Search results for: "consciousness"
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- 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 …
- The Limits of Interconnectedness… But it always has to be with the consciousness that these relationships are going to end. And as you die, as you go towards death, for focus is going to be forced more and more into this area right here, right now, i.e., your direct experience of your mind, your direct experience of your body, how body and mind feel from within. You …
- The Cost of Happiness… Or the totality of non-dual consciousness. They all sound like very good places. But if you get there, you have to look: To what extent is it still fabricated? How are you going to see the process of fabrication? You look to see: Is there still any change? Is there any stress? If there is, then it’s something not worthy of your …
- Self-starting… There’s the element of consciousness. Space and consciousness, in particular, require a lot of good, solid concentration for you to be able to stay with them consistently. This is why we work with the breath and the other physical elements first. But as your concentration gets more subtle, you can begin to pick things up that you didn’t see before, and they …
- The Beginnings of Wisdom… It begins with, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” As for the inconstancy of form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness: That’s a teaching you use within the context of that search for long-term happiness. As you get in the more advanced stages of the practice, you look at the states of concentration that you …
- 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 …
- Honesty… There are states of awareness and consciousness we feed on. There are also mental intentions, and these are the important ones. What’s your intention? What do you want out of a situation, and why does that particular desire appeal to you? Learn to look at it with a jaundiced eye. We don’t like to think that we have unskillful emotions and ideas …
- Faith in Awakening… Craving and consciousness can feed each other, even without the body. They can go on and on and on indefinitely. What the Buddha learned in his second knowledge is that how things go on and on depends on the quality of our actions. The quality of our actions depends on our intentions, and our intentions depend on our views. The third knowledge is that …
- The Best of a Bad Situation… You can’t imagine relating to your thoughts, your feelings, your perceptions, even your acts of consciousness in any other way aside from clinging to them. But the Buddha is saying there are other ways, to expand your imagination. One way of expanding your imagination is to start with something really simple: generosity. I used to read stories of explorers going to the Arctic …
- Being Somebody, Going Somewhere… They may consciously be on a particular path or not. There are paths going to hell, there are paths going to an animal rebirth, or to rebirth as a hungry ghost. Most of the people on those paths don’t realize that those are the paths they’re on. But their actions are taking them someplace. There are also paths to the human realm …
- The Karma of Meditation… Consciousness depends on craving, craving depends on consciousness, and they can feed each other along the way. But if you feed the mind really well until it’s strong, it doesn’t need that companion of craving anymore. It doesn’t need to feed. You can bring it to a point of equilibrium through the development of both insight and tranquility, and another dimension …
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