Search results for: "Fabrication"

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  2. The Fabrication of Pain
    There’s a peculiar passage in the Canon where the Buddha says that we fabricate feelings for the sake of having a feeling. This applies both to pleasures and to pains as well as to feelings that are neutral, neither pleasant nor painful. You might think it would be strange that we would fabricate pains, but all of our feelings are fabricated. You have … 
  3. To Know the Unconditioned
     … They’re made by the mind.” The problem is, our ordinary consciousness is something that’s fabricated, something we fabricate, and everything fabricated has to be stressful. That’s the nature of fabrications. It requires energy to keep them going, because their nature is to arise, stay for a while, and pass away. If you want to keep something going, you have to do … 
  4. The Dhamma Mirror
     … As you’ll see, this is a process of fabrication. The path is something fabricated. Stress, suffering—that’s fabricated. The cause of suffering is fabricated. It’s fabricated through your actions. So reflect. As the Buddha said, the Dhamma is nourished by committing yourself to the practice and then reflecting on what you’re doing. Think about what a mirror meant back in … 
  5. The Buddha’s Standards or Yours?
    When the Buddha talks about the three kinds of fabrication—bodily, verbal, and mental—he does it in two contexts. One is in the context of describing how different actions lead to different levels of rebirth: in other words, fabrication on a macro level. He says that if you fabricate an injurious bodily, verbal, or mental fabrication, then whether you’re alert to it … 
  6. The Uses of the Breath
     … And because the way we feed is the cause of suffering, you really want to get very familiar with how you fabricate things and learn how to fabricate them in a more skillful way. This is what insight is all about. You fabricate the breath. You fabricate your sense of the body through the breath. You fabricate your mind through your feelings and perceptions … 
  7. Developing Discernment
     … You have to realize that the act of choosing is going to be an act of fabrication. As when you choose to stay with the breath: You’ve got the three types of fabrication right there. Bodily fabrication—which is the breath itself. Verbal fabrication—directed thought and evaluation, as you direct your thoughts to the breath and analyze the breath to make sure … 
  8. A Frame for the Day
    When the Buddha teaches about fabrication, he’s pointing to the extent to which our intentions shape our experience. This is a lesson you learn as you’re meditating. You make up your mind to stay with the breath, to breathe comfortably, and then to stick with that intention. You begin to notice that you begin to give rise to feelings of pleasure—a … 
  9. Four Bases of Success
     … Basically, it refers to three kinds of fabrication: bodily, verbal, and mental. Fabrication, saṅkhāra, means the act of intentionally putting something together. Bodily fabrication is the in-and-out breath. Verbal fabrication is the way you talk to yourself—in the Buddha’s terms, it’s directed thought and evaluation. Mental fabrication has to do with perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the images by … 
  10. Fabricating Around Pain
     … There’s bodily fabrication, which is the way you breathe; verbal fabrication, which is the way you talk to yourself about things; and then there’s mental fabrication, which are perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the labels you put on things, and these can either be individual words or images that appear in the mind. You see somebody unfriendly and you think, “monster.” Or … 
  11. Emotion
     … But from the Buddha’s perspective, emotions are just as fabricated as everything else. They’re not your real nature; they’re not your real truth. You fabricate them, often not consciously. So one of the important lessons you need to learn in meditation is how you fabricate an emotion so that you can start fabricating more skillful ones. Again, the idea of a … 
  12. Working Through the Breath
     … When we’re focusing here on the breath, directing our thoughts to the breath, evaluating the breath, we’re actually engaging in all the three levels of fabrication: bodily fabrication, which is the in-and-out breath; verbal fabrication, which is directed thought and evaluation; and then mental fabrication—feelings and perceptions. The feelings here are feeling tones, such as pleasure, pain, or neither … 
  13. Tranquility & Insight with the Breath
     … These, too, are fabricated, mainly out of verbal fabrication, but also mental fabrication. You need to see those types of fabrication in action. Otherwise, you can’t get past them. One way of working with them, of course, is by starting out with how you perceive the breath and how you talk to yourself about the breath while you’re meditating, and learning how … 
  14. Things as They’ve Come to Be
     … bodily fabrications, verbal fabrications, mental fabrications. Like right now, bodily fabrications are the way you breathe—how you’re breathing in, how you’re breathing out. He says try to do that well. He gives instructions. It’s amazing how he covers everything in his teachings, even telling you how to breathe. Most people would say, “I don’t need to be told how … 
  15. Beyond Nature
     … As we meditate, we’re trying to study fabrication as we experience it. This is the conditioning process in the mind and in the body. The basic fabrication in terms of the body is the breath. And as for the mind, there are two types of fabrication: verbal and mental. Verbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation. These are the processes with which you … 
  16. Big Things in Little Things
     … We’ve talked about how the Buddha describes your present experience in terms of three kinds of fabrication. 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 … 
  17. Fabrication at the Breath
     … How does the mind fabricate things? How does the breath fabricate your sense of the body? How do feelings and perceptions fabricate your mind? The way you direct your thoughts and the way you evaluate things: How does that effect the mind too? That’s another kind of fabrication, verbal fabrication. They’re all right here. It’s not that nothing is going on … 
  18. No-Tech Meditation
     … As the Buddha said, the highest Oneness—the non-duality of consciousness—is a fabricated state. Only when you’ve seen yourself in action, seen the process of fabrication, and seen the opening where you don’t have to fabricate things any more: That’s when you know for sure that it’s not fabricated because you’re so familiar with your own fabrications … 
  19. Equanimity & Exertion
     … That kind of cause of suffering, the Buddha said, goes away only when you do what he calls “exerting a fabrication.” The word “fabrication,” sankhara, here, means that you work with intentions and try to figure the cause out. You try to use various strategies to deal with it. The strategies can be involved either with physical fabrication—which is the breath—or with … 
  20. Guardian Meditations
     … They’re focused mainly on bodily fabrication, how you breathe, giving you different ideas about breathing long or short, training yourself to breathe aware of the whole body, training yourself to calm bodily fabrication. How do you do that without stifling the breath? How do you get the mind quiet? That involves mental fabrication, your perceptions and feelings. How do you perceive the breath … 
  21. Truth Without Air Quotes
     … But to get there, we need to fabricate a path. And it’s in the fabrication of the path that you get more and more sensitive to how the mind fabricates things—even with something as simple as the practice of virtue. Some people treat virtue as an optional part of the practice, while the real practice, of course, lies in the techniques of … 
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