Search results for: "Perception"
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- Doubting the Buddha… feelings, perceptions, thought constructs. By their nature, these things don’t last very long, yet we try to patch them together, build them into all kinds of things, put lots of mortar in them, hoping that they’ll stick together. But they don’t, because the mortar itself is more perceptions, more thought constructs. But if you learn how to look at the process …
- Frame Your Questions Well… As the Buddha says, we fabricate feelings for the sake of feeling-ness and perceptions for the sake of perception-hood. It’s very strange Pali, turning all these things into abstract nouns, but the important part is the “for the sake of.” There’s an intentional element going on here. We take a potential and turn it into something we think we can …
- Into the Light of Consciousness… Mental is perceptions and feelings, perceptions are the labels you apply to things that give them meaning, identify what they are. Feelings are feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. 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 …
- Dealing with Pain… Then there’s perception, the labels you place on the pain. They could either be words or they could be pictures. It’s the way the mind communicates with itself through very brief and simple signals. And then there’s fabrication. This is where the emotions are along with your more complex thoughts. Then finally there’s consciousness—awareness of these things. The Buddha …
- Three Parts of Right View… There’s the perception of what kind of hunger we’re suffering from. Is it the kind of hunger that needs something liquid? Does it need something solid? Does it need something salty or sweet? And then there’s the perception of what out there would satisfy the hunger, what qualifies as food, and what doesn’t. Fabrications deal with all the plans we …
- The Second Frame of Reference… Which ways of thinking about the breath and evaluating the breath give more pleasure? Which perceptions of the breath give more pleasure, give you more strength? These are all things you can manipulate, things you can play with. And just knowing that you’re not simply a hapless victim of your pains helps get you on the right side. Sometimes a useful perception is …
- Feeling & Intention… Third, there are perceptions and feelings. “Perception” here means the labels the mind uses, or the images it uses, when you’re thinking about a particular issue. You can practice with this in your concentration. You learn how to perceive the breath, to picture it to yourself, in different ways. This is something that’s very intimate. Just the way you picture the breathing …
- A Heart Set on Goodwill… So you’re thinking about the fabrications of the mind as you’re trying to create a sense of goodwill—how you’re breathing, what you’re saying to yourself, and the perceptions you hold in mind. If you allow yourself to have perceptions of feeling threatened by the people who are difficult to have goodwill for, it makes it even more difficult. This …
- Dualities… But your perceptions have changed. You see that the perceptions are the issue. The same happens as you go through different levels of concentration. You want to notice that when you’re thinking about the breath and adjusting the breath, that’s one level of concentration. Then you get the mind to the point where it doesn’t need to adjust things any more …
- Questioning Your Conviction… You can change your perceptions more directly. Sometimes this takes willpower. You’re used to perceiving things in a certain way, and the Buddha recommends—or Ajaan Lee recommends—other perceptions. The tendency of the mind is to fall back to its old perceptions. But you’re trying to see: How far can I push in another direction? That’s because you want to …
- The Limits of Old Kamma… If you’re feeling trapped in the body, ask yourself, “Why are you trapped?” Well, you have this perception that it’s you or it’s yours. You picked up the perception because there were times when it felt useful to identify with the body. It was a means for gaining pleasure. But now you’re beginning to realize that identifying with the body …
- Learning from the Precepts… For instance, look at your perceptions. Look at your perception of a situation. Look at the narratives you tell yourself about a situation, especially the ones that would say, “I don’t have to observe the precept here,” or, “The precepts don’t apply here.” What in that narrative has its pull? Or in the desire to please? Or in the desire for convenience …
- Contemplating the World You Create… For instance, you need to have a perception of the breath and to figure out which perceptions are most skillful, which ones are the most helpful in getting the mind to settle down. One of the reasons we talk about the breath energy in the body is because you’re trying to get the mind in a state of concentration where a sense of …
- Tapping into the Breath… It’s in this way that you learn how to use your perceptions—and how to change your perceptions so that they actually are conducive to settling down. As you work with the breath in this way, you’ll find that there are lots of different levels. It’s like the water table at Wat Asokaram. They dug their wells in a very unlikely …
- When You Don’t Like Your Selves… And then the perceptions: The Buddha has lots of perceptions to recommend. All those analogies throughout the Canon are designed for you to take on as ways of fabricating the state of your mind, fabricating your attitude toward your anger, toward your lust, toward your greed. For example, with lust: The Buddha has all those images for the drawbacks of lust: a bead of …
- Anxiety… What does that do to the experience of the breath? Notice how the various perceptions have an impact not only on the mind but also on the body, and choose the set of perceptions that has the best impact. And as we learn to work with these things, we’re giving ourselves hands-on experience with the way we create any emotional state, any …
- Breathing Skillfully… That’s what matters.” The fact that the mountain is heavy is the stress in what are called the three characteristics, or the three perceptions. That’s just the way things are. But the fact that you’re lifting it: That’s the problem. The weight that comes when you lift it is stress in the four noble truths—in other words, the stress …
- Full Attention… The Buddha includes feeling-tones with perceptions as the big mental fabricators: the things that shape our emotions and other states of mind. This means that when trying to understand emotions, you have to look at your perceptions. We get practice with this as we work with the breath. Ask yourself: “What kind of breathing would feel really good? How do you perceive the …
- A Conglomeration of Germs… This is the point where contemplation of the body gives rise to real insight into the power of perception—and the power of intention behind the perception. Again, what is that intention? It’s kamma. Where does that kamma come from? You want to look into it, because that, too, is your possession. If you’re not careful, that particular kind of kamma will …
- Beyond Nature… Then there’s purely mental fabrication, which is feeling and perception, “perception” here meaning the labels you apply to things, while “feeling” means the different feeling-tones of pleasure, pain, and neither pleasure nor pain. Normally, the way we put these things together causes stress and suffering. If you do this with ignorance, you suffer. If you can learn how to do it with …
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