Search results for: "Fabrication"

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  2. Don’t Practice in a Row
     … For the mind to settle down, you need to have some understanding of the processes of fabrication in your mind. You’re not going to fully see the fabrications in the mind until the mind has settled down to some extent. It sounds like you’re being put in a double bind, but that’s not the case. In the practice, you just practice … 
  3. Can Do
     … When it comes to feelings, the Buddha simply recommends learning how to breathe in a way that gives rise to a sense of rapture, gives rise to a sense of pleasure, then getting sensitive to mental fabrication, which are feelings and perceptions, and then calming those mental fabrications. That’s the outline for the Buddha’s approach to feelings, but it gives very little … 
  4. Meticulous
     … Actually it’s in the process of developing the mind in concentration that you learn a lot of things about the processes of the mind—not only seeing the processes, but seeing them as fabrication. When you see them as fabrication, you begin to realize: This is all pretty arbitrary. Then it’s easier to develop a sense of disenchantment and dispassion around these … 
  5. The Buddha’s Wisdom
     … That, too, is fabricated. And the right view that was pointing you there: That, too, is fabricated. So you apply the same five-step program to these things: You see their allure, which is that they’ve created a lot of pleasure that you wouldn’t have had before, but their drawback is that you still have to keep fabricating them. And you remember … 
  6. An End to the Stories
     … He realized that his story was just one little thread in a very complex fabric. The best thing to do was the noble thing to do—to get out of the fabric entirely. So if you’ve been the recipient of some unfair treatment, just let it stop there. Tell yourself: The fact that you have ears to hear things and have a body … 
  7. Organizing Your Inner Committee
     … All fabrications are not-self. That includes this verbal fabrication in the mind. It’s not-self. For the time being, you want to use that principle selectively. Continue to side with the skillful voices. Identify with them when they’re useful. As for anything that’s unskillful, learn how to pull out. It’s like those times when you’re in a dream … 
  8. The Thread of Mindfulness
     … It’s a fabrication, but it’s a path-fabrication, just like all the other factors of the path. It’s something you’ve got to foster, something you’ve got to develop. You’re mindful to give rise to it and you’re mindful to keep it going. When the Buddha talks about mindfulness as a governing principle in the practice, that’s … 
  9. Issues of Control
     … In the same way, as we deal with our aggregates—form, feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness—there are unskillful ways of trying to control them and there are skillful ways. You can actually turn them into the path. All five aggregates, for instance, are involved in concentration. Form, of course, would be the breath. Think of the breath going through the whole body. Feeling … 
  10. The Right Piece in the Right Puzzle
     … But the path is fabricated. If you’re going to let go of all fabrications, you’re ultimately going to have to let go of the path, too. This is where the teaching on not-self really moves into high gear. You look, say, at your concentration, and you realize that it’s made out of the aggregates. The form is the form of … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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