for: "Form"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Defeatism? - Anything But… And a lot of them concerned maintaining proper form. Even if you don’t have a lot of time to practice, make sure that when you do practice, you maintain proper form. And that you be really observant about what’s getting results and what’s not. So here, proper form is keeping the mind with the breath; keeping yourself centered here with a …
- All for the Sake of Freedom… All five of these things—form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness—are aggregates. Even when they form a state of concentration, they, too, are inconstant, stressful, and not self. And when the mind is really ready, it can then let go of all these things. At the same time, it lets go of those three perceptions, too, so that awakening to the truth involves transcending …
- Open Are the Doors to the Deathless… You have form, which is the form of the body, and also the form of things outside you can feed on. Feelings: There’s the feeling of the pain that comes with hunger and the feeling of pleasure you’re looking for as you try to assuage that hunger. Perceptions: the labels that tell you, “This is food. This is not food.” Thought constructs …
- Skillful Fear… The chant we had just now about the different forms of blessing: They’re all forms of right action and right thinking, because the word mangala means not only blessing but also protection. It’s good to look at the list. It gives you ideas of which areas in your life where your actions are unskillful are still leaving you unprotected, so that you …
- Simple & Basic… He says that the knowledge is a strengthened form of mindfulness; the vision, a strengthened form of alertness. These two qualities are the starting point for everything else. The basic Dhamma textbook that’s used to teach monks and novices in Thailand is made out of lists, starting with lists of twos, lists of threes, fours, fives. And the very first list, in the …
- Large Perspective, Small Focus… So you look at the suffering, try to identify it, and as the Buddha said, it’s just aggregates, which are just activities of the mind—there’s form, feeling, perception, fabrication, consciousness. And it’s not just the aggregates themselves, there’s aggregates plus clinging, the way we cling to these things. What are you clinging to? Is it a particular idea about …
- The Psychology of Harmlessness… His values come in the form of four noble truths. Suffering is clinging to five aggregates. It’s caused by craving. You can put an end to it by putting an end to the craving. And the way you do that is through the noble eightfold path. Those are the four truths, the basic truths that the Buddha teaches. They carry duties—they have …
- Practicing from Gratitude… After all, these are forms of goodness that don’t have limitations; they’re forms of happiness that don’t create borders and boundaries. If your happiness depends on material gain, status, or praise, those are things that, when you gain them, someone else loses them, and that creates a boundary right there. But generosity, virtue, concentration, discernment, the release of the mind: Nobody …
- Hold a Mirror to Your Mind… If you reflect on that, you’ll learn an awful lot about all the aggregates, because wherever there’s pain, there’s going to be the issue of the form of the body. Is the form of the body the same as the pain? Well, no. The form of the body is made out of the elements or properties of earth, water, wind, and …
- Conceit Defanged… Take form, for example: your body. You can either identify yourself as being the body, or you can identify yourself as being the owner of the body. You can have a sense that you are in the body or that the body’s in you. With the last one, you can have an infinite sense of self—a cosmic sense of self—within which …
- The Power of Perception… You begin to see in action what the Buddha was talking about, which is that if you’re going to have an actual perception, an actual feeling of the form of the body, or the feeling tones of pleasure or pain, you have to fabricate them from the raw material coming from your past. These things exist in a potential form, coming in from …
- Challenges… The pleasure of what they call form, i.e. the body as you sense it from within, is a higher form of pleasure than the pleasure of sensuality: the pleasures of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. The pleasure of form is something is totally independent of things outside. To appreciate it, the mind has to be still. This is why it’s a …
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