Search results for: "Form"
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- Right View Tells You What to Do… the more you learn about your own mind, how it forms a thought-world. What are the stages? A lot of those stages are in what we call the subconscious or the unconscious. This makes it sound like a place, like a basement in your house, with monsters coming up out of the basement every now and then. But actually the subconscious is just …
- Allowing the Breath to Spread… Some forms of suffering or stress are part of the three characteristics. In other words, everything conditioned is going to have some stress. There’s not much you can do about that. But there are other kinds of suffering that are based on craving. That’s stress in the four noble truths, which is based on craving. Because of the craving, you have your …
- Shoulds & Ideals… We can’t have all the different forms of happiness we want in life. So we have to decide what’s really important and what’s not, to see which kinds of happiness are actually getting in the way of a larger happiness and be willing to make sacrifices. This is what the principle of renunciation is all about. It’s not just an …
- Adjusting the Flame… When the Buddha explains the causes of suffering in dependent co-arising, the most interesting ones are those that come prior to sensory contact—in the factors of fabrication, and the factors of name and form. There’s perception, there are feelings, there’s directed thought and evaluation, there are intentions, there are acts of attention, where you frame questions, look into things. Where …
- Negotiating with Death… You’ve got form, which is the body; feelings: i.e., feelings of pleasure, pain, and neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions: the labels you place on things. Fabrications, which are all the things you put together in the mind, to make thoughts that make sense. And then consciousness. Prior to the Buddha’s time, these various concepts were floating around in India. But he …
- Respect… The qualities are there in potential form; we all have skillful qualities. It’s simply a difference in the extent to which we develop them, the extent to which we put them to use. The meditation we’re doing right now: That’s a skill. Use the same principles in developing it as you would in any skill. Encourage yourself in doing it, stick …
- The Gradual Path of Skill… The desire not to suffer, which we all have, is what forms the foundation of how we can practice. The Buddha simply takes it to a level of skill, a level of all-around discernment that goes way beyond what the rest of the world would have accepted. The Buddha had very high standards. And he wants you to have high standards, too, as …
- Put Some Heart into Your Practice… As he also said, patience is the highest form of austerity. In other words, it’s what burns away the mind’s unskillful attitudes. And equanimity is found in many of the lists of the qualities you’re trying to develop as you meditate—both in the heart qualities of the brahmaviharas and in the more head qualities, the factors for awakening. So dealing …
- The Field Hospital… in other words, the pleasure of form, which we gain from getting the mind in concentration, as you feel the body from within. Or formless pleasures, when everything in the body gets so still that you can have a perception of infinite space, infinite consciousness, and the body doesn’t interfere. It’s so quiet that you can ignore it. It’s only then …
- Comprehending Suffering… There’s form, which is your body sitting here right now. There are feelings. You’ve got feelings in the body right now, and you’re trying to generate feelings of ease, feelings of well-being. It’s by trying to generate them that you understand them. You don’t simply watch them come and go. You’re trying to develop what the Buddha …
- Food for Consciousness… Then there’s the sense of the form of the body that has to be fed and at the same time gives you the means to search for food. There’s the perception of what kind of hunger you have, and of what food you need to satisfy the hunger. Then you look around trying to find things that fit in with that perception …
- The Dhamma Wheel… Your sense of the form of the body as you feel it from within. Feelings of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions, where you put labels on things, identifying what they are, what they mean. Thought constructs or fabrications, where you put thoughts together. And then consciousness, which is aware of all these things. He says we cling to these things, and that …
- Of Essential Worth… It really helps the world in an area where other forms of help just really can’t reach: deep into the heart, to the part that really is essential in each of us. Sometimes you hear that the Buddha was an anti-essentialist, saying that there is no permanent self, no permanent essence to anybody or anything. But he never said that. It’s …
- Walking Meditation: Stillness in Motion… Look for whatever you can recognize as form, feeling, perception, thought construct, or consciousness within the concentration, and then contemplate its behavior. One simple way is contemplating the activity of perception. To what extent does the perception you’re using as a marker for your concentration create stress or disturbance for the mind? Learn to observe that perception, the label you place on things …
- Admirable Intentions… As you develop this sense of well-being which is called pleasure of form—your sense of the body as you feel it from within—it helps you to step back from your sensual cravings. Sensuality is not so much indulging in sensual pleasures, it’s indulging in your thoughts and plans about sensual pleasures. We can think about food, for instance: how you …
- How to Use the Three Perceptions… After all, what is your concentration made up of? It’s made out of those aggregates, but in a very subtle form. And for the time being, those are aggregates you don’t apply these three perceptions to. You’ve got something good, so you want to protect it. You don’t just throw it away. Ajaan Lee says that people who like to …
- Death Is Normal… But when it could let go of its fuel, then the fire would go out and return to a latent form of the fire element. In the same way, when the mind is attached to greed, aversion, and delusion, it’s going to burn. But when it can let go, it’s freed. Notice: The greed and aversion and delusion don’t latch on …
- Objectivity… In other words, we all want happiness, but some forms of happiness are more true than others, more lasting than others. Some ways of looking for happiness work and others don’t. The Buddha took advantage of his discovery of cause and effect, and he put it to good use by applying it to our desire for happiness. Every desire, skillful or unskillful, is …
- Emulating the Truth… It’s the search for the truth, in all of its forms, both as truth of statements and truth of the character. And as the Buddha said, the more you develop your own truth, the more readily you can sense this quality—or its lack—in other people. This is how you turn from that student who’s the spoon in the curry who …
- A Cocoon of Energy… The mind gets more and more used to being with something that’s a little bit vaguer than the body, with less of a clear form. Then you can end up getting into the sensation of space. What does the space around your body feel like? If you find that this exercise is too disorienting, go back to the sensation of the body. Think …
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