Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- 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 …
- How to Think about Death… So you want to fabricate those feelings and fabricate those perceptions in a way that’s going to lead to good states of mind, good qualities of mind, like the perfections. What you can actually take from your life is basically what you put into it, what you build into it. You build these qualities of mind. There’s generosity, there’s virtue, there …
- The Dhamma Eye… You’ve seen something that was not originated, not subject to cessation—and from that vantage point you realize that anything you’d experienced up to that point was fabricated through the actions of the mind, yet here you’ve found something that was not fabricated in the mind. That’s why it’s so radical—because you realize that it’s also the …
- The Thinking Heart… And he points out to them that all their doctrines are put together, fabricated. Because anything fabricated is stressful, in holding on to their doctrines, they’re holding on to stress. Then they ask him, “Well, what’s your view?” He says, “Whatever is fabricated, put together, is stressful. Whatever is stressful is not me, not mine, not my self.” So they try to …
- Four Determinations… This is why, in the breath meditation instructions, you’re taught to energize yourself, and then calm bodily fabrication, eventually to the point where the breath stops. You energize yourself with rapture and feelings of pleasure, and then you calm mental fabrication even to the point where perceptions and feelings stop. That’s the direction we’re headed. Now, you don’t just suppress …
- The Strength of Heedfulness… Then finally, the fact that you’ve been learning how to put this mental state together makes you more aware of the processes of fabrication in the mind. You begin to see that even though this is a greater pleasure than you’ve had before, it still has its drawbacks—in the fact that you have to make an effort to keep it going …
- Name & Form… feeling, perception, mental fabrication, and consciousness. In other cases, mental fabrication gets divided up into attention, intention, and mental contact. This gets us into dependent co-arising. All this is dependent on consciousness, consciousness is dependent on this, and the two of them together are dependent on fabrication, which is another word for intention. Insight lies in seeing that: the extent to which your …
- The Buddha’s Map… When the Buddha teaches, he has to use these aggregates to teach us, so the views he’s offering us—the perceptions and thought-fabrications he recommends that we adopt—are just a sketch. After all, everything we do has to depend on a perception of some kind. We can’t comprehend all the sensory input that’s coming in at any one moment …
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