Search results for: "Form"
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- The Need for Evaluation… The different elements here are the aggregate of form. And when you get that feeling of pleasure, are they the same thing or they are something separate? Then there’s the perception, the different labels you apply to the breath, to your sense of the body, your mental image of the body. Learn how to use these things deliberately. The fabrication here is the …
- The Joy of Renunciation… that what we experience in terms of form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness is based on what we’ve fashioned out of the potential for these things. We have certain intentions that make us fashion these aggregates. That applies to feelings of pleasure and pain. The pleasure you’re going to find in the precepts is something you have to fabricate. You do that …
- Investing in Noble Wealth… That’s a form of wealth right there: having that conviction. It gives you a lot of energy to stick with the practice. The next three forms of noble wealth go together as a set: virtue, a sense of shame, and a sense of compunction. Virtue is the decision that you’re not going to harm anybody. You’re not going to harm yourself …
- Right Effort… Keep the proper form. It’s like when you’re practicing to be a swimmer. There are days when your energy level is down, so you do less practice, but you try to maintain proper form throughout the practice. And it’s the same with the meditation. In days when your energy level is down, try at least as skillful as you can. When …
- The Pleasure of the Middle Way… But the pleasure that comes from the breath is called a pleasure of form. It’s on a higher level. When the Buddha had been practicing austerities for six years and realized finally that that was not the way, he asked himself, “Is there another way to awakening? Could there be another way?” He cast around, and he remembered a time when he’d …
- The Desire for Things to Be Different… The same with the factors of name and form: Under form, you’ve got the elements of the body: earth, wind, water, and fire; or solidity, energy, coolness, and warmth. Just notice how these four types of things actually make up your sense of the body as you feel it from within. So instead of thinking of it as your body, it’s just …
- Skillful Selfing… The path that did work was to focus his desires on taking these aggregates, these raw materials from which we create our sense of self—the form of your body, feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness: taking these things that we normally grab onto to create a sense of self in a particular becoming, and turning them into a path. Even though there may …
- Seeds of Becoming… It’s one of the forms of craving that leads to suffering. Then there’s vibhava-tanha, which is a more controversial term, because it it’s not defined anywhere in the Canon. Some passages indicate that it’s desire for annihilation, in other words that you not have anything that has to go anywhere, you’re tired of going to these different places …
- The Five Aggregates… There’s a potential for form, a potential for feeling, for perceptions, for fabrication, for consciousness, coming from our past actions. But for the actual experience of these things to happen in the present moment, you have to fabricate them a little bit more. Which means that there’s an intentional aspect to all your experience. Whatever you experience has to have a certain …
- The Not-Self Discourse… This was a questionnaire that he was to give many, many times throughout his teaching career, starting with form: Is form constant or inconstant? We look at it, and can see it’s inconstant. If something is inconstant, is it easeful or stressful? The fact that it’s inconstant and undependable means that it’s stressful. It’s like building a house in a …
- Conviction & Truth… Here’s the possibility of putting an end to suffering, and even before you put a total end to suffering you can begin to see—as you put the path into practice—that many forms of suffering are falling away. There’s the stress, of course, of having to put the path into practice, but a lot of the really heavy forms of suffering …
- Mature Strategies… The water will evaporate and form clouds and maybe someday fall down in the catchment basin of another river that will flow to the ocean, but that can take a lot of time. So you have to be careful about who you hang around with and what kind of strategies you employ for a lasting happiness. The Buddha said that this is the beginning …
- The Questions of Suffering… You’ve got a potential coming in from past karma—a potential for a feeling, a potential for a perception, and so forth—and you take that and form it into an actual experience, an actual aggregate. There’s an element of intention in each one, which means you can do things with these aggregates by changing your intentions. You don’t just accept …
- Exercising Discernment… As a state of becoming is about to form, there’s a moment of unconsciousness. You blank out. If you want to see the forming of these states, you have to fight that moment of unconsciousness, which means that you have to make your alertness and mindfulness as continuous as possible. That’s where ardency comes in, in keeping them continuous. The next quality …
- A Full Life… You look at the universe—galaxies forming and dissolving, stars coming and then exploding, sending their matter spewing out into space. Then the matter coalesces again, it forms stars again, and it repeats the process over and over and over again. It’s going nowhere—but we are going someplace. And that someplace gives us genuine meaning. So these are the requisites for a …
- The Path Is in the Details… There’s a potential for form, for feeling, perception, fabrication, consciousness, but with your present intention you choose how to put those things together and turn them into actual forms, feelings, perceptions, and so on. This is something very quick. We’re very adept at it. Because it’s so quick, it’s hard for us to catch sight of it. And because we …
- Sensitivity & Skill… Instead of looking for our pleasures in sensuality, our fascination with fantasizing about sensual pleasures, we’re going to go for the pleasure of form. We’re trying to get back to that point prior to the flavor-earth where those brahmas were feeding on rapture, as they were self-luminous. We’re trying to breathe in a way that gives rise to a …
- To Discern Suffering… Your sense of the body sitting here right now, that’s form. Working with the breath energy, learning to perceive the body as composed of breath energy, that’s all form. There’s also the perception that holds you there. So those are two of the aggregates. Then as you stay with the breath you analyze it, adjust it, so that it’s a …
- Lust… You need another form of pleasure to replace the pleasure that comes with sensuality. This is why we have to develop the factors of the path, primarily right mindfulness and right concentration. So learn to look at the pleasures of mindfulness and concentration as your friends. They don’t cause you to do anything unskillful. You sometimes hear about the dangers of concentration, but …
- Rooted in Heedful Desire… When you take care of greed, aversion, and delusion in their blatant forms, they can come back in their subtle forms. And so you just want to watch, watch, watch what’s going on. That patience in watching is one of the most important weapons the soldier has. It’s a part of discernment. As long as you have the desire not to come …
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