Search results for: "consciousness"

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  2. Directing the Flow
     … When you can get your conscious awareness to settle down and spread to fill the whole body so that you’re consciously aware of every part of the body as you breathe in, all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-breath, it takes training. But it’s not unnatural. Simply that you’re directing the mind to stay … 
  3. Terror & Revulsion
     … We cling to form, feeling, perceptions, thought-constructs, and consciousness because we think we’ll get some nourishment out of them. For the most part, though, they’re like junk food—they give pleasure, but no real nourishment, and can actually be harmful. But once we’ve turned them into the health food of the path, and they’ve strengthened us as much as … 
  4. The Six Properties
     … From there, Ajaan Fuang would recommend going on to consciousness: What’s aware of the space? And again, focus just on that perception of “aware, aware,” or “knowing, knowing, knowing.” If you’d stayed there long enough, he might tell you, “Now let go of the oneness of that knowing.” And you’d find that the perception that follows on that is extremely light … 
  5. Admirable Friendship
     … They’ve developed that ability because they’ve consciously tried to find out which person inside them is the one who should be acting now, the one who should be making decisions now. Which identity inside is going to be the most effective in understanding where’s the suffering. Which one is going to be the most effective in abandoning the cause. This is … 
  6. Over the Pass
     … Right after ignorance comes fabrication, and after fabrication comes consciousness, and then name and form. These are just events. Form is your sense of the body as you feel it from within. Name is a whole collection of mental events: feelings, perceptions, acts of attention, acts of intention, contact among these things, without any reference to whose they are. When they first arise, that … 
  7. The Treasure of Equanimity
     … And you can always make a difference here as long as you’ve got a breath to focus on; as long as you’ve got a breath to keep the body and mind together—and even as the mind is leaving the body, as your consciousness is looking for someplace else to go and it can’t stay here anymore. You can still do … 
  8. The Noble Truth of Suffering
     … the food of consciousness, the food of contact, and then the food of what he calls intellectual intentions, which can be translated basically as all your intentions. These are the things the mind feeds on. If you don’t have these things, the mind goes pretty crazy. If there’s no contact, if you get put into a sensory deprivation tank, the mind begins … 
  9. The Truth of Perceptions
     … Then you can ask yourself, “Well, what is it that’s aware of the space?” That’s when you can have a perception of consciousness, awareness, knowing. And again, depending on how strong your concentration is and how steady your ability to stick with one perception, you can have a very strong sense of awareness just filling everything. From there, Ajaan Fuang would have … 
  10. Food Insecurity
     … about the way mindfulness is taught these days, where they say that the Buddha taught, “Just be with whatever feeling comes up, whatever mind state comes up.” He never says that. Consciously try to cultivate feelings of rapture and pleasure: That’s what he says. Cultivate mind states that are gladdened, concentrated, released. It does require an act of will to steer these things … 
  11. Respect Opens Possibilities
     … And finally, consciousness—your awareness of whatever is coming in at the senses, of whatever is happening in the mind. We cling to these things. We cling to these things for sensual pleasure; we cling to these things because they provide us views about what is world is like; we cling because they give us an idea of what should and shouldn’t be … 
  12. Free from Animosity
     … our sense of the form of the body as we feel it from within, our feelings, our perceptions, our mental constructs—mental constructs are the stories we tell ourselves, the analyses, the comments, we make on things—and then finally consciousness at the senses. These are the things with which we ordinarily assemble our sense of who we are and what’s ours. Yet … 
  13. How to Listen
     … You’ve seen something that’s not composed of any of the aggregates, but there is a consciousness there. So from that point on, you would never identify yourself as being identical with the aggregates, or owning the aggregates, or being in them, or having them be in you. Your doubts about the Buddha are gone. You see that he knew what he was … 
  14. Because the Mind Is Purposeful
     … Even our consciousness has an element of intention. Of course, we don’t fabricate these things out of nothing. We start with raw material—the potentials coming in from our past kamma. And then, for the sake of having an experience of the present moment, we put these things together. Notice that for the sake of: This fabrication, these processes of intention, aim at … 
  15. Mindfulness Gets Intimate
     … And here you’re consciously giving rise to deeper stages of concentration as you begin to realize how you can manipulate causes and effects in the mind to get the mind to settle down even more firmly. This is where you use concentration to develop both insight and tranquility. Nowadays they talk about insight and tranquility as different meditation methods, but the Buddha never … 
  16. Getting the Most Out of Now
     … A lot of that control is subconscious, but as we’re meditating we’re trying to bring it up into full consciousness. Because the way you breathe can have a huge impact on the mind. If the breathing is tight and restricted—too short, too long, not satisfying, not nourishing—it puts the mind in a bad mood. And then from that bad mood … 
  17. Appreciating Dispassion
     … world with the six senses, and for most of us, those are the only alternatives. The Buddha found out, though, that there was another alternative that was outside of the senses: consciousness without surface. His image was of a light beam that doesn’t land on any surface anywhere. Think of outer space. There are light beams going in all directions. It looks dark … 
  18. Observing the Mind at the Breath
     … But even then, you’ll be focusing it on other subtler topics—space, consciousness. The mind will always need an anchor like that for you to observe it. As I said, don’t worry about the names of the different qualities you need to focus on. Just try to figure out what’s wrong with the mind, why it’s not settling down with … 
  19. The Endurance of a Long-distance Runner
     … Try to have an unsticky consciousness where the things that people have said just don’t stay there. You begin to realize that a lot of the pain of other people’s words is in how you participate in making them painful, making them stick, making your mind flammable, making your mind weak and puny, when it doesn’t have to be. It all … 
  20. Your Own Karma
     … Another way to deal with them is to consciously ignore them. You know that that kind of thinking is there in the background of your mind but you can focus your attention someplace else. Let the thought continue chattering as long as it wants, but you don’t have to get involved. It’s like dealing with a group of chattering people you don … 
  21. A Path Rooted in Desire
     … We cling to the aggregates of form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, consciousness—and that’s the suffering. It’s the passion and desire that wants to hold on to these things as you’re feeding on them. There’s a hunger, and the hunger is not yet satisfied—that’s where the suffering is. That’s to be comprehended. The cause is the craving … 
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