Search results for: "Fabrication"

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  2. Inconstant, Stressful, Not-self
     … learn how to develop some dispassion for these processes—these forms, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and moments of consciousness—that we crave, that we keep going after, that we fabricate again and again and again. We want happiness, but we keep looking for it in processes that will disappoint us, that keep us stuck with aging, illness, and death. If you bring some wisdom to … 
  3. Bare Attention
     … There are times when you have to fabricate and think and analyze in order to get past a particular unskillful mind state, either by fabricating stronger concentration to resist it or by fabricating discernment to try to figure out ways of getting around the problem— taking it apart, seeing what makes it work, getting down to the nuts and bolts. It’s interesting that … 
  4. Pleasure & Pain
     … If you learn how to use it properly, you can learn a lot about the processes of fabrication in the mind. That’s what insight is all about: how the mind fabricates things—its sense of the body, its sense of the mind, how it fabricates speech as you try to carry the concentration into the day. It may not be full absorption at … 
  5. The Brahmavihāras Aren’t Enough
     … As you get your mind into concentration with any of these topics, you reflect on the fact that this concentration is fabricated. Whatever is fabricated, you perceive in line with the three perceptions of being inconstant, stressful, and not-self, or in line with variations on those perceptions: a disease, a dart, alien, empty. In other words, look at the state of concentration itself … 
  6. Questioning the Hindrances
     … He just taught a series of questions. “How do you look at the fabrications of the mind?” That’s a question he posed, and then you have to learn how to look at your fabrications yourself. “How do you regard fabrications? How do you understand them?” You pose questions in the mind, and it’s in the posing of the question that you start … 
  7. Nostalgia for Suffering
     … Because when you look at the categories, they’re all pretty broad, especially fabrication. All kinds of things come under the category of fabrication: all the different ways you think about things, all the different ways you talk to yourself about your suffering—that’s all fabrication. The Buddha had to give just the basic principles because there’s no way he could have … 
  8. How to Feed Mindfulness
     … I recently read someone saying that mindfulness is an unfabricated phenomenon—that only your thought processes that pull you away from the present moment count as fabricated, that when you’re in the pure present there’s no fabrication going on at all. But that’s a major misunderstanding. Mindfulness is something you do. It’s a fabricated activity. Alertness is something you do … 
  9. The Triple Training
     … Well, those are all different forms of fabrication, and as the Buddha said, when you see things in terms of fabrication—what you’re intentionally doing in the present moment, whether the intention is clear or not, you’re trying to make it clear in that act of clarifying your intentions in the present moment: That’s what insight is all about. So the … 
  10. Some Assembly Required
     … Focus on the breath—that’s bodily fabrication. Talk to yourself about the breath—that’s verbal fabrication. Use different perceptions to see what ways of imaging the breath to yourself make it more comfortable—that’s mental fabrication. As you get more sensitive to how you’re putting this together, then you begin to sense that as you go through the day, you … 
  11. Using Perceptions
     … As the Buddha said, “All fabrications are inconstant; all fabrications are stressful.” But when you’re working on concentration, you don’t apply that map quite yet to the concentration itself. It’s not yet the right time or place. Otherwise you’d say, “Oh, concentration comes and it goes. I learned that. Check that box.” But you haven’t really gained the benefits … 
  12. Overcoming Obstacles
     … That puts you in touch with something that goes beyond the power of fabrication. And because it’s not fabricated, it places no weight on the mind at all. So there is that possibility, but to get there requires training—heightening your virtue, heightening your concentration, heightening your discernment. So try to be very clear on who your internal friends are, who you want … 
  13. Good Fences
     … That’s bodily fabrication, the breath; verbal fabrication, how you talk to yourself; and mental fabrication, the feelings in the body that you’re focusing on. You can make a situation really bad by focusing on how miserable you feel. But you can look for the other parts of the body that are not so miserable. And, of course, you can breathe in ways … 
  14. The Power of Intention
     … As the Buddha said, our past karma gives us the potential for different experiences of form, feeling, perception, thought fabrications, and consciousness. Then with our present fabrications—our present intentions—we turn these potentials into something actual for the sake of having an actual experience, and then, of course, for the sake of whatever activities we want to do with those forms and feelings … 
  15. The Need for Evaluation
     … The fabrication here is the directed thought and evaluation. That’s a very necessary part of fabrication going on in the body. And then there’s the consciousness. To get that pleasure to develop through the breathing and then to be able to spread it through the body, you’ve got to see the body and your mind as aggregates. Get a sense of … 
  16. Heightened Skillfulness
     … You try to understand what you’re doing, in terms of bodily fabrication—the way you breathe; verbal concentration—the way you talk to yourself; and mental fabrication—the perceptions and feelings you apply to the meditation, the perceptions that help you hold the breath in mind: how you picture the breath to yourself, the way it either originates outside and comes into the … 
  17. Mindful & Discerning 24/7
     … As the mind begins to settle in, you use directed thought and evaluation—verbal fabrication—to get the mind still. Ideally, you should get to a point where you can drop your verbal fabrication so that when you pick it up again, you see it clearly. “Oh, this is how the mind talks to itself.” Then you can see these voices more clearly. And … 
  18. Mind Reading
     … It’s in this way that all these forms of fabrications—bodily, verbal, and mental—play a role in learning how to read the mind. Which is why the Buddha’s breath instructions cover all three kinds. He talks explicitly about bodily fabrication, to alert you to the fact that you’re looking at the breath not simply as breath but also in terms … 
  19. Skillfully Shaping Your Life
     … It’s called bodily fabrication. Then there’s verbal fabrication, which is basically how you talk to yourself. Years back we had a woman come from Los Angeles and meditate with us a couple of times. Then, after a couple of weeks, she brought a friend. We were sitting as a group under the trees. At the end of the meditation, the friend opened … 
  20. Two Types of Dukkha
     … There’s a stress or suffering in the fact that all things that are fabricated and inconstant. There’s stress simply in the fact of the fabrication. The fact that they’re inconstant means that as you focus on trying to find happiness in them, it’s really hard. It’s like trying to build your house on a sandy plot where the ocean … 
  21. Mistakes
     … Some of the basic questions of insight are, “How should fabrications be viewed? How they should be regarded? How they should be let go?” And this five-part questionnaire is the answer to those questions. Anything that the mind might fabricate—in other words, anything that it would put together in terms of its thoughts, the way it talks to itself, the decisions it … 
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