Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- 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 …
- Cutting the Fetters… As you begin to contemplate the drawbacks, the mind inclines for something that’s not fabricated. And it’s a natural inclination at this point, because you’ve seen how good fabrication can be and yet you can see its limitations. You stay in this state of concentration, there’s going to be stress. You go to stay in another, there’s going to …
- What Right Mindfulness Remembers… Because you’re already doing this kind of fabrication, what the path is teaching you is to fabricate in more skillful ways. So the purpose of mindfulness is to remind you how you want to fabricate, what you’re going to do right now. You’ve got a whole hour here to sit and focus on the breath, and you can make all kinds …
- The Power is in Your Hands… And it turns out that it’s one of the forms of fabrication that, if you do it in ignorance, is going to lead to suffering. So focus right here. That’s your entry into all of this. Breathe in a way that feels really good so that you have alternative ways of dealing with the different kinds of fabrication, the different manifestations of …
- Accepting the Way Things Function… This means that right resolve is something you fabricate, something you put together. As when you’re meditating right here: There’s directed thought and evaluation. That’s called fabrication. You’re thinking about the breath and evaluating how it’s going, and then you adjust it. You don’t just sit there. You do something with it. If one way of breathing doesn …
- The Complexity of Pain… So, you change your perceptions, you change the way you’re talking to yourself about the breath—technically, that’s verbal fabrication and mental fabrication around bodily fabrication—and you see what happens. I noticed with Ajaan Fuang: The people who had the most interesting understanding of pain were the ones who had the most pain. They found that you can’t have just …
- Where the Mind & Body Meet… Those, too, are types of becoming, and they’re fabricated. As long as the concentration feels really good, the fact that it’s fabricated doesn’t bother you. But as you get more sensitive, there comes a point where you say, “Wouldn’t it be better if there was something that was not fabricated?” That’s when the mind begins to move on. But …
- The Train Trestle… All that’s called fabrication. It’s how we create our inner world. It’s how we create our outer worlds as well. This is one of the reasons why getting the mind in a good state of concentration like this, with the proper understanding, is such a good laboratory. You look at the world outside and it seems pretty confusing. You say, “How …
- Not-self… Now, the special feature of not-self is that it differs from inconstancy and stress in one important area, which is that, as the Buddha says, all fabricated things are inconstant, all fabricated things are stressful, but then when he gets to not-self, he says all phenomena—which would be fabricated or unfabricated—are not-self. That’s because it is possible to …
- Dispassion… The noble eightfold path is the highest of all fabricated phenomena, but dispassion is unfabricated—and it’s the highest experience you can have. Here again, the idea that dispassion would be better than anything else you could know sounds very strange. But the forest ajaans talk about this a lot. They say it’s like sobering up after you’ve been drunk. When …
- Enlightenment is Not a Hot Dog… The fact that you’re trying to think about the breath continually and evaluate the breath, that’s called verbal fabrication. This too, is a fabrication that’s involved in the meditation. It’s also involved in your different emotions. So you learn how to keep the mind with the breath, learn to think about the breath in a way that’s helpful, how …
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