Search results for: "consciousness"
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- In Touch with Your Fabrications… When the Buddha defines fabrication, he defines it as taking the potentials for a sense of form, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, or consciousness, and then putting them together into actual experiences of those aggregates for the sake of something. Many of our problems come from the fact that we, in the past, did these things for the sake of what we thought was going …
- Worldly Dhammas… the water element, which is the coolness that permeates body; the earth element, the sense of solidity; space, both around the body and permeating between the atoms; and the element of consciousness: When you look at things simply as elements or as elementary properties or potentials, the affairs of world seem far away. The trick is to be able to maintain this level of …
- Unattractiveness… Go to consciousness. Don’t be so attached to the body. So if you feel attached to the body, it’s good to look at its negative side in a healthy way so that you can then look at its positive side in a healthy way as well. Get some good use out of it. Then, when the time comes to go, you can …
- Control… Then there’s consciousness, which is aware of all these things. This is how you take the aggregates and make a path out of them. The path may be makeshift: Remember the Buddha’s image of the raft. You don’t wait for a professional carpenter to come and make the raft for you. You put it together out of the twigs and branches …
- Doing, Maintaining, Using… As you gain that feel for it, then the various elements of form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, and consciousness begin to separate out. You can watch them for what they are. Then when you let them go, it’s not that you throw them away. You’ve simply learned that you don’t have to identify with them. You can pick them up when …
- Calm & Insight… Then, consciousness which is aware of all these things. These are said to be fabricated because the way you experience them is that there’s a potential for each of these that comes from the past. Sometimes you have many potentials coming up in the present moment, and your mind focuses on some and not on others, fabricating them into your actual experience of …
- Stick to Your Duties… Why is there the desire? Why is there the passion? What is the allure? Then you take the desire and passion and you separate them from the form, or the feeling, or the perception, the thought construct, the act of consciousness that you’re holding on to, so that you see just the desire and the passion in and of themselves: That’s what …
- Meditation as Play… How do you talk to yourself about the breath? How do you talk to yourself about the mind? How do you talk to yourself about what you’re doing? And there’s consciousness, which is aware of all these things. There you are: You’ve got all five aggregates. You’re playing with the aggregates, trying to make them into a settled state of …
- The Thread of Mindfulness… The same applies to the perception of infinite consciousness and the perception of nothingness. Then, when all you have keeping you going is the perception of nothingness, the mind can reach an equilibrium where it doesn’t need a perception in order to stay concentrated. You get to the state called neither perception nor non-perception, where you recognize where you are, but you …
- The Language of the Heart (2)… Now, of course, I had my problems adjusting to the culture over there—and it may have been because I was learning the Dhamma in a second language—but there was sometimes a feeling at the very beginning that it was almost like make-believe: “Okay, we’ll take this on as a game.” I didn’t consciously think of things in quite those …
- Selfing & Not-selfing… And what have you got? You’ve got these five aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness. The Buddha calls them twigs and branches. You bind them together as a raft. And one of the ways of binding them together, of course, is to get the mind into concentration. You’ve got the form of the body. You’ve got the feeling of pleasure that …
- Choosing to Believe in Your Choices… There are people out there who say he’s wrong, but what do they have to offer in terms of proof? They can say, well, we look at everything in the physical world and see that everything in the physical world is determined by physical laws, so your consciousness is just an after-effect of those physical laws. And you’re better off just …
- Giving Weight… Try to notice, when you look at something, how your focus—not only the focus of your eyes, but also the focus of your whole consciousness—seems to go out to that object. When that happens, you’ve lost your center, you’ve lost your foundation. Pull it back in. If you get used to staying here, then when you sit and meditate, it …
- The Bright Tunnel… There’s form affected by clinging, feeling affected by clinging, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness, all of which are affected by clinging. The clinging is what turns them into suffering. The clinging is what tries to wring a happiness out of them that they simply don’t have to offer. Having to run around clinging to things all the time puts the mind in a …
- Fear of Death… Sometimes you have to consciously direct the breath in a particular way; other times kind you can simply pose a question in the mind: What kind of the breathing would feel good right now? It’s almost as if you allow the body to do its thing, and it’ll find a good rhythm. Sometimes that works; sometimes it doesn’t. But that’s …
- Unlimited Mind, Limited Resources… These attitudes have to be consciously cultivated if they’re going to be universal. We may easily feel goodwill, say, for some people, but with other people it’s hard. The same with equanimity: With some people it’s very easy to be equanimous, with other people it’s not so easy, but you have to learn how to develop these attitudes when they …
- To Disturb Your Complacency… What’s this? What’s happening here in your mind right now? What’s your experience of form right now? What kind of feelings do you have right now? What are your perceptions right now? What are your thought constructs, your intentions? How about your consciousness right now? How do you experience these things? Are you suffering from them? If you are, what are …
- After the Fire… its properties of earth, water, fire, wind, space, consciousness. This way, you achieve a sense of balance in the stillness. There’s mindfulness there, and you’re trying to get all the factors of awakening working together so that they’re all in balance. Analysis of qualities: What kind of breathing is skillful? What kind of breathing is unskillful? Work at developing the skillful …
- Your Inner Ally… Is it comfortable? Does it feel good? Is it as nourishing as it could be? Do you need to give it some space? Try to relax all the places in the body where you feel tension, as many as you can consciously relax. As you breathe in, think of the breath energy flowing everywhere throughout the body. You might think of it flowing up …
- Staying in Position… The more you can bring the mind to stillness, the more refined your concentration, then the more you can make that choice consciously. In other words, the opportunity comes to either stay with a breath or go someplace else, and you learn how to stay, stay, stay. Keep making this choice to stay here. In the process of mastering that skill, you’ll get …
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