Search results for: "Fabrication"

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  2. The Power of Perception
     … You begin to see in action what the Buddha was talking about, which is that if you’re going to have an actual perception, an actual feeling of the form of the body, or the feeling tones of pleasure or pain, you have to fabricate them from the raw material coming from your past. These things exist in a potential form, coming in from … 
  3. The Need for a Purpose
     … We have a purpose, which means, of course, that we have some expectations, that by fashioning a sense of form, feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness out of the raw material given to us by our past karma, we’re looking for something. We have a purpose in mind. This is the nature of our mind. It’s purposeful. When it has no purpose … 
  4. Attention & Intention
     … As the Buddha said, fabricated things do offer their pleasures. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas; form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness can be very pleasant. He doesn’t deny it. But he says that if you focus on their pleasures, it just gives rise to more passion. And it’s because of our passions that we keep getting involved in … 
  5. Chronic Pain
     … You have to figure out: “What is it that I’m doing that’s making the pain pain the mind?” If you’re willing to sit with the pain, and the pain is not overwhelming, then you get to see a lot of the mind’s conversations around the pain—what the Buddha calls verbal fabrication and mental fabrication. The pain will become the … 
  6. Action & the End of Action
     … Even ultimate Oneness, the Oneness of consciousness, the Oneness of the ground of being, is something fabricated—it’s put together by your intentions, and it’s going to fall apart—then you’re more motivated to look at what you’re doing and to learn how to not put these things together at all. The mind inclines to something that is not fabricated … 
  7. The Six Properties
     … Sankhara, or “fabrication” is way down there, prior to the sensations you feel in terms of form, feeling, and so forth. So how are you going to fabricate the body? If there are feelings of tension in the body, sometimes that’s a sign of too much earth property, so you can think of the breath. This is one of the reasons we start … 
  8. Motivation
     … Because after all, it is something you fabricate, something you put together. Mindfulness you put together. Concentration is put together. All the factors of the path are things that you fabricate. And to fabricate something, you’ve got to have desire. There has to be a passion. So you have to learn how to give rise to that desire: That’s part of right … 
  9. Goodwill for the Real World
     … That’s verbal fabrication. And you hold in mind those images—the images of the bandits sawing you into pieces, the mother protecting her child—which are mental fabrications. Fabrications are things you have to do, to put together. So in working on goodwill, you begin to get more sensitive to how the mind has to create these mental states, and how it can … 
  10. The Mind Comes First
     … As the Buddha said, when you deal with breath meditation, you’re going to learn about the directed thought and evaluation—what they call verbal fabrication—and perceptions and feelings: what they call mental fabrication. All these things are going to appear right here. As you get to know them, you realize that you’re engaged in these activities all the time. Then as … 
  11. In the Light of Karma
     … Concentration may be something fabricated but it takes you to a good place. You can start engaging in your verbal fabrications—all the thoughts and conversations of the mind—in a skillful way. Bring them to a focal point right here with the breath. Learn how to figure out what’s going on here in the body, what positive things you can do with … 
  12. Admirable in the Beginning, Middle, & End
     … It’s not something fabricated into being that’s going to fall apart when the fabrications fall apart. It’s blissful. And it’s free. In fact, the word nibbāna comes from an image that they used to describe how fire went out. Their view of fire was that there was a fire element latent in everything, and when you provoked it, fire would … 
  13. Not Getting What You Want
     … Anything that’s fabricated—in other words, anything that’s put together by nature, put together by causes—is going to have to have these three qualities: inconstant, i.e. it’s wavering and undependable; stressful because it is so fabricated; and that it’s not really worth calling it yourself because you don’t have total control over it. If you try to … 
  14. Admirable Friendship
     … All these things are fabricated. Your feelings are fabricated. The voices in your mind are fabricated. It’s just that some are more habitual than others, and it’s very easy to fall into the groove and the ruts of old habits. Then if you’re not careful, they can be like the ruts that develop in snow in the winter. If the car … 
  15. How to Listen
     … That’s when the mind can open up to something that’s not fabricated, not put together. It was through this process that Yasa gained the Dhamma eye: “Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation.” In other words, what is caused by fabrications in the mind will all have to fall away. The question is, in what state of mind would … 
  16. A Safe Harbor
     … We fabricate our emotions just the same way we fabricate our thoughts. We tend to think of our emotions as being more real, being more true and prior to thinking, but they’re fabricated as well. They have their physical side, which is influenced by the way you breathe. The mental side is the way you talk to yourself, the things you focus on … 
  17. Preparing to Die Well
     … You work with the breath to make the breath comfortable so that it’s easier to stay here, and you work with your perception of the breath so you can calm things down and make things more and more quiet inside, both in terms of what’s called the physical fabrication of the breathing, and the mental fabrications that are the feelings and perceptions … 
  18. Enlarged Awareness
     … From there the Buddha has you going to calming the breath fabrications. In other words, as you’re aware of the whole body, you begin to be sensitive to the way you pull the breath in, pull the breath out, all of what they call bodily fabrication, and you begin to see where it’s exaggerated, where it falls in line with your cartoon … 
  19. Thinking Your Way to Stillness
     … Not all fabrication is bad. You have to learn how to fabricate skillfully before you can let go of fabrication, and these are some of the ways you can do it.
  20. Realities Right Here
     … And as the Buddha says, you’re going to find first that there’s the activity of fabrication in all of this. In other words, there are some intentions that tell you to breathe in now, breathe out now, think this, think that. So bring some attention to your intentions. The best way to do that is to intend one thing and stick with … 
  21. Skills for Dying Well
     … That’s what you want to be focus on as your die; just that sense of awareness that’s not fabricating any thoughts, that’s not even fabricating a sense of the body. There may be pains coming and going but you don’t have to turn those pains into a sense that “Well, this is my body in pain right now.” They’re … 
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