Search results for: "consciousness"
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- The Fourth Frame of Reference… In particular, you want to learn how to identify each of the clinging-aggregates—form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness—as events, activities, to see what spurs them into action and how they stop. Then you try to notice how you’re clinging to them: how you keep compulsively repeating them. Then you take your clinging apart. If something’s disturbing your concentration, take …
- A Touchstone at the Breath… Or better, you can just focus on consciousness, your awareness of the space. But to do that, you need to have practice in maintaining that perception of space, space, space, all the time. So right here in your experience of the body is when you learn about the other aggregates as well: the feeling aggregate, the perception aggregate, fabrication, and consciousness. It’s when …
- The Tools of the Path… Of course, there are perceptions and thought constructs, consciousness of these things—it’s all there. You have to learn how to use these aggregates to get rid of unskillful thoughts. This is going to be a lesson for concentration, because once the mind gets into concentration, you don’t just stay there. The whole point of getting into concentration is that, in the …
- A Good Foundation… What we’re doing as we meditate is learning how to focus on the way in which we put the present moment together, and to do it consciously. One of the big areas of exploration is going to be the movement of the energy in the body. Think about it: When we first got these physical bodies, we didn’t have any language. We …
- Negotiating with Death… And then consciousness. Prior to the Buddha’s time, these various concepts were floating around in India. But he was the one who put them together as a set and said that it’s out of this set that we create a sense of who we are. As long as we identify with these things, we’re going to suffer. And not only that …
- The Field Hospital… Or formless pleasures, when everything in the body gets so still that you can have a perception of infinite space, infinite consciousness, and the body doesn’t interfere. It’s so quiet that you can ignore it. It’s only then, when you have this kind of pleasure, that you can really step back from sensual craving. Otherwise, even though you may know the …
- Open Are the Doors to the Deathless… The same with thought constructs and consciousness: You look at these things as they’re happening, as he talks about them. And ask yourself, “How do I cling to these things? What’s the passion? What’s the desire I have around these things? Why is that?” Part of the mind will say, “The only way you’re going to find happiness in life …
- Death Is All Around… feeling, perception, thought constructs, and consciousness. You turn these things into a path. Focus on the breath, develop feelings of ease, spread them throughout the body. You use your perception of the breath to focus your concentration. You use your directed thought and evaluation, which are thought constructs, to keep your mind on the breath and to evaluate the breath. Then you’re aware …
- Strength of Persistence… That’s probably the biggest obstacle in the path—the attitude of “well, just enough to get by.” We may not come to the meditation consciously with that attitude, but if that’s the way we live our lives, it’s going to creep into the meditation as well. So the various skills you need around the house, the various skills you need at …
- Fabrication… Other times you can consciously ignore the distraction. A little world appears in your mind and you say, “I don’t want to enter into that,” but for some reason it just doesn’t go away. You realize the reason it’s not going away is because you’re paying attention to it. Even if you don’t like it, paying attention to it …
- The Uses of Right Concentration… form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness. On the surface this may sound like the same sort of thing as developing mindfulness and alertness, but the word “origination” here signals something different. It points not to the fact that things come and go, but to the fact that they come because of a reason. That’s the meaning of “origination,” and the origination of the …
- Two Eyes, Not Just One… I’ve discovered that when I think very consciously of letting the breath flow there, it also changes the flow of breath in the head. So there are all kinds of connections all around. And this is just in the body. It’s even more so in the mind. So you really do want to develop this all-around eye that comes with concentration …
- Feeding on Right Resolve… The Buddha identifies three different kinds of food for consciousness. One of them is sensory contact: sights, sounds, smells, taste, tactile sensations making contact at your eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind. Then there’s the act of consciousness itself as those things make contact: We’re constantly looking, listening, hoping to get some nourishment out of things outside. But it’s like popcorn …
- Determined to Practice… This is an attitude you have to consciously develop and to maintain in all situations. If you really wish for your own true well-being, then you’ll be more likely to seek out admirable friends and more likely to apply the standards of appropriate attention to your experience. So this is a question you want to ask yourself as you choose your various …
- Your Inner Teacher… Subconscious events are events going on in the mind all the time when you’re not paying attention, or that you—consciously or subconsciously—willfully ignore. You go into denial. This is why it’s so difficult to train the mind. The mind has this tendency toward denial, to block things out. What we’re doing as we meditate is to put the mind …
- Clinging & the End of Clinging… said something more specific, useful, and insightful: “Suffering is the five clinging-aggregates.” As he pointed out elsewhere, the problem isn’t with the aggregates of form, feeling, perceptions, fabrication, or consciousness. The problem is with the clinging. So, suffering is clinging. When he said that all he taught was suffering and the end of suffering, he was basically saying all he taught was …
- Furnishing Your Home for the Mind… a directive for whether they want to be resuscitated or not. But that’s not really preparing for it, because when we die, things don’t stop. Consciousness does not have to depend on the body. Consciousness can go simply on craving and find itself in a new body. So what kinds of cravings are you associating with here? This is another reason why …
- Appropriate Attention… He saw the structure of consciousness; he saw the patterns of action. He saw the types of questions that give good results when you ask them and answer them, and the types of questions that don’t. That was the framework he passed down. So for this question the mind always has—“What should I do now?”—he provides an answer for it. This …
- Borrowed Goods… And then there’s consciousness: the awareness of all these things. In this way, you’re using all five aggregates to make them into a path, to turn them into concentration. You use them as you develop discernment as well. Because what is discernment? Directed thought and evaluation, perceptions—different kinds of perceptions and fabrication, basically. So you want to get some comprehension out …
- Settling In… But that requires a lot of subtle attention to the process of how you identify with a place to begin with, what you do with it, and how you allow your consciousness to land someplace and then proliferate out of that place. So first you have to cut down on the proliferations. Try to be here as much is possible, with this little elaboration …
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