Search results for: "Fabrication"

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  2. The Perception of Inconstancy
     … And then the path—even though the factors of the path are made out of fabrications, you have to develop them, because those are fabrications that can get you out. You can’t simply say, “Well, everything’s inconstant. Just leave it at that.” You try to figure out, “Well, what’s inconstant? In what way? And what has what potentials?” This connects with … 
  3. The Dhamma Eye
     … You have to know this part of the mind really well, the part that’s adjusting things in the present moment, using the different kinds of fabrication—bodily fabrication, the way you breathe; verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself; and mental fabrication, feelings and perceptions. Get to know these things really well, so that when they finally fall away, you’ll know … 
  4. Focus on What You’re Doing
     … This is why we fabricate a state of concentration: so that we can get good at fabricating a good state of mind and get more conscious of what it means to engage in fabrication. We’re always fabricating different mental states: greed, aversion, delusion—all kinds of things. We’re doing it all the time, to the point we’re not really conscious of … 
  5. How We Cling
     … Thought fabrications fabricate things, and consciousness cognizes. We’re not holding on to things here. We’re holding on to actions. When you gain that insight into the aggregates through your concentration, then you can turn it on to the things you hold on to, and you realize that you’re holding on with these same activities. Yet they’re all pretty ephemeral. They … 
  6. Protect Your Energy
     … This is where the other forms of fabrication come in. First there’s verbal fabrication, which is the way you think about things and evaluate situations. Then there’s mental fabrication, the perceptions and feelings you have. Those are things you have some control over as well. Those are things that you use to shape your experience, too. If you do it with ignorance … 
  7. Counter-cultural Values
     … The Buddha talks about three kinds of fabrication. There’s bodily fabrication, which is the breath; verbal fabrication, which is the way you talk to yourself about things. You direct your thoughts to a topic and you evaluate it. These are the sentences with which you describe things in your mind. And then there’s mental fabrication: perception and feeling, which are the raw … 
  8. Lessons of Right Resolve
     … You see that they depend on all three kinds of fabrications. There’s bodily fabrication—the way you breathe; verbal fabrication—the way you direct your thoughts to a topic, in this case, goodwill, and the way you think about it and evaluate it. You realize that this is something you have to think about, because infinite goodwill isn’t something naturally there in … 
  9. The Noble Truths of the Breath
     … The important point in all the steps is that as you breathe in and breathe out, you give yourself a task to do, either in making the breath comfortable, giving rise to a sense of refreshment, or in dealing with what the Buddha calls fabrication. This is where breath meditation connects to the four noble truths. Because the way you fabricate the body is … 
  10. Anapanasati Day
     … These are mental fabrications, the Buddha calls them. Then you learn how to calm the mental fabrications. In other words, where there’s pain, you try to turn it into rapture; where there’s rapture, you might want to turn it into pleasure. Then there’s the very subtle pleasure of equanimity. These are all things you can play with. Again, if you couldn … 
  11. Dissolving Distress
     … He says you try to breathe in and out aware of what he calls bodily fabrication. Breathe in and out aware of mental fabrication. Bodily fabrication is the breath and its effect on the body. Mental fabrication deals with your perceptions and your feelings, which shape the state of your mind. As you’re trying to stay with the breath, keeping it in mind … 
  12. The Forerunner of All Things
     … Physical fabrication is the breath itself. Verbal is the way you talk to yourself, what the Buddha calls directed thought and evaluation: You focus on a topic and then you comment on it. And finally there’s mental fabrication, which is composed of feelings and perceptions. Feelings are feelings of pleasure, pain, or neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Perceptions are the images or labels that … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. Defabricating Anger
    The Buddha says that we suffer from our ignorance, and the first thing we’re ignorant of is the extent to which we fabricate the present moment. We take the raw material coming in from our past karma, and then we turn it into an actual experience of the present moment. We that with three activities called fabrication: bodily fabrication, the in-and-out … 
  15. Physical Pains & Painful Words
     … The next two steps—being sensitive to mental fabrication and calming mental fabrication—correspond to Ajaan Maha Boowa’s recommendations for how to deal with pain. “Mental fabrication” basically means feeling and perception. And here the perception is the important element: how you perceive the pain. You might want to ask yourself, “What color is the pain? What shape is the pain?” Strange questions … 
  16. What’s Relative, What’s Constant
     … The connection between ignorance and fabrication is a useful one to start with, because as you’re sitting here meditating, you’re getting direct hands-on experience with bodily fabrication—i.e., the in-and-out breath and all the variations of the ways that you can breathe. Verbal fabrication—directed thought and evaluation—all the different ways you can talk to yourself about … 
  17. Right Effort
     … Other defilements, though, require what the Buddha calls exerting a fabrication. “Fabrication” here has many aspects: verbal, mental, and physical. Physical fabrication is the breath. In other words, when you see greed or anger or delusion arising in the mind, ask yourself, “How is the breath going right now?” See if you can change the mind state by changing the way you breathe. That … 
  18. Breath Meditation: The First Tetrad
     … I was reading a piece recently questioning the standard translation of bodily fabrication, asking, “Why would the Buddha introduce a technical term here?” Well, part of the reason we’re doing breath meditation is because we’re trying to develop both calm and insight. Insight requires seeing things in terms of fabrication. So the breath is something that fabricates your sense of the body … 
  19. Analysis of Qualities
     … They require first, though, that you understand the process of fabrication in the present moment. Fabrication, sankhara, comes in three types: bodily, verbal, and mental. “Bodily” is the in-and-out breath. “Verbal” is the way you talk to yourself before you break into speech. Technically, this is called directed thought and evaluation: directing your thoughts to an object and evaluating it—asking questions … 
  20. Meaning & Becoming
     … Think about the different kinds of fabrications that go into this process of becoming. They’re the same fabrications that can be used to create a path. There’s bodily fabrication, the way you breathe; verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself with directed thought and evaluation; mental fabrication, perceptions and feelings. We turn these into states of becoming all the time. We … 
  21. Anger
     … We get used to looking at things in the mind in terms of the different kinds of fabrication: bodily fabrication, verbal, mental. Bodily fabrication being the in-and-out breath; verbal being directed thought and evaluation being the way you talk to yourself; and mental fabrication being perceptions—mental labels, acts of recognition, acts of imaging things to yourself—along with feelings. You use … 
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