Search results for: "consciousness"
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- Adolescent Practice… Otherwise you’ll never get a sense of how much subconscious molding of the breath is still going on, down under the surface of your consciousness. You’ll never get a sense of what input you’re putting into the present moment. That’s crucial to the meditation, for only when you see it are you in a position where you can try to …
- A Game of Chess… feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness. You start out with space. Just think of the space that permeates the body, going between all the atoms and the parts of the atoms throughout the body. It spreads out beyond the body, too. It’s unlimited because this kind of space goes through all atoms everywhere. Then learn how to maintain that perception. When the perception is …
- Putting Aside the World… Even if people don’t speak of it or can’t even think of it consciously, there is a subconscious impact of a peaceful mind, of a stable mind. That’s a huge gift right there. So the equanimity here is informed by goodwill. This is why the Buddha teaches those four attitudes—universal goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity—as a set. They …
- The Buddha’s Filters… your experience of form, your experience of feelings, experience of perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness. When you look at your ideas of reality in those terms, you realize that these things change all the time. They’re strongly conditioned, both in the sense of being socially conditioned and in the sense of simply being subject to conditions that arise and fall away. They’re all …
- Knowing the Body from Within… Right where the body was felt, that’s where you’re going to start noticing space and consciousness. When your awareness of the deathless comes, it’s going to fill the area where your body is now. That’s where the Dhamma is seen and touched. So right here is where you want to look. And get used to looking again and again and …
- Jhana: Responsible Happiness… Whether or not it’s the factor you’re consciously emphasizing, it’s got to be there, paying close attention to what you’re doing, noticing where you’re adding unnecessary stress, and then learning how to stop doing the things that are causing that unnecessary stress. Even though this inquiry is just on the level of the breath, it’s an application of …
- Signs Along the Road… how you relate to form, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness. The aggregates are all right here, and this is a really good place to watch the aggregates. This is one of the best things you can do with them: to create a state of concentration. You get to see subtleties in the aggregates that you wouldn’t have seen before if you just …
- Buddhist Engineering… You take the potentials, say, for form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness, and you turn them into the actual experience of these things, using your present intentions. This, too, is a type of fabrication, and we’re doing it all the time. We want to get more sensitive to exactly how we’re doing that. That’s where the emphasis gets more and …
- Pro-self, Pro-help… That moment of self-consciousness: You just have to let it pass and get back to what you were doing. Have conviction in the actions; have conviction in the instructions. These things are going to work. And try to take a matter-of-fact attitude. We all want things to go well. But before you learn how to get them to go well, you …
- Sense Restraint… As the Buddha said, the aggregates form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, and consciousness have their pleasant side and their unpleasant side. If they didn’t have the pleasant side, we wouldn’t fall for them. But they do have their pleasures. When the Buddha says that all fabricated things are inconstant, stressful, and not-self—it’s true. But then they have their constant …
- A Greater Happiness… What this means is that, as you work through all the attachments of the mind, as you peel them away one by one by one—attachments not only to the body but also to feelings, to your mental labels, your thought-constructs, even sensory consciousness—then things open up in the mind. You find that there’s a deathless element or a deathless dimension …
- Interested in the Breath… Either pose the question in your mind, “What kind of breathing would feel best right now?” and see how the body responds, or you can consciously change the way you breathe. Make it shorter, more shallow, heavier, lighter; in long, out short; or in short, out long. There are lots of ways you can experiment. Why do you experiment? So that you can get …
- The Challenge of Right View… So the Buddha has you apply these perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not self to see where you’ll run into other perceptions you’ve been holding on to consciously or unconsciously, saying, basically, “This is me, this is mine, this is something really worth holding on to.” This is why it’s called exerting a fabrication: You really have to push, push, push …
- Skills to Make a Difference… If you want to be sensitive to how it’s shaping its experience, you consciously change the way you shape it. Sometimes you need an active imagination to open your mind to possibilities of what’s actually happening. It’s like learning to imagine that the world is round. It takes an active act of imagination, because you look around and the earth looks …
- Training Your Inner Critic… You’re trying to find your nourishment, you need a sense of form, and feelings, and perceptions, and thought constructs, and consciousness to get your nourishment. When the Buddha talks about three, he divides fabrications into bodily, verbal, and mental. You get those on two levels. On the large level, bodily fabrication is any intentional act you do with the body. Verbal fabrication is …
- The Dhamma Wheel… Feelings feel, perceptions perceive, fabrications fabricate, consciousness cognizes. And we cling to these activities—in other words, we feed off of them. That’s where the suffering is, so that’s what we’ve got to focus on. Knowing the suffering or knowing that first noble truth is one level, then there’s knowing the duty with regard to it, which is to comprehend …
- Mastering Causality… clinging to the form of the body, clinging to your feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, or consciousness. When you stop clinging to these aggregates, then even though they’re still impermanent and there still may be some stress in them, it doesn’t weigh on the mind. The bridge has been cut so that it doesn’t connect. You stop lifting things up, as in …
- Cross-questioning… There are many cases throughout the Canon where after a cross-questioning like that, people gain awakening: “Is the eye constant? Is eye-consciousness constant? Is eye-contact constant? The feelings that arise based on the eye, are they constant?” As you chase these things down, you begin to realize they’re not worth hanging on to, not worth claiming to be your self …
- Desire… You can see the limitation that comes from defining yourself in terms of feelings or perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness, when they finally do start appearing to be burdensome. This requires a fair amount of sensitizing the mind, because otherwise you’re willing to put up with all kinds of burdens. You think, “Well, this is as good as it gets.” But as you get …
- Frame Your Questions Well… So it’s good to be consciously aware that this is something that we’re doing. And we’re doing it all the time. But we don’t understand what we’re because, as the Buddha said, the craving that gives rise to becoming is the craving that causes suffering. It can be sensual craving or latent craving for becoming or even craving for …
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