Search results for: "Form"

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  2. Fear of Death
     … You’re able to see a thought form and realize that you’re in charge. You can go with it or not as you choose. The mind has a long-term habit of going into these things without even thinking. So the first order of business when you meditate is how not to get involved in these things at all. In other words, your … 
  3. The Self-correcting Mind
     … But the Buddha talks openly and freely about aging, illness, death, separation, all the various forms of stress and suffering because he has a cure for them all. But it’s a self-administered cure. We learn from him, we learn from his example, we learn from the example of all the noble disciples in the Buddha’s time on up into the present … 
  4. The Origination of Suffering
     … Instead, you create a state of becoming here around a different kind of pleasure, the pleasure of form: the body as you feel it from within. And you try to adjust it so that this is a good place to be. This is going to be your food on the path, but you learn how to use it to see into other becomings. In … 
  5. Turning Points
     … Central to this story is his discovery of right concentration, a form of happiness that could be a path to a higher form of happiness. He didn’t have to put himself through ultimate pain in order to get the happiness that’s supposed to lie on the other side. There would be pain, there would be struggle in the path, but he kept … 
  6. Choose Your Cravings Wisely
     … Some forms of craving are the cause of suffering, but the Buddha also recognized that there’s a kind of craving that’s involved in the path: You’ve heard that other people have gained true happiness and you want that happiness. That’s a good craving to nourish. There’s a sutta where he calls craving your companion. Everywhere you go, you’re … 
  7. Becomings
     … This is the good becoming you want right now, so that you can see the other becomings as they form, and recognize them for what they’re doing. This way, in the course of getting a place for the mind to settle down and get a sense of well-being from settling down, you’re also learning about the mind, about all of its … 
  8. Interconnectedness
     … We intentionally shape this process, because the most important type of interconnectedness is the interconnectedness in the mind—how our perceptions and our intentions, the questions we ask ourselves, the answers we give ourselves, how we go about forming those answers: how these processes are all interconnected. They can be interconnected in a way that leads to suffering or in a way that leads … 
  9. Beneficial Thinking
     … Not that there aren’t pleasant things or good things outside, but they’re not solid enough to form a foundation for a happiness that you can really trust. Sometimes it’s good to think about these things in a general sort of way. That’s why we have the chants about aging, illness, and death, and the chant on the unattractiveness of the … 
  10. Tranquility & Insight
     … That’s form. The breath coming in, breath going out: That’s form. There’s a feeling of ease that you’re trying to develop. There’s a perception of how the breath goes through the body. When it comes in, where does it come in? When it goes out, where does it go out? How does it go through the body as it … 
  11. Buddhist Engineering
     … You take the potentials, say, for form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness, and you turn them into the actual experience of these things, using your present intentions. This, too, is a type of fabrication, and we’re doing it all the time. We want to get more sensitive to exactly how we’re doing that. That’s where the emphasis gets more and … 
  12. A Slave to Craving
     … We tend to think of goodwill as an expansive mind-state, but the Buddha calls it a form of restraint. In your search for happiness, there will be certain things you simply can’t do if you have goodwill for others. There are certain things you can’t do if you have goodwill for yourself. The whole point of developing goodwill is that it … 
  13. A Greater Happiness
    Why are we sitting here meditating when we could be out doing other things? It’s because we’ve seen that some forms of happiness are truer than others, more long-lasting, they go deeper into the heart. And we want that deeper happiness. We often hear that Buddhism is down on desires and wanting, but that’s not true. The desire for true … 
  14. Against the Stream
     … In this way, you begin to push against the stream, go against the stream, and as you do that you get more and more sensitive to little tiny thoughts that are just about to form, and you can say No to them too. They’re nothing you want to get involved in right now. For the time being, they’re not-self. This whole … 
  15. Training Your Inner Critic
     … In each case, he says you fabricate them for the sake, say, of formness, or for the sake of feelingness… It sounds odd, but basically you fabricate the potentials so that you can have these things to use as you go through the day, as you go through life. You’re trying to find your nourishment, you need a sense of form, and feelings … 
  16. Comfortable with Yourself
     … The Buddha said that when the mind is rightly concentrated, that forms the heart of the path. All the other elements of the noble eightfold path are ancillary, because the path depends on this sense of well-being, of getting along inside. If the different things that come together to create the present moment, that compose the present moment, are on bad terms with … 
  17. Encouraging Perceptions
     … Ananda said, this is a form of conceit, but it’s a healthy form of conceit. You hear that other people have gained awakening and you tell yourself, “They’re human beings. I’m a human being. They can do it, so can I.” But sometimes you’re fighting some perceptions you’ve carried over from the past that tend to undercut that kind … 
  18. Into the Light of Consciousness
     … We encounter these forms of these fabrications very directly as we meditate. But the three fabrications are also interpreted in another way in some passages in the Canon, where bodily fabrication is any intentional bodily action. Verbal fabrication is any intentional verbal action. Mental is any intentional mental action. In other words, three different levels of kamma: bodily, verbal, mental. These are then discussed … 
  19. Perception
     … You’re not trying to do away with form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, and consciousness — at least not right away. The first thing you’ve got to do is learn how to convert them into the path. They use the word “aggregates,” “heaps,” for the word “khandha.” You might think of them as big heaps of gravel. And you have the choice: You can … 
  20. Oneness
     … When you start leaving the meditation object, the first thing you’ll run into is the fence formed by the sound of the talk. That’s to remind you to go back. The word desana, the word we usually translate as “Dhamma talk,” actually means pointing. And the talk is here to point you back to the breath, back to your present awareness, to … 
  21. Constructing & Deconstructing
     … That, too, has its form and feelings and perceptions and thought constructs and consciousness. The fact is that the mind in concentration is the ideal laboratory for understanding these things and dismantling them. With the voices in the mind, you find there are many layers. There’s the voice that tries to take charge, and then the other voices make comments on it. Then … 
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