Search results for: "Fabrication"

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  2. The Good Fight
     … Even these states of concentration are fabricated. It’s one of the reasons you don’t want to do this type of analysis too early, because early on in the process they’re obviously fabricated. But as you get more and more used to them, they become more and more part of the way the mind is. And you tend to forget what went … 
  3. A Point of Balance
     … After all, the Buddha said the path is something fabricated. So we fabricate a sense of well-being. It may not be absolute well-being, but it’s relatively better than anything else we’ve experienced so far. So learn how to explore what you’ve got here, and see how you can take the breath—which is simply coming in and going out … 
  4. Frame Your Questions Well
     … It’s something you have to fabricate. It’s called a sankhara in Pali, a fabrication. And it requires desire, which is part of right effort. You put it together with this desire so that you have the state of becoming that allows you to watch other states of becoming as they come in. You see the mind tempted to go off into a … 
  5. What to Tolerate, What Not
    The Buddha calls the breath a type of bodily fabrication. Which means two things. One is that the breath is what shapes your experience of the body, of the various properties of the body: breath; fire or the warmth; liquid, coolness; earth or solidity. The breath is your most immediate experience of the body. It’s through the energy of the body that you … 
  6. Layers of Selves
     … And then breathing in and out sensitive to mental fabrication, i.e., your perceptions and your feelings. How are the perceptions having an effect on you? How are the feelings having an effect on you? How do they get mixed together to have an effect on the mind? Then you find a way to calm that. When you’re dealing with the pleasure of … 
  7. Awaken to Your Potentials
     … You’re taking these three types of fabrication and you’re making them into a path—both for the immediate benefits of a sense of well-being and also for gaining insight. You can improve your mindfulness, improve your alertness, and gain insight into how far these fabrications can go. So, it’s not just a matter of deciding whether you agree with the … 
  8. Four Noble Truths to One
     … the five clinging-aggregates of form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness. The aggregates don’t cling. We cling to them, and the clinging is the actual suffering. Once we learn how to be with these things, to engage in these things without clinging, then there’s no suffering around them. So you have to comprehend: How is that clinging suffering? We have to … 
  9. Poison Your Fantasies
     … You’re putting a lot of your effort into fabricating things. When the Buddha says that things are fabricated, he’s not just saying that things are conditioned. He’s saying that your experience of things requires effort on your part. This food that you’re feeding requires that you do a lot of hunting and gathering and fixing. Years back, we had a … 
  10. The Art of Right Speech
     … It is possible to reach a happiness that goes beyond fabrication, that goes beyond intentions, where all the dimensions of space and time fall away. But to get there, you’ve got to look very carefully at your intentions. You can’t know what is truly unintended until you’re thoroughly familiar with all the levels of fabrication and intention going on in the … 
  11. Not Pained by Pain
     … The third is that you breathe in and out being sensitive to mental fabrication—in other words, feelings and perceptions. Perceptions, here, are the images you hold in mind. And the fourth step is to breathe in and out calming mental fabrications. Now, his explanation here is focused on how to give rise to a sense of pleasure, and then refine that pleasure in … 
  12. Passion, Dispassion, Compassion
     … The fact that we keep going after things, the energy we put into fabricating things, is what keeps the whole process of fabrication going, along with all the stress that comes with fabrication. Yet this sort of passion is something that society encourages. We’re happy to play along and don’t like to think that we’re misguided. So we tend to paint … 
  13. Discernment in Concentration
     … Even form he says deforms; feelings feel; perceptions perceive; fabrications fabricate; consciousness cognizes. These are activities, and you use them as you get the mind to settle down. In this way, you get on familiar terms with them. As a famous philosopher once said, “The things we know best are the things we do.” And for the most part, most people do things, say … 
  14. Count Yourself Lucky
     … One of the Buddha’s most radical insights is seeing how much our experience of the world is simply fabricated. It’s all activities. Even these five khandhas, these aggregates: The word “aggregate” makes it sound like pieces of rock, but they’re not. They may be as heavy as rock but they’re actually activities. Everything is a means to something else. And … 
  15. Gather ’Round the Breath
     … In the past, the priority was given to thought fabrication, and all the public relations work that thought fabrication does about itself, about how wonderful and useful it is, and how much you learn, and how much you get entertainment this way, and all the other voices in the mind that cheer you on in that direction. But now you’re saying: No, the … 
  16. Look in the Mirror
     … It’s attained by discernment, but it’s still a state of concentration—and it too is fabricated. Ajaan Lee has a good way of dealing with that kind of issue. He says, “You see that there are these things that are inconstant, but there’s something else that seems to be constant”: either the state of concentration or the insight that allows you … 
  17. Lessons from the Breath
     … Goodwill involves mental fabrication and verbal fabrication. It’s something you consciously do with as much knowledge as possible, so that your mental and verbal fabrication don’t cause suffering. You understand that when you think, when you have feelings and perceptions, if you do that with ignorance, it’s going to cause suffering. But if you do it with knowledge, it goes in … 
  18. Meaning & Importance
     … As the Buddha says, we take the potentials for form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness, and we fabricate them into actual forms, feelings, etc., for the sake of something. Usually for the sake of happiness, which means that every present moment has a for-the-sake-of in it. It’s moving in a direction. It’s a means to an end. That’s … 
  19. Interdependence & Death
     … When the Buddha talks about working with the sixteen steps of breath meditation, he’s also talking about mental fabrication, and the instructions themselves are in the form of verbal fabrication. The purpose of this focus on fabrications is to get you sensitive to the way you shape your mind through your perceptions and feelings. That’s what’s going to hold you in … 
  20. Recollecting the Buddha
     … Breath is, of course, the bodily fabrication kaya-sankhara, but his instructions also tell you to be sensitive to citta-sankhara or mental fabrication, which are your perceptions and feelings. And the instructions themselves are things you tell yourself: That’s vaci-sankhara, verbal fabrication. These are precisely the things you really have to watch out for as you die: what the mind tells … 
  21. Not-self as a Raft
     … How skillful is it? To what extent does it lead to suffering and to what extent does it actually help put an end to suffering? To answer that question, you have to look more carefully at the process of what the Buddha calls “I-making” and “my-making.” It’s a kind of fabrication. It comes under the aggregate of fabrication. It’s also … 
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