Search results for: "Form"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- The Escape of Discipline… That’s a treasure right there, a very strong form of happiness. Then there’s the happiness that comes from understanding, from discernment: seeing where you have habits that cause unnecessary stress, unnecessary suffering, understanding why you do them, and understanding how you can drop them. A great sense of relief and release comes with that. So the training that the Buddha offers is …
- Take an Interest… So you want to be able to look into the mind and see, when a thought forms, how does it form? Can you trust it? What kind of impulse is it coming from: something that’s going to be good for you, or something that’s going to be bad? Is it going to be good for somebody else, or bad for somebody else …
- Cutting Through the Hype… We come up with an idea: “I’d like to do this,” and then the mind can elaborate on it and create all the hype you need in order to get going, to search for that form of happiness. When it comes, it’s usually not much, but again you can embroider it more. The hype while you are doing it, the hype after …
- Tending the Flame… As I mentioned last night with Ajaan Fuang’s image, when you’re trying to set something in cement, as long as the cement isn’t yet hard, you have to keep the form in place. But once the cement has hardened, then you can take the forms away So you find, as you settle down, that sometimes the mind hasn’t set yet …
- Metta Can Hurt… After all, the brahma-vihāras are a form of mindfulness. But then, to move into the other factors of awakening requires that you analyze things. When is it skillful and when is it not skillful to hold to mettā? When is it more skillful to hold to upekkhā, equanimity? And how do you make sure that your actions are based on mettā* *for others …
- Pride… passion for form, passion for formlessness, restlessness, and ignorance. There’s a good side to some of these qualities. You need a passion for form and for the formless, for instance, to really master the jhanas. Even restlessness can have its uses on the path, to keep you active and pushing ahead. Only when these fetters have served their purpose do you let them …
- Eeeels… And you open up also to the areas where thoughts begin to form. The formation of a thought usually starts as a little disturbance—or a little wavering, wiggling, whatever—and at the very beginning, it’s hard to tell whether it’s a physical or mental sensation. It’s on the borderline between the two. Then the mind scouts around, coming across this …
- Cleaning Out the Stables… As you remember, clinging comes in four forms. There’s sensuality—clinging to the pleasure of planning and fantasizing about sensual pleasures—which forms a nucleus for your desire. There are views about the world in which that object is going to be found. There are habits and practices—the things you have to do, the things you *should *do, within the context of …
- Beyond Inter-eating… just masses of form, masses of feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and sensory consciousness. You’ve taken these aggregates and you’ve turned them into your path. Even so there’s still a little bit of clinging there. And the clinging also relates to feeding. It’s the act of taking sustenance on these things. You’ve brought the mind to the most refined form of …
- The Long-Distance Meditator… One of its instructions is that even on days when you don’t have a lot of time to put into swimming practice, for the few minutes that you do put in, make sure your form is correct. So when you’re feeling sick, make sure the form of your meditation is correct, that you’re with the breath. It doesn’t require that …
- At Home in Jhana… You might think there are forms of happiness you get from very aroused states of mind, very active and running-around states of mind, but that’s not really happiness. The mind’s true happiness is when it’s at peace. Yet it’s so rarely at peace. It’s traveling around all the time, jumping from one thought to the next. If you …
- The Gift of Discernment… What are you holding onto in terms of the form, whatever forms there may be in your experience right now? What are you holding onto in terms of feelings, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness? How are you holding on? Why do you hold on? What’s the allure? When you see the allure, then you want to see the drawbacks of holding on like that. That …
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