Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- The Gift of Discernment… And then you can use the skills you develop in concentration to deal with other issues as they come in the course of the day because, after all, the fabrications that you use to create that state of concentration are the same fabrications with which you can create greed or anger or fear or anxiety, jealousy—whatever unskillful states there are. They’re basically …
- A Good Place to Stay… The Buddha calls this fabrication. The reason we suffer is because we fabricate our experience out of ignorance. One of the ways we do that is through the way we breathe. Some people wonder why we work with the breath. Shouldn’t we just kind of let it come in and go out on its own so you can see its true nature without …
- Four Roles to Play… When the Buddha lays out the principles in dependent co-arising, right next to ignorance is a factor he calls fabrication. It’s the activity in the mind, the intentional activity. One of those activities is directed thought and evaluation. In plain terms, that’s how you talk to yourself. And you’re talking to yourself all the time. One problem is that you …
- Doubting the Buddha… the mind’s habit of fabrication, its way of putting things together. You put feelings and perceptions together, you add a little salt, a little pepper, and you want to eat them. When they don’t agree with you, you find other ones. This time you add mayonnaise and mustard, and it still doesn’t agree with you, but you keep at it. You …
- Comprehending Pain… Then you can look at the stories simply as mental fabrications around the pain. It’s very easy, when you’re sitting here pained by something, to start thinking about other times you’ve been pained and how unfair it always is or whatever. Those thoughts are just fabrications that simply add more suffering that doesn’t have to be there on top of …
- Three Parts of Right View… There’s form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness. He calls them clinging-aggregates. The word for clinging, upadana, can also mean taking food or taking sustenance. This is where it’s easy to see how the clinging-aggregates work together as a set, because they’re activities that we engage in as we feed. There’s the form of the body, which needs to …
- Alert… As you appreciate those different levels, that’s one of the ways in which you can gain awakening, as you get more sensitive to the amount of fabrication that goes on, the layers of fabrication that go on, even as you try to get the mind quiet and settled down. So, given that we do have this principle that some of the causes of …
- Anchored in the Present… The act of attention to the breath, the Buddha says, counts as a kind of feeling, which is kind of a strange statement, but apparently it relates to the fact that every feeling has an element of fabrication. In this case, the attention is the fabrication. As you’re staying with the breath, you’ll notice certain feelings that come up around the breath …
- The Three Perceptions & Their Opposites… Even though the insights may be true about all fabrications, there comes a point where you have to let them go as well. After all, the insights are fabrications, as well. If you don’t let them go, you suffer from what are called the corruptions of insight, where you latch on to an experience or an insight and think you’ve reached the …
- A Heart Set on Goodwill… You have to fabricate a state of mind in order to maintain it. And the happiness you’re wishing universally is also something that will have to come from karma. 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 …
- Breath Meditation: The Second Tetrad… I think what he’s referring to is the fact that feelings are fabricated. They come from some potentials from the past: the fact that you have this body in this condition right now, this mind in this condition right now. It comes from a lot of things you’ve done in the past. But those things from the past are just potentials. What …
- Wilderness Wealth… But even that, he says, is fabricated. When you realize that—that there is even an element of effort that goes into that, that it’s inconstant, stressful, not-self—you can let go of that as well. That’s when there’s a true awakening. Even though emptiness has its gradations, awakening doesn’t happen until you’ve totally let go of fabrication …
- See Yourself as Active Verbs… The aggregates are form, feeling, perception, mental fabrications, and consciousness—all of which the Buddha defines with verbs. Form, he says, deforms. In other words, in the form of your body there’s nothing static. Feelings feel: pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions perceive. Thought fabrications fabricate, and consciousness cognizes. These are all verbs, and we cling to them. The act of clinging …
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