Search results for: "consciousness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. Assumptions
     … You use your body, you use your feelings, you use your perceptions, your fabrications, your consciousness. You convert them into the path. As Ajaan Lee once said, “A wise person can get good use out of anything.” We’re told that the aggregates, if you cling to them, are the essence of what’s stressful, the essence of suffering. So what the Buddha has … 
  16. Death World
     … The infinitude of consciousness is 40,000, and the dimension of nothingness is 60,000. That’s a long time. But if you haven’t gained any of the noble attainments, then when you fall from those places, you fall hard. You can go fall all the way down to hell, you can fall to be an animal, you can be a hungry ghost … 
  17. Equanimity & Power
     … ways that may not be skillful? We’re trying to bring some light into areas of the mind that tend to be subconscious, to bring them up into the light of consciousness so that we can see, “Oh, this is what I’m doing.” When we talk about breath energy, a lot of people get confused. They say, “What kind of breath energy could … 
  18. How & Why We Meditate
     … The breath is one of the few bodily functions that you can actually change consciously, so try to take advantage of that fact, both for the settling down and for the being observant. If the breath feels good and you find it interesting to notice how the way you breathe has an impact on how the body feels, that helps you to stay in … 
  19. The Right Place to Look
     … And as you can work through your own ignorance, you’re going to be able to see where you’re doing things semi-consciously that are actually harmful to yourself or other people. You can stop that harm, both for yourself and for everyone else. So when you’re working with the breath, you’re working right close to the source. This is where … 
  20. Goodwill Is Respect
     … This is why we consciously develop thoughts of goodwill. It’s not that goodwill is our innate nature. Goodwill comes easily to us in some cases, and ill will comes just as easily in others. That’s the typical human attitude. What we’re trying to develop are Brahma attitudes, and those are higher, more refined, more inclusive: goodwill for all, everybody without exception … 
  21. A Simple Path Through a Complex Map
     … All you have to do is to bring knowledge to one connection, say, between name and form and consciousness, or to feeling and craving, or contact and feeling, or any of the combinations. You bring knowledge to these things, and—because the cycle has so many feedback loops—you can get whole the cycle to stop. What kind of knowledge? Knowledge in terms of … 
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