Search results for: "Fabrication"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. The Logic of Not-self
     … But then there will come a point when you’ve got the mind as still as you can manage, as peaceful as you can manage, and yet there will still be a sense of dissatisfaction because the concentration is something that’s fabricated, something you have to put together. This is where you have to think about the third noble truth. The Buddha is … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. Space for Sustained Contemplation
     … And as you’re dealing with the types of fabrication around the breath—the directed thought and the evaluation, perceptions and feelings around the breath—that sensitizes you to the fabrications that are always going on in the mind. Whatever the attachment is, whatever the craving is, you realize it has to be made out of these things. That’s what you want to … 
  13. The Sport of Wise People
     … After all, when you’re getting the mind to settle down, you’re engaging in what they call verbal fabrication: directed thought and evaluation. If you can’t control your verbal fabrication as you go through the day, it’s going to be really hard to control it as you sit down to meditate. So keep very careful control over your mouth, because it … 
  14. Normalcy
     … And even though this is a fabricated state of stillness and equanimity, still it’s part of the path—because, after all, the entire path is a fabrication. So we are not trying to induce special experiences. Sometimes they may happen and then the question will be: When they happen, what you do with them? How to get yourself back to normalcy? But if … 
  15. Feeding While You Work
     … After all, the breath is an ideal way of seeing the process of fabrication in action: that you’re shaping things and you can tell pretty quickly whether you’re shaping them well or not. So be careful. While you’re following the breath and trying to make the breath comfortable, there will come times when the comfort is surprising. A sense of ease … 
  16. Ask Yourself the Buddha’s Question
     … The breath is close to your awareness, and it’s what the Buddha calls a bodily fabrication. In other words, it’s something that you can intentionally make changes in that have an effect on the body. There are also verbal fabrications, which are feelings and perceptions—in other words, the labels you apply to things. That’s another area where you can question … 
  17. Discerning the Middle Way
     … Those are the ones that are going to require a lot of work—what the Buddha calls “exerting a fabrication.” In other words,you apply all three kinds of fabrication: You work with the breath, work with the way you’re talking to yourself about the issue, look at the perceptions you hold around the issue to see maybe if the perceptions are part … 
  18. Practicing for Dispassion
     … So we have the Dhamma, which are fabrications that the Buddha left behind, his verbal fabrications, his instructions on how to practice, but then he also made it very clear what the attha of the Dhamma was: It was so that we could train our minds to find the true peace that comes with dispassion. Now, a lot of people don’t like the … 
  19. The Hedgefox
     … Why do these pleasures have that bad impact? If you get to know them really well, you begin to see that they’re associated with certain perceptions, certain mental fabrications. So even though you’re focused mainly on feelings here, you find that they connect up with the other aggregates. In the beginning, you don’t have to think about the other aggregates that … 
  20. There Is This
     … You see that there are these things, and then there’s the cessation of fabrications with regard to them. Then, the Buddha said, you have to see the escape from that. Imagine how difficult that’s going to be. You see the cessation of fabrications, and it’s as if everything comes crashing down, and something amazing opens up. And even then, you want … 
  21. A Matter of Life & Death
     … Even in dependent co-arising, right after ignorance comes fabrication, and bodily fabrication, i.e., the in-and-out breath, is right there first in the list. If you can bring some awareness and alertness to the process of your breathing, you’re helping to cut away ignorance at a very basic level. And as you get on familiar terms with the breath, as … 
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