Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- Large Perspective, Small Focus… One, it’s because to get the mind in concentration you have to deal with those forms of fabrication: physical fabrication, i.e., the breath; verbal fabrication, directed thought and evaluation; mental fabrication, which are perceptions and feelings—perceptions are the labels or images you apply to things, and feelings are feelings of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain. You realize, when you …
- Isolating the Aggregates… what the Buddha calls “calming mental fabrications.” That brings us to the aggregate of fabrication itself. These are the questions you ask yourself about the breath. Your intention to stay here is also a fabrication. Your intention to change the breath is a fabrication. The way you evaluate how things are going: That’s a fabrication as well. The more clearly you can isolate …
- Tranquility, Insight, & Concentration… The Buddha gave sixteen steps in all for breath meditation, and the general pattern throughout the steps is that you see how things are fabricated in terms of the body, in terms of the mind; you learn how to energize that fabrication; and then you calm it down. Seeing in terms of fabrication: That’s the insight. The calming is tranquility. It all goes …
- Not What You Are, What You Do… After all, the path is a path of fabrication. The Buddha doesn’t tell you just to drop all activity at once, to be totally passive or totally devoid of any kind of intention. We hear that the goal at the end of the path is to be free from fabrication, so we think we’ll just stop fabricating and that should get us …
- Ironclad Technique vs. No Technique… If you’re not sensitive to what you’re putting into the present moment, how are you going to know whether a particular state is fabricated or not? There are strong states of Oneness that can come in the meditation. And the Buddha says, watch out: These are fabricated. The highest Oneness, he says, is a fabricated state. So you have to see the …
- Mindfulness of Death… You have to ask yourself, “Well, what needs to be done?” Look at the breath as bodily fabrication; the way you talk to yourself as verbal fabrication; and the perceptions and feelings you focus on as mental fabrication. What needs to be worked on in those three things? What insight can you gain into the process of fabrication as you work with them? That …
- The Reality of Your Thoughts… This is where the Buddha’s teachings on fabrication are useful. He says we fabricate our emotions in three ways: through physical fabrication, i.e., the breath; verbal fabrication, the thoughts and evaluations we make of a particular situation; and then mental fabrications, which are feelings and perceptions. The feelings here are feeling-tones: pleasure, pain, and neither-pleasure-nor-pain. As for perceptions …
- Question & Probe… You’re not given any help as to how not to get overwhelmed by the emotion, or how not to end up feeling trapped or trying to run away from it? Remember, the Buddha taught three types of fabrication. First is bodily fabrication, the in-and-out breath. You work with the breath in the body so that even though there may be difficult …
- An Ennobling Pleasure… Mindfulness itself is a type of sankhara, a type of fabrication. Your attention to the present moment is a type of fabrication. Your decision to watch the present moment: That’s a fabrication as well. But as you get the mind into this fabrication, one, you’re putting yourself in a better position to observe the grosser kinds of fabrication; and two, as your …
- What You Bring to the Moment… So let’s take a close look at how the Buddha describes fabrication. What is there along with the breathing? There’s also what he calls verbal fabrication and mental fabrication. Verbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation, which is what you’re supposed to bring to the breath as you meditate. You direct your thoughts to the breath and then you evaluate how …
- Verified Confidence… You see that that state of the mind as something fabricated. And, as we all know, once you start thinking in terms of fabrication—that’s the way you breathe, that’s the way you think, talk to yourself, the perceptions you hold in mind, the feelings you hold, focus on; these things fabricate your sense of the body, they fabricate your words, they …
- The Joy of Renunciation… Then use whatever skills you have—the mind’s skills for fabricating things, which are already good at fabricating defilements: Convert those skills to fabricating motivation to practice the Dhamma, to finding joy in the Dhamma, joy in investing in the long-term. As the Buddha said, delight in the Dhamma, delight in abandoning, delight in developing: These are among the forms of delight …
- Disenchantment… You look at fabrication. The bodily fabrication is breath. Verbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation. Mental fabrication is feeling and perception. These are the basic elements the Buddha has us focus on as we concentrate. First, of course, we learn how to dress them up in a new way. In other words, bring the directed thought and evaluation to the breath, to create …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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