Search results for: "consciousness"
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- Alternative Conceptions… It gets you down to the basic level where insight happens, what the Buddha called name and form together with consciousness. Form, of course, is the form of the body, how it feels from inside as we’re sitting right here: the sense of warmth, which is the fire element; the solidity, which is the earth element; the liquidity, the water element; and the …
- Everything You Need… You don’t have to identify with your feelings, your perceptions, your thoughts, even your awareness at the senses, your consciousness. You don’t have to identify with these things if identifying with them leads to suffering. You have that choice. We talk about the committee of the mind and that’s only part of the range of what you can latch onto here …
- Habits & Practices… the form clinging-aggregate, the feeling clinging-aggregate, perception, fabrications, consciousness clinging-aggregate. That’s because we’re not familiar with our clinging on this level. It’s easier to relate to the different clingings that the Buddha says get applied to these five aggregates. In fact, that’s what the whole issue of comprehension is. First, to get familiar with how you experience …
- Oneness… Ajaan Fuang noted that this sense of total oneness or unification with the object can take you all the way up to the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness. It’s simply a matter of the perception you hold in mind. After the fourth jhana, you drop the perception of the form of the body — the still breath allows you to do this — and …
- Constructing & Deconstructing… Into the future, it sends us warnings: “Watch out, there’s a pain here.” That perception shapes your next moment of consciousness, and your next moment, and then your next moment. It drags them down, fastens them to the pain. You want to watch out for that. Learn how to take that process apart, because it’s the perception that makes the pain invade …
- The Pursuit of Excellence… One is that it’s a type of consciousness. There’s an awareness, but it’s an awareness without an object. The image the Buddha gives is of a sunbeam. He asks the monks, “Suppose there’s a house with a window in the eastern wall. When the sun rises, the sunbeams go through the window in the eastern wall. Where do they land …
- Tools of Perception… The perception of form is gone, and what you’re left with is feeling, perception, thought fabrication, and consciousness. But even these aggregates are not the ultimate terms. In the commentaries they talk about this being the ultimate description of reality: the five aggregates. But the Buddha advises us to go on to perceive whatever arises and passes away simply as stress arising and …
- Train Hopping… One is simply consciously to ignore that train of thought. You’re sitting here with your full-body awareness. The trains of thought can go through and you don’t have to focus on them. Focus on the body side of your awareness and keep that as comfortable as possible. There will be these little thought trains going through like the cosmic rays that …
- Taking Your Own Medicine… As you’re doing it consciously, you begin to catch the more subconscious ways you’ve been manipulating the breath without even realizing it— sometimes in ways that are not especially good for the body or mind. So make this your conscious activity, your conscious endeavor right now, to see what kind of breathing feels good and to see what way of adjusting the …
- To Discern Suffering… And then there’s consciousness, your awareness of these things. We hold on to these things. This is how we suffer. The word for clinging in Pali means basically to feed on things. The image comes from fire. Back in those days, they felt that fire clung to its fuel and, in clinging to the fuel, that’s how it fed itself. At the …
- Twigs & Branches… form, feeling, perception, fabrications, consciousness.” There’s another passage, though, where twigs and branches are a symbol for the path. You lash together twigs and branches to make a raft and, holding onto the raft, you can cross over the flood. So in the second case, the twigs and branches are something you hold on to provisionally, for the purpose of getting across. Of …
- Dharma Medicine… for example, the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness. This is the Buddha’s analysis of suffering. When you suffer, there is going to be clinging to one of these five things. So it’s useful to look at whatever the suffering is in these terms, whether it’s an uncomfortable experience in the body, or an uncomfortable state of mind …
- Three Levels of Evaluation… That sense of oneness can take you all the way to the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness. But to get to that, you’ve first got to evaluate things to get everything fitting snugly together and well-connected together inside. I once made the mistake one time, when talking to someone in Thailand, of saying that it’s like a dog lying down …
- Wind, Fire, Water, Earth, Space… Then there’s consciousness that knows these things. All of these things can be seen as impersonal properties. Space and consciousness are useful for getting beyond the form jhanas into the formless states. In other words, once you’ve got the breath still and you’ve got the other elements in balance, try to maintain that sense of being balanced right here. You’ll …
- The Skill of Restraint… The Buddha counts sensory input among the four foods for consciousness. It actually includes three of the four: contact at the senses; intentions at the senses — why you’re looking at these things, listening to these things to begin with; and then consciousness of the act of sensing. These three aspects of sensory input are what the mind is feeding on all the time …
- The Return of Chickens from Hell… You’ve got perceptions, the labels you put on things, and you’ve got the intentions that are fabricating these things, and then you’ve got consciousness, which is aware. Those five activities—form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness—are the aggregates. And as the Buddha said, if we cling to them, we’re going to suffer. Particularly if we cling to them with …
- Respect, Confidence, & Patience… You can be more realistic about what you’re undertaking here, which is the total re-training of the mind, learning radically new habits in how you relate to the body, how you relate to your feelings, how you relate to your perceptions, your thought- constructs, even how you relate to consciousness. The Buddha points out that we tend to relate to these things …
- Tranquility & Insight… Our whole experience of the form of the body, our feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, even our consciousness, has an element of intention in it. We’re doing it for a particular purpose. We want happiness out of these things, in line with whatever we conceive the happiness to be. And we shape these things because of our passion for the happiness. It’s a …
- Fears… Then consciously expand that sensation of physical relief and open it up to counteract the fear’s physical symptoms. At the same time, ask yourself, “Exactly what is this fear?” “What’s being threatened?” “Where do you feel weak?” “What is the danger?” Learn to take the reasons for the fear apart, because a lot of the fear lies in the confusion. You don …
- Everybody Suffers… We’re also talking about emotional food, the food of sensory contact, the food of our thoughts, the food of consciousness. All these things can dry up, they can all be threatened. You have to look for a happiness that lies outside of their range. It was the Buddha’s discovery that there is such a happiness, and it can be attained through human …
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