Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- The Body In & Of Itself… After all, at the moment, all those worlds are just fabrications, total fabrications. You think about your friends: Your friends aren’t here right now. You think about issues at work: They’re not here right now. They’re just baggage you’re fabricating and carrying around. What is here right now: You’ve got the body sitting here breathing. And even though there …
- Happy to Be Here… In doing this, you’re employing all the different kinds of fabrication the Buddha talked about. There’s the breath itself, with is bodily fabrication, and then there’s the way you talk to yourself, which is verbal fabrication. Here you talk to yourself in a calm and soothing way. Then you take an interest in the breath, realizing that the breath and the …
- Learning by Doing… You focus on the breath—that’s bodily fabrication, and it’s also part of form. It’s part of the wind element. You think about the breath—that’s verbal fabrication. And you hold perceptions in mind—that comes under both name and mental fabrication. You’re trying to create a feeling of well-being—that comes under both name and mental fabrication …
- The Purpose of Empathetic Joy… We’re making it as pleasant as possible, to give the mind the food it needs in order to practice, to settle down, be still, and see things as they really are, to see the movements of the mind as they’re actually happening, to see the extent to which you’re fabricating your experience, and then the value of those fabrications: which ones …
- No One Size Fits All… As for the topics you use, in general, the Buddha said it’s an issue of learning how to look at fabrication: this process by which the mind creates thoughts, intentions, urges. You can look at fabrication from any number of angles: from the five aggregates, the six sense media, the six properties, dependent co-arising. A monk once went to see a several …
- The Raft… The Buddha taught that the path is something that’s fabricated, something you have to put together. It leads to something unfabricated, something unconditioned. But you’ve got to get the fabrications right for them to take you there. So hold on to your breath for the time being, because it is your path. Luang Pu Waen used to say, “Make Buddho the path …
- Deconstructing Suffering… It’s made out of directed thought and evaluation, which count as sankharas, or fabrications of the mind. Focused on the breath—which is a bodily fabrication—you’re dealing with perceptions and feelings, which are mental fabrications. What you’re doing is taking this process of fabrication and turning it from a cause of suffering into a path to the end of suffering …
- Controlling… For instance, you’ve got fabrication, the very first factor after ignorance. This includes bodily fabrication, the breath; verbal fabrication, directed thought and evaluation; and mental fabrication, perceptions and feelings. You have some control over all those things. You can change the way you breathe. You can change the way you talk to yourself, which is what directed thought and evaluation are all about …
- An Exercise in Freedom… There are processes the Buddha calls bodily fabrication, verbal fabrication, and mental fabrication. And they all hover around the breath. In fact, the breath itself is the bodily fabrication, it’s what creates our sense of the body. If the breath weren’t coming in, going out—if the breath energy weren’t flowing through the nerves—we wouldn’t even know we had …
- Damming & Diverting… You begin to see that there are these elements, these fabrications, that go into keeping the mind here. It turns out they’re the same fabrications we use to create any mental state, especially with an emotion. If the fear or lust or anger gets into your breath, it’s gone from the mind into the body. That’s all too often why we …
- Investing Your Intention… So what is there to see right here? Well, there are different kinds of fabrication. There’s bodily fabrication, which is the breath. There’s verbal fabrication: directed thought and evaluation. And there’s mental fabrication: feelings and perceptions. The path consists of comprehending these things. You’ve got them all gathered together here. You’re directing your thoughts to the breath and evaluating …
- Countercultural Conditioning… The conditioning that he’s talking about when we’re trying to go beyond conditioning is the fact that any experience that’s going to make any sense has to be composed of those three kinds of fabrication that he said, when they’re based on ignorance, will lead to suffering. There’s bodily fabrication, which is your in-and-out breath. Verbal fabrication …
- Deconstruct Your Emotions… Three, the breath energy is part of what’s called bodily fabrication. It’s one of the three kinds of fabrication that go into creating an emotion. Here in the West in particular we have the belief that our emotions are what we really are—what we really feel. But a lot of those “real” feelings are simply habits. A certain incident comes up …
- Equanimity… Why did the Buddha use all those terms? Well, the defilement has been something you’ve been fabricating all along. The mind has been fabricating defilement out of passion, so when you develop dispassion, you’re going to stop fabricating it, and when you stop fabricating it, it ends. That’s how it gets destroyed. That’s how all these things go together. Now …
- Skills Needed at Death… So you have to ask yourself, “Where are you going to find the ignorance?” And the Buddha says, look at the fabrications in the mind: the way you fabricate the in-and-out breath, the way you fabricate your thoughts, the way you fabricate your perceptions and feelings. Try to be as really clear as possible around these things. In particular, the perceptions: One …
- You’re Doing Something Wrong… In fact, you’re reading all three kinds of fabrication. This is where the concentration practice begins to shade into insight practice. You’re looking at the breath, which is bodily fabrication. The directed thought and evaluation itself are verbal fabrication, and then your perceptions and your feelings are mental fabrications. These are the things that, if you do them in ignorance, you’re …
- Lighter & Stronger… We have this tendency to keep fabricating states. Even with the concentration, you realize it’s a fabricated state. There’s that attitude, “It’s the best I’ve got, so I might as well hold on; I might as well keep on doing this.” This is why we’re lucky we have the Buddha to remind us, “No, there’s something better.” If …
- Steering the Raft… There are similar contemplations for feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. There’s a lot about these things that you simply can’t control. They come and they go. You can see them coming, and you can see them going. If they were really you, you wouldn’t be in a position to observe their coming and going. Things like this, if they’re based …
- Observe Your Concentration… Is there any up and down? That’s how the ajaans have noted that if an experience has to be maintained—if there’s any stress coming up, stress going down, even if it’s subtle—the fact that you have to maintain it means that it’s fabricated. If it’s fabrication, it’s not the goal. A question came up recently, “When …
- Fear & Insecurity… You can take your form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, consciousness, and turn them into a path—like you’re doing right now as you meditate. You’re focused on the breath, that’s form. You’re creating a feeling of well-being. You use perceptions to stay with the breath, and directed thought and evaluation, which are fabrications, to adjust the breath and the …
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