Search results for: "consciousness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. Chanting on Your Own
     … I remember one night in particular as I was chanting and I got to consciousness, something inside me clicked and said, “This is referring to my awareness right here, right now,” and I saw that it spoke to my direct experience. That’s one way in which chanting can be useful in the meditation: You repeat something long enough, you get to know it … 
  16. Seriously Happy
     … He says that the aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, consciousness—the things out of which we create our sense of self—have their pleasures and their pains. He says that it’s because of their pleasures that we get stuck on them. It’s because of their pains that we look for a way out. So when you find yourself missing a particular … 
  17. The End of Uncertainty
     … When there are feelings, be alert to what you’re doing in the feeling, in the perception, in the thought fabrication, in the consciousness. Each of these things contains an element of fabrication, an element of present intention. Do you ever notice that? Do you see it happening? If you can’t yet see it happening, look at what you can see that you … 
  18. Balance & Release
     … You might consciously try to fight aging by doing longer in-breaths and shorter out-breaths to see if the breath can have a rejuvenating influence on the body. Whatever technique you find that gives more energy to your practice is helpful. Ajaan Fuang once said, “You have to be really crazy about this to do it well.” Otherwise, you might not be paying … 
  19. Training the Whole Mind
     … After all, the big issue is how you relate to yourself, how you relate to the body, how you relate to feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. That’s the area where you’re causing yourself suffering, so that’s the area where you’ve got to gain sensitivity and insight. Nobody else can get into your head and straighten these things out for … 
  20. Self-starting
     … past?” Look at what kind of person you’re becoming, given the habits you’ve been picking up, the habits that you’ve been training yourself in—regardless of whether you consciously regard yourself as being in training in that particular habit. A habit of laziness, a habit of carelessness: We don’t think of ourselves as training ourselves in those directions, but if … 
  21. Tranquility & Insight
     … There’s form, feeling, perception, fabrication itself, and consciousness. Or there’s another list called the three fabrications: bodily fabrication—which is the breath; verbal fabrication—directed thought and evaluation; and mental fabrication—perceptions and feelings. These things are all involved in doing the concentration. In terms of the five aggregates: You’ve got the body here that you’re focused on: That’s … 
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