Search results for: "Form"
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- On Human Nature… One is the realization that there are short-term forms of happiness and long-term forms of happiness. And the long-term ones, even if they take more effort, are the ones that are really worth going for. The second realization is that these things are going to require effort. You have to do things in order to attain happiness. That’s the beginning …
- A Thread into Awareness… But the form of the body is the first object of your attention, because when you’re with the breath, you’re with the form of the body right now; you *know *you’re in the present moment. Otherwise, if you focus on a perception, you suddenly find it drifting away and turning into something else. So you stay with the perception of the …
- Heightened Skillfulness… In fact, there are ways in which you can see that all three of these forms of making merit—doing what’s skillful, virtue, and the development of goodwill—are forms of generosity. With virtue, you’re giving safety to everybody. With the development of goodwill, you’re freely giving your good intentions regardless of whether people wish you well in return. Now, people …
- Duties… The four duties form the overarching framework you want to keep in mind at all times. To do this is what the Buddha called fostering appropriate attention: using the questions he asked, the teachings he gave, in a way that fits into this frame. Anything that didn’t fit into this frame, he’d just put it aside. The truths are not just lists …
- Evaluation… You still have to watch over what you’ve got, because when distracting thoughts come, they come in little forms at first. As we were saying this afternoon, sometimes there’s just a stirring in the body someplace, or sometimes there will be a little whispering voice that comes in and goes away. “Wouldn’t it be nice to think about x,” and then …
- Head & Heart… This is the kind of breathing that leads to suffering, it’s one of the forms of fabrication—bodily fabrication—and it’s one of the basic building blocks of all your emotions. There’s bodily fabrication; verbal fabrication, which is directed thought and evaluation, the conversations you have inside; and then there are mental fabrications, your feelings and perceptions. Those are the building …
- Take Nothing for Granted… As the Buddha said, we fabricate our experience for the sake of having form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness, and then we use those things for the sake of happiness. So we have to remember why we’re here. Keep that in the background, and then set your mind on doing what needs to be done to reach to that goal of happiness, of real …
- Breath Meditation – The Four Tetrads… The pattern he’s establishing here—and it’s one that carries through each of the tetrads—is that you first try to get sensitive to this particular aspect of your awareness and then learn how to manipulate it as a form of fabrication. Energize it for a while, and then realize the best way to manipulate it is to calm it down. That …
- Staying on Track… In other words, when something really unskillful comes up, use breath meditation as a way of dealing with these three forms of fabrication and finding the antidote. The Buddha lists five different ways of dealing with unskillful thoughts, and they’re basically different ways of engaging in fabrication. With each of them, he gives you an image, which is a perception to hold in …
- The Five Precepts for the Mind… The Buddha calls this the pleasure of form. It’s a pleasure of a higher level. Just being able to be inside your body and inhabit it from the inside with a sense of ease and well-being is a pleasure with no drawbacks. In fact, when the Buddha-to-be realized that, that was what got him on the path to the end …
- Strong & Heedful… And it’s useful to look at craving and delusion as forms of weakness, because the Buddha says the qualities that counteract them are strengths. The Pali word is bala, and it’s interesting to note that in all the texts talking about developing these strengths, heedfulness is the quality that underlies them all. Heedfulness is what keeps them from simply being brute forces …
- Judging Mindfulness & Concentration… You want to get more sensitive to the signs that a thought world is about to form, and just breathe right through them. The faster you can do that, the more interesting things you’ll find about, as I said, how the mind lies to itself, how it does something and then pretends it didn’t do it. Or denies that it did it …
- Independent of the World… The discernment that allows you to let go of your greed, aversion, and delusion is the highest form of relinquishment. And, of course, the calm, the satisfaction, the sense of peace and security that come with attaining nibbana is the highest noble calm. So we desire these things. But in desiring them, we don’t just wait for them to come at the end …
- The Path of Action… Because they all form part of the path—in particular, right effort. We discussed this point today. There’s a teaching you very rarely hear in the West but it’s very common over there in Thailand: Viriyena dukkhamacceti, a person overcomes suffering or stress through effort, through persistence. And not just brute effort. Look at right effort, it’s an element in the …
- Shoot Your Pains with Wisdom… We take an active role in forming them. And the best way to understand that active role is not to try to be passive and say, “I’m not going to do anything at all. I’m just going to accept what happens.” Because what really happens is the active role you’re playing then goes underground where you don’t see it. Bring …
- A Passion for the Path… We cling to our body, our form, our sense of the body felt from the inside and other forms we see outside. We cling to our feelings, our perceptions, our thought fabrications, our consciousness. It’s because we cling to these things that we suffer. That’s what suffering is—and we’re passionate about it until we comprehend what’s going on.—in …
- Happy About Kamma… Intention and attention come under name and form. Based on name and form, there are the six senses, and with the six senses there’s contact. And it’s contact at the six senses, in your experience of the six senses, the Buddha said: That should be seen as past kamma. So actually your present intentions come first. This, too, is an important principle …
- Not Resolved on Self… They’re made out of feelings, perceptions, thought-constructs, the sense of the form of the body, your consciousness. So when you start taking apart the things that disturb you, you find that it begins to have an effect on what goes into making up your sense of self: who you are, who’s doing the practice. It’s like an avalanche as the …
- Doubt… It’ll come in different shapes and forms: doubt about different things. Some forms of doubt are more insidious than others. There are a lot of issues, the Buddha said, that you don’t have to think about. He’s not asking you to have any particular view about whether the world is eternal or not, or finite or not. But you do have …
- Gratification… That, they say, is a higher form of happiness than simple pleasure. But from the Buddha’s point, both types of happiness involve a kind of activity. They’re just that, activities. When you enjoy a pleasure, there’s an element of fabrication even in the present moment of the enjoyment. When you try to enjoy a nice sound or a nice sight, the …
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