Search results for: "Perception"
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- The Sport of Wise People… If there’s a pain in one part of the body and the more you focus on it, the worse it seems to get, ask yourself, “What is my perception adding to the pain? Can I think about the pain using other perceptions?” So the evaluation here evaluates the breath and other physical aspects of the body together with what you’re doing, in …
- Looking for Happiness Inside… You see how the mind’s perceptions, say, create a sense of where your body is right now and a sense of the shape of the body, and how those perceptions can be dropped. Then what have you got? Just a cloud of little sensation points. If you want, you can focus on the space between the points. That gets even more refined. You …
- A Good Independent Self… And finally, feelings and perceptions: We have our old perceptions that we keep plastering on to things, but those can be changed. The Buddha gives us so many useful perceptions to apply. Think of all the different skilled craftspeople that the Buddha recommends that you imitate: a good cook, a good archer, a good soldier, even a good elephant, a good horse, a well …
- How to Change… Finally, mental fabrications are perceptions and feelings: the labels you put on things, the feeling tones you have. These are the building blocks for all mental kamma. So as the Buddha’s teaching you, he’s noticing that the way you talk to yourself, the way you breathe, the way you hold different feelings and perceptions in the mind is causing you to suffer …
- The Path of Mistakes… form, feeling, perception, fabrication, consciousness. These all have to play a role in the path, which means we have to learn how to change our attitude toward the aggregates. Instead of just clinging to them as us or ours, we learn how to use them as elements in the path. The important point here is to realize that these things have to be used …
- Choosing Freedom… So bring a new perception in. When you breathe in, it’s not just a little pair of holes here in your nose that the breath can come in. It can come in anywhere in the body. In fact, if you have the perception that it *is *coming in everywhere, see what happens. It’s not a question of whether it’s true that …
- Alighting on the Dhamma… The three characteristics, or the three perceptions, have their place within the four noble truths as you apply them to help comprehend suffering or abandon the cause. But the underlying framework you’ve always got to always keep in mind, the framework that actually gives meaning to these perceptions, is the four noble truths. On their own, the perceptions just say: Things are inconstant …
- The Dead Snake Around Your Neck… Talk to yourself also about what perceptions to hold in mind as you do this. The perceptions and feelings are mental fabrications. Perceptions are the labels you apply to things or the images you hold in mind. What kind of image of the breath is helpful for concentration? Think of the breath as energy flowing through the body. It can flow through the nerves …
- Boxed Stories… You can make them real if you want to, but why would you want to? Then there are the perceptions underlying them. Particularly the one that says, “If you don’t give in to this temptation, it’s just going to build and build and build and then it’s going to explode.” Well, the perception of its building up: That, too, is a …
- The Karma of Pain… One of the first lines of defense against physical pain as you’re sitting here is your breath, and the breath is affected by your perceptions. How is the way you’re breathing relating to the pain? Does the pain set up barriers that the breath energy can’t go through? Well, try to change your perception. Think of the pain as being permeable …
- Why We Train the Mind… feelings and perceptions. “Feeling” here doesn’t mean emotion. It means the feeling tone that you focus on with regard to that issue—pleasant, painful, or neither. Perceptions are the mental labels or images that surround an issue—for example, the way you perceive the breath and how it relates to a particular unskillful emotion. If anger comes up, ask yourself: “How am I …
- The Dualistic Path… The mind has its perceptions about things. So what happens when you change the perceptions? One of the most interesting ways of dealing with this issue is to focus on space. As the body gets still, the breath gets still, your sense of the boundary on the outside of the body begins to disappear. You’re sitting here in a mist of sensations, like …
- Endurance… The Buddha talks about our perceptions as an important factor in how we shape our minds. So learn to have perceptions like this: Your mind is like space. Your goodwill is like the Earth—a lot bigger than anything anyone can do to you. And because it’s like space, there’s nothing anybody can write on your mind. It’s in this way …
- The Raft… There are perceptions—saññā—the images you have in the mind about how the breath comes into the body, where it comes in, where it goes out, where you would like it to come in, go out, where you would like it to go in the body. Then there are fabrications: directed thoughts and evaluations, the way you talk to yourself about the breath …
- Me, Me, Me… When a thought comes up in the mind, recognize it* as a thought.* When the thought of me, me, me comes up, tell yourself, “That’s just a perception.” You ask can yourself, “To what extent, in what way, do I hold to that perception?” You should get interested in those questions. You don’t have to take on The Self in capital letters …
- No Extra Arrows… It’s focused on form — the form of the body — feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, acts of consciousness. And it comes from craving. Craving, too, is desire and passion. The relationship between the two is like this: The word for craving in Pali is “thirst.” The word for clinging — upādāna — is “to feed.” So the desire and passion that’s looking for something: That’s …
- Learning How to Talk to Yourself… Then finally, there are mental fabrications, which are perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the labels you put on things, like labels on a bottle. Some of these labels are just words, and sometimes they’re images. They give meaning to things: This is this, and that’s that. You identify what this is, what that is, what its meaning is. And then feelings—feeling …
- Discerning the Middle Way… You work with the breath, work with the way you’re talking to yourself about the issue, look at the perceptions you hold around the issue to see maybe if the perceptions are part of the problem, and whether you can change those perceptions. For instance, if you find yourself running up against anger, you have to ask yourself: What’s the perception you …
- Fighting Spirit… If you hold that perception in mind, what does it do to the breathing? Hakuin, the old Zen master, talked about getting Zen sickness, which was basically a strong headache when he was meditating. To cure it, he would hold in mind a perception to counteract it, which was to think of a big ball of butter on top of his head melting and …
- Ānāpānasati Day… You breathe in and out training yourself to be sensitive to rapture, sensitive to pleasure, sensitive to mental fabrications, which are perceptions and feelings. And then you calm mental fabrications. Again, think about how you’re shaping your mind state by the perceptions you hold in mind. You can think about things that get you all upset. All kinds of perceptions can get you …
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