Search results for: "consciousness"
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- At Play… So, as you’re sitting here meditating, think of yourself being at play—at play with the four elements of the body; at play with feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness, your awareness—on those basic, building-block terms. You begin to see even how not only are your perceptions somewhat arbitrary, but even the Buddha’s perceptions are conventions. You see this in some …
- True & Beneficial… What do you make the raft of? You make the raft out of the twigs and branches on this side of the river, which the Buddha identifies as form, feelings, perceptions, thought-constructs, consciousness of the senses—in other words, the things that you ordinarily cling to that cause suffering, but now you’re going to cling to them strategically as you make this …
- Pain & Patience… form—the way you create the sense of your body, inhabit the sense of your body; feeling—feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain; perceptions, the labels you put on things, either words or images; fabrications—the thoughts you create around things; and then finally, consciousness, which is aware of all these things. These are all activities you’re engaged in. And …
- What You’re Choosing to Do Right Now… feelings, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness. The fact that you are fabricating these things… The way the Buddha explains it is that there’s a potential for all of these things coming in from the past, and you decide that you want a feeling, or you want a perception, so you fabricate those potentials into something you actually experience right now. What this means is that …
- When Aging Closes In… It’s a matter developing the mind to the point where you no longer have to identify with the body, with feelings, perceptions, thought-constructs, or consciousness. That way, when these things change, as they inevitably will, the mind won’t be affected by the change. That’s a really healthy mind. This is what we’re working on as we meditate. We develop …
- Intelligent Effort… The Buddha had to go and show him that he was wrong, by disappearing to a realm that Baka himself couldn’t see, and by pointing out that there was a different kind of consciousness that had nothing to do with any of the six senses at all. The funny thing is that the sutta doesn’t say whether Baka changed his mind. But …
- The Bureaucracy of the Defilements… All of the kamma that you’ve been creating in a semiconscious way becomes a lot more conscious—and your ability to bring consciousness and discernment to these things is what’s going to make all the difference.
- Fear of Missing Out… Then, from there, the sequence goes on to consciousness and from there, name and form. And again, you have intention under name. You also have perceptions. You also have acts of attention. What are you paying attention to? How are you framing the issue? These are things you should know. All these steps prior to sensory contact are things on which you should cast …
- Seclusion Through Mindfulness… After all, what is “the knowing” in the present moment? It’s the aggregate of consciousness. It’s one of the khandhas. It’s a useful tool in the path, but ideally you don’t want to be the knowing—you want to keep track of the knowing. This is how you get secluded: putting aside thoughts of the past, not laying claim to …
- A Concentration Checklist… What’s form, what’s feeling doing right now? What’s perception doing? What’s fabrication doing? What’s consciousness doing? How do these things work together to create a state of concentration? Can you see that? Look. Take an interest—and you’ll realize there’s nothing to get bored about. All the processes by which the mind is creating suffering for itself …
- Serial Clinging Is Still Clinging… Sometimes you identify with your body, sometimes with your feelings, sometimes with your perceptions, your thoughts, your consciousness, or any combination of these. If you were to draw a picture of your sense of self, it would be like an amoeba, changing shape all the time. It all still counts as clinging, because the Buddha’s not telling you, “Wander around with your ideas …
- Love Me, Love My Defilements… Feelings feel, perceptions perceive, fabrications fabricate the other aggregates into actual aggregates, and consciousness cognizes. These things are defined by their activity. And these activities are the raw materials from which we create our sense of self. In our delusion we tend to think of “self” as a thing we’re stuck with, either for metaphysical reasons or for social reasons. But that’s …
- Your Committee of Addicts… These are basically ways in which we put the aggregates together—our sense of our body, our feelings, our perceptions, our thought constructs, our acts of consciousness. We put them together into something that we actively hold on to. The Buddha’s great insight was that if you’re really serious about going beyond suffering, you can take the different things that you hold …
- Refuge… There’s fabrication, your internal conversation about the breath, your directed thoughts and your evaluations of what’s going on; and then consciousness, which is aware of all these things. There you’ve got them all here, the five aggregates, and you turn them into the path. They become your home right now, a much more solid home than any other one you could …
- Dispassion… You realize that you’ve been feeding off of form and feelings and perceptions and fabrications and consciousness: all these things that make up your sense of who you are. Now, though, you’ve found something better, which doesn’t require that you need to feed anymore. And you realize that all of this clinging and holding on is suffering. So you feel dispassion …
- A Good Path to Be On… contains an element of intention. So the way you breathe already has a subconscious element of intention. The best way to realize that is to try to breathe in different ways. Consciously change the way you breathe. Find a way of breathing that’s comfortable, interesting, soothing when you need to be soothed, energizing when you need to be energized. This involves thinking about …
- Not-self Is a Value Judgment… Even when he was talking to people on the verge of becoming arahants giving them that questionnaire, notice how he phrased the questions: “Form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness: Are they constant or inconstant?” — “They’re inconstant.” “If they’re inconstant, are they easeful or stressful?” — “They’re stressful.” And then the final question is not, “Then is there a self?” No, the question is …
- Doing… The same with feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness. He doesn’t tell you just to give to up and say, “Well, that’s not my self, so I’ll just learn how to accept things as they are.” That short-circuits the whole path. You never get anywhere. He says to try training these things into a state of stillness, a state of well …
- The Mind When Trained Brings Happiness… re not holding on to any tension as you breathe out. Allow your ankles to relax, allow your wrists to relax. Any part of the body that tends to hold tension: Consciously relax it. If you’re not sure if something is tense or not, you can compare the left side to the right side. Your left shoulder and your right shoulder. Your wrists …
- Empathetic Joy… So it’s good very consciously to develop an attitude of appreciation and empathetic joy when people are doing good things and when they’re reaping the results of good actions. That makes the mind very expansive. It’s a form of generosity, a generosity of spirit: that you’re happy to see other people doing something that might be better than what you …
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