Search results for: "Perception"
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- For a Routine That Isn’t Routine… But take, for instance, the fact that you have a perception of the shape of the body: That perception is an activity. You have a perception about how the breath comes in, how the breath goes out. You have a perception of where you are in the body in relationship to the breath. So you can ask questions: “How about changing that?” Last night …
- Accepting the Way Out… That’s tied in with mental fabrication, your feelings and your perceptions of what’s going on. And one of the big perceptions that keeps you in a bad mood is, “Why me? Why am I the victim when everybody else is happy, free from suffering?” This is because you’re not looking. Look around you. There’s injustice all over the place. This …
- A Sense of Space Inside… And hold in mind the perception that the whole body is breathing: all the nerves, all the blood vessels, all the cells. That creates a nice spacious sense here in the present. See how long you can maintain that perception—and what happens to your sense of the body, your sense of yourself sitting here as you keep that perception in mind. Read the …
- The Quality of Your Awareness… You also try to quiet down the feelings and perceptions in the mind. In other words, figure out how you might conceive of the breath, how you might picture the breath to yourself, to allow it to become more quiet and to allow the mind to become quieter too. As things grow more quiet, then you begin to see that, at least in the …
- Immersed in the Body… If your sense of self is flitting all around — first with a feeling, then with a perception, then back to a feeling again, then to perception and feeling, like those weird amoeba-like shapes that flit across the surface of water — it’s hard to observe, to get a sense of, “What is this self? Why does the mind need a sense of self …
- Jhāna & Discernment… Then, three, there’s mental fabrication, which are your perceptions and feelings. Perceptions, here, would be the images you hold in mind—like thinking of the breath as a quality of energy flowing through the body, rather than air coming in and out the nose. Those are two separate pictures you could have about what happens when you breathe, and you can ask yourself …
- Determined on Awakening… Can you let go of those activities? Usually they’re different perceptions you’re holding on to. You get the breath very refined, very refined, and then you can ask yourself about the perception you have that you have to breathe in and breathe out: To what extent can you let go of that perception? See what happens when the body is really, really …
- A Sense of Humor… These feelings are your feelings, your perceptions are your perceptions, and so on down the line. But you can suddenly shift around and see, “No. They’re not.” They’re the same things—the same feelings, the same perceptions—but you put them in an entirely different context and they’re entirely different things. That’s the nature of a lot of insight. So …
- The Forerunner of All Things… And finally there’s mental fabrication, which is composed of feelings and perceptions. Feelings are feelings of pleasure, pain, or neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Perceptions are the images or labels that you apply to things—the messages from your lizard brain, which has images that get you breathing in a certain way, which will create a certain feeling. If it’s a threatening image …
- Feeding on the Breath… You can’t put pressure on something unless you have a perception of something solid for it to put pressure against. So try to destroy any sense any perception you have of the solidity of the body. Think of the breath energy as being your sensation of the body. In other words, your awareness of the body right now is all breath, and that …
- A Thread into Awareness… Otherwise, if you focus on a perception, you suddenly find it drifting away and turning into something else. So you stay with the perception of the breath, and you stay with the sensation of the breath. Try to keep the two of them nailed together. And work with the breath to whatever extent is needed to get the mind to settle down, to feel …
- Right Effort… And then use your perceptions, the labels you have for things, to figure out how to get the most out of the comfort you’ve got and also how to analyze the defilement that was causing so much trouble. You can use your perceptions in lots of ways. If you find that you’re angry at somebody, remember the Buddha’s famous image of …
- A Thread Out of the Maze… Even though you’re looking in the same place, you start seeing things you didn’t see before, not because they weren’t there before, but simply because your powers of perception were not yet that strong, not that subtle. But if you look again and again and again, you become more familiar with the territory, your powers of perception grow, and you see …
- Safety in Awareness… As you’re walking down the street or at work dealing with people, you can hold in mind that perception: just space permeating everything. Think of the atoms in all the solid objects as being just tiny, tiny bits of matter surrounded by huge gobs of space. And the space is all connected; there’s no boundary to it. From that perception, you can …
- More than a Slice of Mindfulness… This can refer to physical actions or to mental actions, like perceptions and thought constructs. *Ardent *means engaging in the right effort. If something unskillful is there in the mind, you try to get rid of it and try to make sure it doesn’t come back. If you’re missing skillful qualities, you try to give rise to them. Once they’re there …
- All Four Tetrads at Once… The next step is to be sensitive to mental fabrications, which are feelings and perceptions. The step after that is to calm mental fabrications. This is where perceptions play a big role. You want to find perceptions that will create calmer feelings, because you’re going to go from rapture down to pleasure and then ultimately to equanimity. What kind of perceptions help with …
- Not Getting What You Want… Then there’s mental fabrication—perceptions and feelings. Perceptions here are the images and labels you apply to things, identifying this as this, and that as that. Feelings are not emotions so much, they’re more feeling tones: feeling tones of pleasure, pain, or neither-pleasure-nor-pain. There’s an intentional element in all of these things, which is why the Buddha calls …
- Sensitive to Fabrication… Then there are mental fabrications, which are feelings of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain, together with perceptions: the labels you apply to things. Sometimes these labels are conscious and sometimes they’re very unconscious. As we focus on the breath, we’re dealing directly with all three types of fabrication. You’ve got the in-and-out breath as your object. You’ve …
- Dethinking Thinking… Just tell yourself that your first perception of these things is energy. Then, from that, the perception goes into the sense of being solid or warm or cold. So it’s not like you’re trying to push the breath through the solid parts. You’re just allowing the breath to come first. Give it priority. And let those other things fall into the …
- Finding Extra Energy… Then there are the perceptions. How do you represent the situation to yourself in your mind? What are the images that underlie your thinking? Are you perceiving yourself as the victim? Maybe you might want to drop that perception and replace it with another one. Instead of being the victim, you can see yourself as the person who’s resourceful and has extra sources …
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