Search results for: "consciousness"
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- The Size of Your Eyes… We may not consciously think of it when we’re developing it in the direction of greed, aversion, and delusion, but that’s what we’re going. But we have the choice to develop it in a good direction. Remember that this is what wisdom is all about. Sometimes, when you hear about Buddhist wisdom, you think about emptiness or not-self or statements …
- Respect for Concentration… And then your consciousness, which could be aware of all kinds of things: You devote it to being conscious of this process of getting the mind to settle down. Don’t pay attention to anything else, even the voice of the talk here. Let that be in the background. These activities are called aggregates, and ordinarily we suffer a lot because of the aggregates …
- Pleasure on the Middle Way… Sometimes there will be a resistance to opening up, for fear that in the past you’ve breathed in ways—not consciously of course—but you’ve breathed in ways that were harsh and uncomfortable, and there are parts of the body that will close up as a result. But as you start breathing in a way that feels good in some parts of …
- Free to Choose… As long as there’s consciousness that feeds on craving, which gives rise to more craving, the process can just keep on going indefinitely. It’s not going anywhere in particular and it doesn’t serve any purpose. Now, that insight can be depressing if you think about it in one way, but it’s liberating if you think about it in another way …
- 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 …
- Hitting a Wall… Your mindfulness, your effort, all the qualities that need to go into the path, are things that you experience from within, your consciousness. So in that sense, your path is a very particular one. But in a more general sense, the path has the same structure for everybody. We all need to have all eight factors of the path. And they all need to …
- Think Like a Thief… If you feel desire or passion for form, feeling, perception, thought formations, consciousness, all of which are activities, you feed off of these things the way the fire feeds off fuel. And you get stuck on these things the way fire stuck in its fuel. The basic image the Buddha uses here, as you know, is in the word nibbāna. It refers to a …
- Measuring Progress… It was because she wasn’t developing any discernment, and she wasn’t using the discernment she did have, consciously applying it for the rest of the day. Part of the problem was that when she was in concentration it was very intense, and she couldn’t even think. She didn’t have the ability that Ajaan Fuang was trying to teach her, which …
- Truths of the Will… That’s a truth of the will that you may or may not have been consciously acting on. As the Buddha said, you have to ask yourself every day: “Days and nights fly past, fly past. What am I becoming right now?” What kind of person are you becoming? We’re all becoming older, but what kind of older person are you becoming? Are …
- An Auspicious Birth… It wants this kind of feeling, these kinds of perceptions, thought constructs, this kind of consciousness. We talk of the first kind of birth being auspicious when you’re born into a family that’s got material comforts and you have an opportunity to meet with the Dhamma. But it’s really made auspicious by this other kind of birth, the momentary attachment, because …
- Me, Me, Me… form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness. That gives you five. In each of those cases, you can either identify directly with the aggregate or you can think of yourself as someone who has that aggregate, or somehow you’re in the aggregate, or the aggregate is in you. That’s four times five: twenty. Twenty possible ways of thinking about your self. On top …
- For the Sake of the Deathless… And in doing this very consciously, you dig up a lot of things that you do unconsciously that might resist. But it’s only when you counteract them that they’ll show themselves. Then you can figure out your way around them. So it’s by paying very careful attention right here that you get to that goal that seems so far away. But …
- Disenchantment & Dispassion… All the teachings—the teachings on the five aggregates, the six sense media, the properties of earth, water, wind, fire, space, and consciousness; and his more poetic teachings, the images in the poetry, the images in the suttas: They’re all aimed at this direction—to induce that sense of dispassion, disenchantment. And through the dispassion, release. Not that you’re hoping to be …
- Evaluation… In other words, you have to consciously figure out ways of sidestepping the thought, or banishing the thought, or ignoring the thought, replacing it with a better thought, relaxing around the formation of that thought. There are other times, he says, that you can simply watch. He doesn’t give instructions as to which technique to use at which time. It’s up to …
- The Hedgefox… Finally, there’s consciousness, which is aware of all these things: the more passive side of the knowing that simply registers what’s there. So you’ve got all these things going on here right now. As you get to know the breath better, and get to know the process of being with the breath better, you begin to see that these things do …
- The Skills of a Hunter… And here again, this quality of continuity is something we have to learn and consciously develop. I read a very foolish comment one time by a British professor, saying that back in the time of the Buddha, people didn’t have the level of concentration that we have now, which was why the Buddha had to emphasize it so much. We have to read …
- Dispassion Is Freedom… When you’ve decided that even maintaining a sense of the form of the body becomes oppressive, and you’d rather just be there with infinite space, infinite consciousness, it all seems very wide open and free. But the Buddha says, there’s a slavery there even in those forms of passion. It’s a fetter that keeps us tied to coming back again …
- Metta… We don’t want to harm anyone, so we have to consciously develop thoughts of goodwill, even for people who have harmed those whom we love or who have helped people we don’t like. We can’t let our likes or dislikes determine our actions, because it’s very easy for them to lead to a lot of unskillful actions. This is one …
- No-Tech Meditation… As the Buddha said, the highest Oneness—the non-duality of consciousness—is a fabricated state. Only when you’ve seen yourself in action, seen the process of fabrication, and seen the opening where you don’t have to fabricate things any more: That’s when you know for sure that it’s not fabricated because you’re so familiar with your own fabrications …
- Skillful Thinking… If you kept thinking in that direction, where would it take you? Is that where you want to go? Or if the distraction is really insistent, tell yourself, “Okay the distraction can stay there in the background if it wants to, but I’m going to stay here with the breath in the foreground.” Consciously ignore it. Don’t get involved. It’s like …
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