Search results for: "Perception"
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- Fire Escapes… For that deeper letting go, you have to start looking more carefully at what the allure of the perceptions is. Why do you want to get engaged in them? Then, when you see the allure, you can also start looking at the drawbacks. Given that the perception adds to the level of stress in the mind, is it worth going with? When you can …
- Working Hypotheses… It’s a kind of karma that’s going on, and you’re holding different perceptions. You may hold a perception of the body. You may hold a perception of the breath. At first, it’s your anchor that enables you to stay here in the present moment. But after a while you begin to realize that your way of perceiving these things may …
- Your Secret Foundation… And then there’s mental fabrication, the feelings that arise—the sense of pleasure, the sense of dis-ease, depending whether the breath is comfortable or not—and your perceptions, the labels you put on things. These are all present right here. Everything you really need to know gathers around the breath. It’s like going to the savanna in Africa. If you want …
- Let Pleasure & Pain Fall Off the Plow… In particular, we like to fantasize around our perceptions of something being entertaining or beautiful. Attractive. Interesting. These perceptions form the nucleus around which we start fabricating our thoughts. Then there’s a feeling of the pleasure that comes with those thoughts. But the thoughts can turn on you. They can lead to other thoughts that give pain. They’re all part of the …
- In Search of What’s Skillful… And the perception is something you keep repeatedly doing. It’s an activity. So this can’t be the unconditioned. If you see any wavering in that perception, then you can let it go. That gets replaced by the perception of just awareness, knowing, knowing, knowing. Again, it’s very easy to think that you’ve hit some sort of metaphysical absolute here. And …
- Fabricating Around Pain… There’s bodily fabrication, which is the way you breathe; verbal fabrication, which is the way you talk to yourself about things; and then there’s mental fabrication, which are perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the labels you put on things, and these can either be individual words or images that appear in the mind. You see somebody unfriendly and you think, “monster.” Or …
- A Home & a Mobile Home… being able to walk around and carry this perception of breath or the perception of your space inside. This is your safe territory. And you want to have a sense of well-being in here, because that enables you to bring well-being into all your interactions with other people. That’s your strength. And the ease of the breath is the nourishment for …
- The Wisdom of Ardency… If your perceptions around something make it attractive or disgusting, can you change those perceptions? Can you find counterbalancing perceptions that are equally true? After all, no perception can represent the totality of anything. So what’s missing in your perception of something that could help calm down whatever the defilement is? You learn this from trying to be skillful. This requires a lot …
- Pleasure from the Body… Just stay with that perception and the sensation of space. But as you reflect on that, after doing this many times, you begin to see you’ve learned an important lesson about perception. As long as you’re using the body as a foundation for sensual ideas it’s going to require a lot of mental activity. You begin to see that sensual thoughts …
- The Skills of Truth & Calm… Then you’ve got perceptions and feelings. You’re trying to create a feeling of ease, well-being. And you’ve got certain perceptions about how the body relates to the mind, the mind relates to the body. Where is your mind right now in relation to the body? And there are perceptions about the breath. When the breath comes in, what’s actually …
- Suppressed Emotions… Instead of seeing yourself as a person partaking of the pain or the pleasure, you want to dismantle that perception. You want to have another way of approaching pain and pleasure so that you don’t feel threatened by the pain and don’t simply indulge in the pleasure. This is why you need a technique as the foundation of your meditation. We’ve …
- Everything Comes Together Right Here… There will also be a perception you hold in mind, an image you hold in mind about the breath, and then the feeling. How does the breath feel right now? Does it feel comfortable? The Buddha talks about perception and feeling as being mental fabrications because of the impact they have on the mind. But they also have an impact on the breath. The …
- Perceiving the Breath… Then all of a sudden there’s a little switch in your perception, and you recognize one of these little dark brown spots not as a leaf or space between leaves but an actual mushroom. Then there are mushrooms everywhere. They were there all along, it’s just that your categories of perception were telling you something else. Or like those magic eye pictures …
- Let Go Like a Millionaire… They’re perceptions that you apply to things. You apply them strategically, in line with the duties of the four noble truths. And you also apply them selectively as you work on the path. Like when you’re working on your virtue and your precepts: You apply the three perceptions to anything that would pull you away from your virtue. For example, you learn …
- The Karma that Ends Karma… feeling and perception. These things have their intentional element, too. Even when you drop directed thought and evaluation to go from the first jhana to the second, there’s still feeling and perception. In fact the perception — the perception of breath — is what keeps you there all the way up through the fourth jhana. Try to hold onto that perception until the breath energy …
- A Noble Warrior’s Path… Hold a perception of the breath in mind and try to adjust the perception so that it allows you to breathe in a way that’s really comfortable. You have to question your perceptions if your breathing feels cramped or tight. Maybe you’re perceiving the breath in the wrong way. What other ways can you picture it to yourself? Experiment. And as you …
- Equanimity Isn’t Everything… You’ve got to learn how to keep these perceptions in mind to help wean yourself away from the defilements of lust, anger, or greed. To bring the mind into concentration requires perceptions as well. You need to have a certain perception of the breath, a certain perception of the body to get into concentration and stay there. At the very least, you need …
- At the End of the Day… Mental fabrication is perception and feeling. You want to see how those two things together have an impact on the mind. If there’s a pain in the body, it’s having an impact on the mind not only because of the pain but even more importantly because of the perception. This is where Ajaan Maha Boowa’s instructions on dealing with pain fit …
- Patient & Inquisitive… It also reminds you that as you’re exploring, as you experiment, you can’t just say, “Well, I’ll experiment with this particular idea or this particular perception for a few breaths, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll throw it away and try something else.” You have to stick with things to see what results they have over the long term …
- What You Sense Directly… Mental fabrication is composed of feelings and perceptions. Feelings are the feeling tones you have right here: pleasant, painful, neither pleasant nor painful. Then perceptions are the images you hold in mind that help you stay with the breath—the markers of the mind, the signposts—or the way you visualize to yourself how the breath goes through the body. So the question is …
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