Search results for: "consciousness"
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- The Buddha Didn’t Play Gotcha… Repeatedly, the Buddha talks about analyzing the concentration in and of itself, seeing what in the concentration is form, feeling, perception, thought fabrication, or consciousness. You realize that even when you let go of outside aggregates, or the grosser aggregates, there are still these subtler aggregates inside. It’s right here that the work can be done. So the Buddha’s teachings are very …
- Reading & Meditating… The Buddha provides a very clear vocabulary for what’s going on inside the mind, in terms of feelings and perceptions, thought-fabrications, acts of consciousness, and all the other many elaborations on those basic terms. It’s good to have those terms in the back of the mind as you meditate. For example, what he has to say about the three kinds of …
- Fixing the Present… One of the ways you do that is by consciously trying to change the perception, bringing a new perception into the mind, one that’s less likely to stir up those emotions. Then you can ask yourself: What in the mind resists this? What in the mind feels that this new image is artificial? Often we have the feeling that whatever comes up in …
- Lean into the Present… The same with perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness: We do this for the sake of something, but all too often we’re not really clear about what the “for the sake” is. All we know is that we’re leaning in that direction. What the Buddha’s telling us is to be here with the breath in order to fabricate feelings around the breath, fabricate …
- Attahi Attano Natho… If you can consciously calm those manifestations, it has a calming effect on the mind. So try to breathe in a way that’s comfortable: easy coming in, easy going out, not strained or tightened or stressed. Think of the whole body being nourished by the breath, with everybody getting a part, because the breath is not just the air coming in and of …
- Three Noble Truths Versus Four… And then there’s the consciousness that’s aware of these things. You turn those five aggregates into a state of concentration. And in doing so, you’re fighting against those three perceptions of inconstant, stressful, and not-self. You’re making the mind more constant, you’re finding a sense of ease and pleasure, and you’re getting the mind under control. Ultimately …
- A Light in the Darkness… Once it’s comfortable, spread that sense of comfort to fill the whole body and then try to stay very consciously aware of the whole body. Don’t let your awareness shrink. There are other times when the mind has more energy to think, and in that case you’ve got to cut it off in other ways, partly by explaining things to it …
- Your Higher Power… We cling to our feelings, our perceptions, our thought constructs, and our consciousness. And when these things turn on us, we’re stuck with what we’ve clung to. But if you learn how to let go—and letting go means first fashioning more skillful versions of these things, more skillful perceptions and thoughts to give rise to feelings in the body that are …
- Discernment Fosters Concentration… When we bring the mind back to the present moment, we have to consciously allow those parts of the body to be un-squeezed. Let them fill up with breath energy. You can think of their being starved of blood, so you allow the blood to flow there. It’s this way you get the beginnings of the factor for awakening that in Pali …
- Negative Emotions… Exactly what are you consciously ignoring? We tend to think of ignorance as a blank that just happens to be there in the mind, but actually there’s an active process of ignoring, an active process of denying, of shutting things off within the mind. What are we covering up? For most of us, that’s how our minds function—there’s a lot …
- Why Mindfulness… form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and sensory consciousness. There’s another follow-up question: “What danger does your teacher see in having desire and passion for those things?” The answer: When you have desire and passion for those things, you do things that cause suffering. But if you abandon that passion and desire, you put an end to suffering. So notice that Sariputta’s answers …
- Producing Discernment… outside, how do you undo that reaction? You can start with the breath. Remind yourself that even though the body may be in a bad breath cycle, you can change it. Consciously breathe in a way that’s calmer. Hold in mind perceptions that are calmer. Talk to yourself in ways that calm you down. You can borrow the wisdom of the ajaans, the …
- The Primacy of the Mind (2)… Those are feelings that are consciously, deliberately created. So again, we’re working from the mind into the breath. Then you’re sensitive to how that sense of pleasure has an impact on the mind: You breathe in and out sensitive to mental fabrication—in other words, feelings and perceptions. So, what perceptions do you apply to the breath? How do you visualize the …
- The Heart to Keep Going… At the same time, you’re also developing the observer inside, what in some circles they call meta-consciousness—the ability to watch your own mind, to observe your own mind from the outside, and not get sucked into all of its stories and moods. The moods and the stories are one thing, but your awareness is something else. Each time you pull out …
- The Wisdom of Incongruity… Stream-of-consciousness novels have nothing on the strange shifts and incongruous fragments that the mind can toss up. If you try to trace where your mind has been or the course of its inner conversations even over the course of five minutes, you find that it’s zigged and zagged all over the place. Of course, when we’re getting the mind to …
- Unfabricated Happiness… For instance, simply the way you intend to breathe—consciously or unconsciously—has an impact on how you experience the body. The feelings you focus on, the perceptions you use, have an impact on the mind. Then there’s a third kind of fabrication, called verbal fabrication, where you talk to yourself. That plays a role in the instructions to the meditation themselves: things …
- Renunciation… The Buddha talks about learning how to see form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness as something separate; sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations as something separate. There’s an awareness that’s not touched by any of these things. You have to dig deep down into this awareness right here right nowto get to that level of awareness. But this is how you find …
- Ingenuity… It’s one of the qualities the Buddha said you should look for in yourself as you practice and consciously try to develop. The Pali word for ingenuity, patibhana, shows up in a lot of places as a good quality to develop together with your learning. There’s nowhere, though, where the Buddha defines the term. So you have to be ingenious in figuring …
- Mindfulness & Perception… What feels good right now? How is it going along? Is the mind settling down? If not, what can you do? And then there’s the consciousness of all this. There you are: You’ve got all five aggregates working together—because you want to see them together. You want to get everything in one place, in a place where things are still, calm …
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