Search results for: "Fabrication"

  1. Page 34
  2. The World Does Not Endure
     … In the centuries afterwards, people raised the question, “If that dimension is not fabricated, how can a fabricated path of practice take you there?” The solution they arrived at was that, as the Buddha said, this is a path. He didn’t say that the path causes the deathless. But it is a path, and the path will take you there, in the same … 
  3. Rhythms of the Mind
     … Allow bodily fabrication to grow calm. Allow mental fabrication to grow calm. It’s a matter of allowing, and the allowing comes if you simply keep track of the breath in and of itself, and are sensitive to what you’re doing, trying to do it as efficiently as you can without preconceived notions about how many steps there are going to be. That … 
  4. Nurturing Patient Endurance
     … This is one of those areas where all three fabrications come in, because an important part of patience is learning that not everything in the present moment is hard to bear. There have to be some ways that you can give rise to a sense of well-being, mental or physical, preferably both, and you start with the breath: How are you breathing right … 
  5. Desire Is Part of the Path
     … As you develop the path, right view teaches you to look at all things fabricated as worth letting go. At first, you’re going to be letting go of things that are opposed to the path. But then you realize that the path itself is fabricated, so that, too, has to be let go. This is why right view is right. It directs you … 
  6. Potentials
     … You probably know the passage where the Buddha says that you look at form, feeling, perception, fabrication and consciousness, and you ask yourself: “Are they under your control? Can you have them be the way you want them to be?” The answer is “partially.” Most people tend to think that there’s nothing you can do about them at all. You’ve just got … 
  7. Habits of Perception
     … You start seeing the fabrication of worlds in the mind, realizing that the world as you perceive it out there is really your own mental construct. You have lots of different mental constructs about the world out there. Sometimes you think about the world in geological terms, sometimes in cosmic, astronomical terms, sometimes simply in terms of your own personal narrative, day to day … 
  8. The Four-in-One Establishing of Mindfulness
     … But you have to remember that feelings, as the Buddha said, are fabricated. As you pay careful attention to the breath, that’s how you fabricate a sense of ease. You try to make your attention continuous all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-, and all the way through the spaces in between. It’s the spaces in … 
  9. The Five Faculties Confirmed
     … What the sutta is getting at is that even the path is fabricated, and you have to go beyond it. To do that, you apply that fivefold analysis. As the Buddha says elsewhere, the five faculties originate in heedfulness. You realize that it is possible for your actions to make a difference between whether you’re happy or not. And you realize that the … 
  10. The End of Uncertainty
     … When there are feelings, be alert to what you’re doing in the feeling, in the perception, in the thought fabrication, in the consciousness. Each of these things contains an element of fabrication, an element of present intention. Do you ever notice that? Do you see it happening? If you can’t yet see it happening, look at what you can see that you … 
  11. Mountains Moving In
     … All actions are fabrications. All motivations are fabrications. So learn how to encourage the ones that are skillful. Even though you may have unskillful attitudes in the mind, you don’t have to regard them as your true nature. They’re no more true than your good motives, and they certainly don’t take you in a good direction. So encourage the good ones … 
  12. Everything Comes Together Right Here
     … How does the breath feel right now? Does it feel comfortable? The Buddha talks about perception and feeling as being mental fabrications because of the impact they have on the mind. But they also have an impact on the breath. The way you picture the breath to yourself will have an impact on how it feels and where the sensations are that you notice … 
  13. A Master of Your Thoughts
     … It’s why we fabricate our thoughts. Without the passion, thoughts wouldn’t get fabricated. They’d be these little impulses that wouldn’t go anywhere. But we pick them up and run with them, so we’re complicit in what’s happening. It’s only when we see that we’re complicit in our own suffering that we begin to step back from … 
  14. Abandoning Effluents (1)
     … This is why, as we meditate, we’re focused on the process of fabrication—the breath coming in and going out, the way we talk to ourselves, the images we hold in mind, the feelings we focus on—because these fabrications are things that we’re doing. In our practice leading up to meditation, we don’t spend all that much time talking about … 
  15. Even Animals Can Be Trained
     … But in the meantime, how are you going to get there? Right view is made up of perceptions and thought fabrications. Right concentration is made up of all five of the aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness. But these are things eventually you’re going to have to go beyond. You’ll have to learn how to stop clinging to them, but … 
  16. The Kamma of Concentration
     … The Buddha has that tetrad in his breath meditation instructions where he talks about training yourself to breathe 1) with a sense of rapture, 2) with a sense of pleasure, 3) sensitive to mental fabrication—i.e., feelings and perceptions—and then, 4) calming mental fabrication. Those first two steps give you, basically, Ajaan Lee’s recommendations for how you start working with pain … 
  17. Clinging
     … As for feelings, they feel; perceptions perceive, fabrications fabricate things, consciousness cognizes. These aggregates are defined by verbs. So you’re putting yourself together out of verbs, and you want to see that, because that gives you a way of loosening up your attachments to unskillful parts of yourself, the ones that say, “Well, I’ve been this way since who knows when. You … 
  18. Like Earth and Space
     … After all, perceptions are mental fabrications. These are the things that have an impact on the state of your mind. So learn to use fabrications that are impervious to other people’s activities, like the man with the hoe and the shovel and the basket. Even if there are many, many people with hoes and shovels and baskets, the earth is still more than … 
  19. Fear of Concentration
     … That’s where the* sankharas—*bodily fabrication, mental fabrication, verbal fabrication—all come together. In a case like that, you’ve got to tell yourself that there must be some spot in the body where you feel safe. Try to find that one spot. Take that as your beachhead and then gradually expand your awareness as you begin to feel comfortable. As for any … 
  20. Truths of the Will
     … The other day, someone was mentioning to me he’d been told that, yes, the path is composed of fabrications—things you intend—but you have to learn how to hold these fabrications lightly so that they don’t weigh on you. That’s true only in some circumstances. The path is like a tool. With some tools, you have to hold onto them … 
  21. Me, Me, Me
     … form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness. That gives you five. In each of those cases, you can either identify directly with the aggregate or you can think of yourself as someone who has that aggregate, or somehow you’re in the aggregate, or the aggregate is in you. That’s four times five: twenty. Twenty possible ways of thinking about your self. On top … 
  22. Load next page...