Search results for: "consciousness"

  1. Page 2
  2. Worthy of Trust
     … The main plot device for the story was that when the ship changed its frame of reference, everybody inside the ship would conk out—lose consciousness—for a little while, and then come back. Some of the people lost consciousness longer than others, which meant that those who came to first had an advantage. They could do all kinds of things while the other … 
  3. Not Just a Witness
     … It’s already been shaped by fabrications, acts of consciousness, perceptions, intentions. And the consciousness of a witness is not totally pure. As the Buddha pointed out, you can peel away your attachment to the different elements or properties—earth, water, wind, fire, and space—and arrive at pure consciousness. Pure consciousness can observe feelings from the outside, seeing what’s causing a particular … 
  4. Exploring Fabrication
     … perception of space, consciousness, infinite consciousness without any end. You’re sitting here and you have no sense of where this consciousness ends. That’s the ultimate, as the Buddha said, in the oneness of the mind. Everything seems one. You’re one with your object, and your consciousness is one with everything. Then you drop the oneness and go to nothingness, from nothingness … 
  5. The Flamethrowing Mind
     … In some cases, consciousness is just the passive registering of sensory input. In other cases, it’s more active. It’s actually proactive. It gets obsessed with things. It gets attached to things. What we normally think of as the activities of the mind are sometimes attributed to consciousness. The mind gets released, and a couple of suttas say that even consciousness gets released … 
  6. Awaken to Your Potentials
     … That something is not an aggregate, it has nothing to do with the aggregates—but it is a state of consciousness. He calls it “consciousness without surface.” The image he gives is of a light beam. The sun rises in the east. There’s a house with a window on the east and a wall on the west. The question is: “When the sun … 
  7. Clinging-Aggregates in Context
     … For instance, you may identify with a spacious consciousness, and think that all the other aggregates are somehow there in that consciousness. Or you may have the idea of a little tiny person inside the body who looks out the eyes, listens through the ears, and so forth. There are lots of ways that you can relate to these aggregates with an idea of … 
  8. Sensitive to Fabrication
     … What’s interesting about fabrication is that it comes before your consciousness. It’s how you prime yourself to sense things. If you’re ignorant of this fabrication, your consciousness can lead to all the other links in the process leading to suffering. But if you bring knowledge to this process, it turns all those links into part of the path. Now, when we … 
  9. The Karma of Perception
     … The examples for perception and consciousness are very similar. In terms of perception, you recognize what you see: blue, red, yellow, whatever. Whereas with consciousness, you recognize what you taste: sweet, sour, bitter. And it’s not the case that perception happens only at the eye, and consciousness only at the tongue. I think the point he’s getting at is that just as … 
  10. What’s Relative, What’s Constant
     … I was listening to a Dhamma talk the other day in which someone was saying, “Consciousness has to be unconditioned. After all, how could one conditioned thing know another conditioned thing?” Well, that’s what actually happens: Knowing something is a conditioned process. The only thing that’s unconditioned is consciousness without surface, and that has no objects at all. All other consciousness is … 
  11. Stay Tuned
     … The seed is your consciousness, your awareness. And for any seed to grow, of course, you’ve got to plant it in one place. You don’t move it around. Planting it here today, then digging it up tomorrow, moving it someplace else, you’ll never get the plant you want. So you stay in one place. And then once the seed is in … 
  12. Into the Light of Consciousness
     … This is the whole principle of a lot of modern psychology—that your unconscious urges and impulses have a huge power over your life, and you have to learn how to bring them up into consciousness. Well, that’s precisely what we’re doing as we meditate. We’re seeing the beginning level of all these large-term fabrications. Bodily fabrications: Your bodily actions … 
  13. Owners of Our Actions
     … That’s how the consciousness we have here, this process of consciousness, moves on, from moment to moment, always latching onto, “This is me,” “This is mine.” So as long as there’s going to be clinging there, you try to give it something good to cling to, through your good actions. This way you provide for yourself now and on in the future … 
  14. Rooted in Heedful Desire
     … Some people say, “Well, eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.” So it takes more than just consciousness of death to make you wise. It also requires a consciousness of your actions, the power of your actions to make a real difference in how your death goes, and what your death will result in. This is why the Buddha said that … 
  15. The Six Properties
    When I first went to stay with Ajaan Fuang, he had me chant the Divine Mantra every evening as a way of getting me used to the six elements or the six dhātu—the properties of wind, fire, water, earth, space, and consciousness. It was an important part of the way he taught meditation. Here in the West, it’s a topic that people … 
  16. Right Questions in the Right Order
     … That goes for consciousness as well, because the consciousness in the aggregates is conditioned, fabricated. It’s an object for clinging. So there’s going to be some suffering if you cling to that consciousness, whether that consciousness is perceived as being limited or unlimited. As long as it’s conditioned, there’s going to be suffering there. So whatever passion and desire you … 
  17. Obstacles to Full-body Awareness
     … Where are you in your body? Here it’s good to keep in mind a distinction that the Buddha makes between consciousness and attention. Consciousness is simply the receptive quality of receiving sensations. In this case, the body’s receptive all over. We talk about spreading awareness to fill the body, but actually that aspect of awareness is already there throughout the body. You … 
  18. Nurturing Your Inner Adult
     … One of the most effective ways of changing that balance of power is to be consciously aware of how you’re breathing and to consciously smooth out, sort through, untangle any patterns of tension that would come up with the emotion. That way you can reclaim the breath, you can reclaim the power of the breath, so that it’s on the side of … 
  19. Fear & Insecurity
     … Where is the attachment? Form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, consciousness.” These are the things with which we create our sense of who we are, as we take on the role of a being. The problem is that the raw material from which we create our sense of who we are is pretty precarious. So there’s always uncertainty and an instability to being a … 
  20. Own Your Actions
     … His approach was to say, “What can the mind do in terms of finding true happiness?” And in the course of finding that true happiness, he learned a lot about the nature of how consciousness acts and what keeps it going. It’s a feeding process, and he discovered it doesn’t have to depend on the body. Consciousness can depend simply on craving … 
  21. Uncertainty
     … Remember Ajaan Lee’s analogy that there may be lots of different consciousnesses in your body. There’s your consciousness; there are the consciousness of the different animals and worms and whatnot living in your body; and then there are the consciousnesses of whatever spirits may be hovering around. The question is, how do you recognize your voice in the midst of all of … 
  22. Load next page...