Search results for: "Form"

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  2. Working with Fabrication
     … All the different voices in the mind, all the different committee members, all our different identities are made up of these various forms of fabrication. This is where the teaching gets useful. A thought comes into your mind, an emotion comes into your mind, telling you that you want to do this or that: If you realize that it’s not skillful, you can … 
  3. The Chess Game
     … One of the basic principles in the Buddha’s teachings is that if you see that there’s a higher or greater form of happiness that you can gain by giving up a lower form of happiness, you have to be willing to give up the lower form—happy to give it up. That’s what’s hard about the practice. The Buddha was … 
  4. Surveying the World
     … You’re doing this to clear the decks, because eventually you’ll want to see how those thoughts form—the ones that pull you away, that want to go back to more papañca. And from a still mind, you can see what motivates them: the arrow that the Buddha talked about. So as you’re here right now, if there are any thoughts of … 
  5. In Times of Danger and Fear
     … Then when danger comes in a blatant form, we tend to lose our wits. We don’t think straight. We think that because things are dangerous we have to take special measures that are really not reasonable. Reason lies in realizing that dangers are around us all the time, and that we have to behave well in spite of the dangers. Or we might … 
  6. To Suffer Is an Active Verb
     … We’ve got potentials coming in from the past for form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. And then, for the sake of having aggregates to use, we fashion them—we put them together—into actual aggregates. The Pali in this particular sutta is rather strange: It says that we do this for the sake of feelingness, for the sake of formness, for the sake … 
  7. What You Sense Directly
     … what the Buddha calls name and form. I’ve been reading a book recently saying that all of our language is metaphorical. The metaphors get really deep into our experiences, so deep that it’s hard to say that we don’t have any experience that hasn’t been colored by the metaphors of our language and culture. But there is one experience that … 
  8. The Path of Happiness
     … It’s in seeing those subtle forms of stress that you begin to see the movements of the mind in a very direct way. That was how he began to see which forms of desire are actually part of the path and are conducive to concentration, and which forms of desire pull you away. This is taking a very special attitude toward happiness. As … 
  9. A Pervasive Well-being
     … That’s the kind of concentration that can form a basis for insight because nothing is blocked out at that stage in the practice. The mind is allowed to be as large as it wants to be, but it’s centered. It’s got a basis. It’s not wandering around here. It’s more radiant. You may not actually sense light—some people … 
  10. Wealth & Strength
     … They started out poor in worldly wealth, but they had wealth in the form of conviction—and, through being willing to change and grow, they were able to parlay that wealth to great attainments. This, too, is a lesson we should take to heart. We tend to be really stubborn about our habits. “This is the way I am, this is the way I … 
  11. For the Sake of the Deathless
     … Even form deforms. We know form through its activities. And fabrication fabricates all the aggregates for a purpose, for the sake of something. And as the Buddha saw rightly, it’s for the sake of happiness. The thing is, we have to keep on fabricating because the happiness we’ve gained from our activities in the past lasts for a little while and then … 
  12. Relating to Kamma
     … Part of the reaction came in the form of a teaching that said that people didn’t have any free will, so when someone gave something to someone else, it didn’t really mean anything. The other part of the reaction took the form of a teaching on annihilation, that when you die, pffft, you just go out and that’s it. This would … 
  13. A Slave to Craving
     … It confirms what you’ve already seen, that the pleasure of jhana, the pleasure of concentration, is really a much better form of pleasure. And you are better off not running after those other things. This is one way in which you begin to cut the leash that craving has on the heart. When mind is solid enough, then you can start looking at … 
  14. Circumspection
     … As the Buddha once said, it’s not that he praises all practices or condemns all practices, he doesn’t praise every form of renunciation, he doesn’t condemn every form of renunciation. He would praise the practices that would lead to fewer defilements, and condemn the ones that don’t. The test, of course, is when you apply a particular strategy or apply … 
  15. Discernment in Concentration
     … Even form he says deforms; feelings feel; perceptions perceive; fabrications fabricate; consciousness cognizes. These are activities, and you use them as you get the mind to settle down. In this way, you get on familiar terms with them. As a famous philosopher once said, “The things we know best are the things we do.” And for the most part, most people do things, say … 
  16. Body as Path
     … So this is how you take the body, this aggregate of form, and turn it into part of the path. When you get the mind in a good state of concentration like this, all the aggregates are here. There’s the form of the body, there’s a feeling of pleasure, there’s the perception of breath. Directed thought and evaluation are the fabrications … 
  17. Your Main Foundation
     … But when the breath is really still—this is one of the reasons we work with it so assiduously—when the breath is very still, then we can see things very clearly, what exactly is going on in the mind, and we can sort out all of the different ways that we glom things together and turn them into huge big sticky forms of … 
  18. Settling In
     … Every now and then a little picture will form at some spot on the screen. A little knot of energy will develop, and if you’re not careful, it’ll turn into another thought world. So think of your awareness as a spider on the web. The spider’s in one spot, but the web extends throughout the whole body. So as soon as … 
  19. Don’t Be Afraid of Jhana
     … Then there’s the pleasure of form, the pleasure you can feel simply by inhabiting your body in a way that feels comfortable. And that’s on a higher level. We know that the path is supposed to avoid two extremes: on the one side, indulgence in self-affliction, and on the other side, indulgence in sensuality. Well, notice that this kind of pleasure … 
  20. A Touchstone at the Breath
     … So as you’re exploring this issue of what they call name and form—mental events and physical events—remember that the interaction goes both ways. The breath, though, is a good way to get a handle on a lot of the mental events that bedevil the mind because often they put you in a Catch-22 situation. No matter how you react to … 
  21. Merit: Goodness of the Heart
     … the form of your body as you feel it from within; your feelings; your perceptions; your fabrications, the way you put thoughts together; and your consciousness. All of these things are activities. Even the way you keep reaffirming to yourself where your body is right now: That’s an activity, your sense of form, i.e., how you feel the body from within. The … 
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