Search results for: "Perception"
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- 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 …
- Doing Aggregates… You can see that when the mind slips off, it’s engaging in perceptions and thought fabrication. There’s usually a feeling. When you’re here with the concentration, you’re adding the form of the body as an anchor. But still, there’s also feeling and perception, fabrication, and consciousness. So everything you need to understand is right here. You’re getting practice …
- The Carrot & the Stick… Think of the breath in different ways, what we call de-perception. Take apart your perceptions. Sometimes you don’t even know you have any particular perception. The way to deal with that is to just tell yourself, “You can breathe in and out through every pore. It’s possible.” Now, what would that be like? What would it feel like if you were …
- Tranquility & Insight… Our whole experience of the form of the body, our feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, even our consciousness, has an element of intention in it. We’re doing it for a particular purpose. We want happiness out of these things, in line with whatever we conceive the happiness to be. And we shape these things because of our passion for the happiness. It’s a …
- Kamma & Rebirth—A Handful of Leaves… You can also ask yourself if you’ve picked up a perception from your childhood that when pain comes it has an intention to hurt you: That might be lurking someplace in your mind. Learn how to take these perceptions apart. In the Buddha’s instructions on breath mindfulness, this is called calming mental fabrication—in other words, the perceptions by which you shape …
- The Karma of Not-self… In other words, given that there are actions, what kind of action is the perception of not-self? What kind of action is the perception of self? These are things that you do. The question then is: Given that these are forms of karma, when are they skillful and when are they not? The karma of self the Buddha calls “I-making” and “my …
- An Exercise in Freedom… your feelings and perceptions. Perceptions here are the labels that the mind applies to things. For example, there may be sensations in the body that you’ve assumed to be solid sensations but when you look at them more carefully, you realize there’s breath energy flowing in there. That means you have to change your perception. Or look at the mental picture you …
- Big Things in Little Things… There’s bodily fabrication, which is the in-and-out breath; verbal fabrication, directed thought and evaluation, the way you talk to yourself; and then mental fabrication—feelings and perceptions. These are things you experience directly as you meditate. You’re focused on the breath, you direct your thoughts to the breath, you evaluate the breath, you use perceptions in order to maintain your …
- Protecting Yourself Against Yourself… Bodily fabrication is the factor that fabricates the body, which is the breath; the factors that fabricate speech are directed thought and evaluation; and the factors that fabricate the mind are perceptions and feelings—perceptions being the labels you put on things, and feelings being the feeling-tones of pleasure, pain, and neither pleasure nor pain. You notice, as you focus on the breath …
- More than Just Letting Go… Mental fabrications are feelings and perceptions. Feelings are feeling-tones of pleasure, pain, neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Perceptions are the images you have in your mind, either individual words or visual images, that the mind uses to communicate to itself with. These are the processes that usually get shaped in ignorance, but now we’re bringing some knowledge to them. We’re trying to …
- Insight Is Seeing What’s Worth Doing… These mind-states will be related to the way you breathe, they’ll be related to the way you think to yourself about things, the way you talk to yourself about things, and the perceptions and feelings you focus on. All these things are what the Buddha calls fabrication. He says we engage in fabrication in ignorance, which is why we suffer. But when …
- Verbal Fabrication… And then mental fabrication—your perceptions and feelings. As Ajaan Lee would point out, the verbal fabrications are real troublemakers. The way we talk to ourselves can create a lot of problems in the present moment, depending on the kind of commentary we’re making. So an important part of meditation is learning to talk to yourself in a new way. This, of course …
- Step Back & Watch… to keep in mind the possibility that sometimes our perceptions are off. The concentration gives us a place to step back, so that we can examine things, to watch the perception as it comes, to watch it as it goes, and to ask ourselves: Which of our different sets of colored glasses have we been wearing? The greed glasses? The ill will glasses? The …
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