Search results for: "Perception"
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- Self-Correct… When you hold that perception in mind, it helps you to stop focusing on the perceptions that make things tighter and more solid, more tense. So you take the perception you’ve got and you turn it inside out. You turn it around. See how that works. Or if there’s a noise disturbing you as you meditate, how can you let the noise …
- Working with Fabrication… feelings and perceptions. Feelings are feeling tones of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions are the labels we apply to things—the words or images we hold in mind. When you compare perception with directed thought and evaluation, a perception is like an individual word, whereas the directed thought and evaluation deals in whole sentences. These have a huge impact on how …
- A Trained Observer… Then mental fabrication would fall away when you move from the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception to the cessation of perception and feeling. That’s way up there. That’s another way in which insight can arise. You see how the mind constructs things, and how you can move from one construction to another. You begin to see how each is fabricated …
- Treasures from the East… Be very conscious of how your perceptions and feelings shape your mind. And try to use your knowledge of how the body is affected by the breath to calm the body down. Use your knowledge about how the mind is affected by perceptions and feelings to calm the mind down. What kind of perception of the breath makes it comfortable right now? What kind …
- Ugly Body, Happy Mind… All the contemplations ultimately get down to understanding perceptions. When the ajaans talk about contemplating feelings, especially feelings of pain, the issue comes down to: What’s creating a bridge between the physical pain and the pain that you’re suffering from in the mind? It’s a perception. What kind of perception? Why do you think in those terms? The same with the …
- The Meaning of Insight… But then the three characteristics or, more properly, the three perceptions: What are they good for? If you simply say, “Well, everything is impermanent,” what does that tell you about what to do? You could take that observation and do all kinds of things with it. You could decide that nothing is worth striving for at all, so you might as well give up …
- Patience & Sensitivity… What exactly is the alluring perception or the alluring thought that is the focal point of your craving? Once you see that, then you look for the drawbacks. That’s what the path is for. This is where you bring in the three perceptions. Whatever it is you crave, whatever the allure is, you want to see that it’s inconstant, it’s stressful …
- Delusion… Learn how to compare different ways of breathing with other ways of breathing, different perceptions with other perceptions. Learn how to compare what it’s like when you keep your mind focused on one spot as opposed to another spot. Learn how to ask questions like this, using what you’ve learned, what you’ve thought about, and the ingenuity that you’ve had …
- Emotion… And then there’s mental fabrication, which comes down to feeling and perceptions. When you learn how to breathe in a way that feels good, feels comfortable inside, it’s harder to hold on to a negative emotion. At the same time, you don’t feel so hungry. Often lust or anger comes out of a hunger for immediate gratification. But when you’ve …
- Learn from the Ants… So even when he was studying with the teachers who taught very high levels of concentration—the dimension of nothingness, the dimension of neither perception and non-perception—he saw that they’d developed conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. They devoted good qualities of the mind to this, but they rested content with something that wasn’t ultimate. He, however, wasn’t satisfied …
- The Psychology of Harmlessness… Mental fabrications, the perceptions and feelings you focus on, will shape your mind. You want to be sensitive to what you’re doing right now in these terms because that gets into the question of values as to what’s worth doing. But first you want to see what you’re doing. Sometimes you hear it said that breath meditation, especially the way the …
- Take Good Aim… There was something in his mind that liked the perception of beauty. The problem wasn’t the body of this person or that person out there. It was his being hooked on the perception of beauty, something totally internal. Think about this for a minute. We create lots of havoc, not only in our own lives, but also in the lives of others, simply …
- Jhana & Insight… feelings and perceptions. You bring all those things together to create a state of concentration. You evaluate your breath, you think about the breath, you have a perception of the breath and how it goes in and out the body. And the way you relate to breath—first to the in-and-out-breath and then to the breath energies in the body—should …
- Remembering Ajaan Lee… So try to use your ingenuity and turn your perceptions inside out. As the Buddha said, perceptions are one of the factors that fabricate the mind. And you have to learn how to question your perceptions, the ones that you hold to so steadily. Maybe they’re the problem. Doing this helps to pull you back from your perceptions. And the way of mastering …
- Like an Athlete in Training… When you hold that perception in mind, it gives rise to a floating feeling in the body. See if you can maintain the position of your focus on that perception, on that feeling of lightness, buoyancy. This is what gives flavor to that intention, so that it tastes good and is good for you. This is one of the ways in which you can …
- Play with the Breath… That’s a perception you could also keep in mind. And as you perceive things this way, it actually creates the conditions for the energy to flow in those directions in the body. As you get more sensitive, you can decide, what does your body need right now? So play with the breath. We’re doing something serious here in training the mind, but …
- The Karma of Self & Not-Self… And then you even let go of the perception of not-self, because that, too, is a perception. It’s an aggregate. That’s when the mind opens up to something that’s very different. Up to this point, your sense of self and your sense of not-self—even as you’ve refined them and made them more consistent—are still strategies, they …
- Location, Location… You may have a desire for a person and think that the desire is focused on the person, but maybe it’s focused on your perception or on the way you talk to yourself about the person. Or your idea of how you look when you’re with that person. Maybe that’s the real allure. This is one of the reasons why interpersonal …
- Bewildered… For instance, when a feeling of pain appears in fabrication, it’s accompanied by the way you breathe and by your perceptions. So, you can ask yourself, “To what extent is the way I’m breathing aggravating this pain? Can I breathe in another way? And to what extent is the way I’m talking to myself about the pain getting in the way …
- Attention with an Agenda… You apply different perceptions and focus on different feelings for the sake of something. Like right now: You’re trying to get the mind into concentration. So you breathe in a way that will give rise to a sense of comfort for the sake of getting the mind into concentration. You use directed thought and evaluation, again for the sake of getting the mind …
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