Search results for: "Perception"

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  2. Do Jhana
     … You also get more sensitive to your perception of the breath, especially when you change it from the perception of air coming in and out through the nose to a perception of energy suffusing the body. Notice which perceptions are most helpful. If you perceive the breath as something you have to pull in or push out through this solid body, it makes it … 
  3. The Making Of
     … Then there are perceptions and feelings. Of course, there’s the feeling of pleasure. The perception is whatever perception allows you to be with the breath, with a sense of ease, with a sense of belonging, allowing the breath energies to fill the whole body, so that the ease and rapture have a medium which allows them to spread them throughout. While you’re … 
  4. Locate Your Craving
     … You begin to parse out the different activities of the mind, the directed thought, the evaluation—what the Buddha calls verbal fabrication—along with the perception that holds you with the breath. How do you perceive the breath going through the body? Notice that the way you change that perception will change the way you feel the breath in the body, but the perception … 
  5. Brahmaviharas at the Breath
     … Are you putting too much pressure on it? Are you focusing in the right place or the wrong place? What perception of the breath do you have in mind? Is there a perception that can make things easier? I’ve talked about the perception of the body as being like a sponge, where the breath can come in and out of the body from … 
  6. A Mirror for the Mind
     … A perception arises and you know that. This is probably one of the major lessons you learn from concentration: what a huge role your perceptions play—“perceptions” here meaning the images, the mental labels you use to tell yourself: This is this, and that is that. It was the mental label of the breath that allowed you to stay with the breath, together with … 
  7. Stress
     … There’s the stress in the three perceptions, and there’s the stress in the four noble truths. The stress in the three perceptions has to do with the raw material from which you’re trying to create a state of happiness, create a state of well-being, realizing that the raw material is the raw material for that purpose. But it’s like … 
  8. The Web of Pain
     … So this process of playing with your perceptions or manipulating your perceptions is a very important part of the practice, both in helping your concentration and in giving you insights. We usually think of insight simply as the ability to see things arising and passing away, which is supposed to do away with our attachment to them. Well, it’s important to see things … 
  9. Eyes in the Back of Your Head
     … And there is going to be perception. So uniting that intention and the perception: That’s a process of fabrication. You want to look for that. Again, sometimes this involves having eyes in the back of your head or eyes on different sides of your body. In other words, it’s not going to be right where you thought it was. It’s certainly … 
  10. Hold a Mirror to Your Mind
     … When that foundation is strong, then you can start asking the other questions, which are, “How are my feelings and perceptions shaping my mind?” In other words, “How does that feeling of pain make inroads into the mind, and what role does perception play in that?” Ajaan MahaBoowa gives a lot of interesting reflections on this: How do you perceive your pain? Is it … 
  11. Acceptance Without Suffering
     … Then look at the perceptions you hold in mind: how you perceive the situation, how you perceive what should be done. Ask yourself, “Where are my perceptions wrong? What perceptions would be useful to hold in mind?” When someone does something bad, you remind yourself that they do have their good side. The Buddha gives you an image to keep in mind. You’re … 
  12. Wise Endurance
     … clinging to form, feeling, perception, thought fabrications, or consciousness. In particular, what are your perceptions, what are your thought fabrications about a particular issue? Remember that even with the aggregates, there’s an element that comes in from the past and an element of fabrication in the present. The way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, the perceptions and feelings you focus … 
  13. Holding On to the Path
     … The same pattern is followed in the next tetrad, when you’re aware of how to breathe in a way that induces as sense of rapture, a sense of ease, and you get sensitive to how your feelings and your perceptions have an effect on the mind. The last step in that section is to allow those feelings and perceptions to be calmed. In … 
  14. Abandoning Craving
     … But where is that sense of satisfaction? Is it in the sight, the sound, smell, taste, tactile sensation? Is it in the feelings that arise at the senses? Is it in your perception around those things? And your perception of what? The perception of the object? The perception of yourself possessing that object? This is a principle that’s used a lot in advertising … 
  15. A Sense of Well-being
     … Then the perceptions influence the intentions, and the intentions influence the perceptions, and if you don’t watch out you can actually get yourself all tied up in knots. Some people, for instance, begin to feel as if their bodies are made out of lead because they focus too intently on the perceptions of solidity. When it’s too heavy like that you can … 
  16. What Focus? What Breath?
     … These are just a couple of examples of how our perception of the breath, and our perception of the focusing, the way we focus, can cause problems. You have to use the process of de-perception. Try to ferret out exactly what your perception, what your mental picture of the process is. Or catch yourself in the process of, say, tensing up around something … 
  17. High Level Metta
     … All those ways of thinking are directed thought and evaluation, but they also involve perceptions, in other words, images, labels. That’s where you get into mental fabrication. If you hold a picture in your mind, what happens to the breath as it comes into the body? That’s a perception. And the different perceptions will give rise to different feelings—of either pleasure … 
  18. Dwelling in Emptiness
     … You start going into the formless jhanas and the different levels of perception: The perception of space is more gross than the perception of consciousness. The perception of consciousness is more gross than the perception of nothingness. If you can see them separate out one by one like that, that’s how this dwelling in emptiness leads both to calm and insight at the … 
  19. Inquisitive
     … the power of perception. Just the image you hold in mind can change an experience. This applies, of course, not only to the breath but also to other things. That makes you stop and think: What would life be like if you had more control over your perceptions? And when you go back to the breath, what perceptions are most useful with the breath … 
  20. Lean into the Present
     … What the Buddha’s telling us is to be here with the breath in order to fabricate feelings around the breath, fabricate your perceptions around the breath for the sake of settling in and really get to know the breath—to see what potentials its got. This, too, is something we fabricate. In-and-out breathing is bodily fabrication, and the perceptions you apply … 
  21. Learning by Doing
     … You see the difference between an intention and an act of attention, and you begin to get very clear about what your perceptions are. For example, the perception you have of the breath—how it comes in, how it goes out: You can change that perception to think of the breath as originating in the body. Where are the spots in the body where … 
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