Search results for: "Fabrication"
- Page 35
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Dealing with the Hindrances… You look inside to see how the mind is processing things, how it’s fabricating things, and what the results are, whether they’re skillful or not. When the Buddha was teaching Rahula about the practice as a whole, the image he used was of a mirror. You look at your actions as a mirror to see what’s going on in the mind …
- Your Main Foundation… Those stories come from perception and fabrication in the mind, which gets you more into the framework of mind states or mental qualities. Also, the line between mind states and mental qualities is very hard to pin down. You might think of the mind state as being when the whole mental committee has agreed on something, whereas the mental qualities are the specific members …
- The Strength of Conviction… how it focuses on things, how its attitude can change an experience from pleasant to painful, from painful back to pleasant—all depending on your perception, all depending on the feeling, all those elements of fabrication or the elements of name in name-and-form. What you see as important, what you see as unimportant: This can really change how you experience the body …
- Single-minded Determination… The question is, “Is the effort worth it?” In terms of fabricated things, conditioned things, many times the answer is No. In fact, if you make any conditioned thing an end in and of itself, the effort isn’t worth it, for ultimately it will leave you high and dry. Yet the Buddha realized that conditioned things have another side as well. Not only …
- A Touchstone at the Breath… the feeling aggregate, the perception aggregate, fabrication, and consciousness. It’s when your attention is rooted in this awareness of the body from the inside that you can begin to see how those other aggregates function, and particularly how perception and fabrication can totally change the way you experience the body, and how being grounded in the body helps give you a different perspective …
- The Arrows of Emotion… One of the purposes of evaluating and playing with the breath is to bring that aspect of verbal fabrication up to the fore, to be clear about what you’re thinking about and how you’re fashioning your thoughts. You deal with the breath right here so that when the breath changes with an emotion, you’re aware of it. You’re on top …
- Just One Person… You’re doing your perceptions, your thought fabrications, your consciousness. You’ve even been doing your sense of the body. This is why the Buddha said that all of the aggregates depend on the fourth one—fabrications. That’s what takes the potentials coming from your past actions and turns them into your present experiences. So you’re playing a huge role right here …
- Imagine… Even though it’s something created, something fabricated, it’s a good thing to create, a good thing to fabricate. As the Buddha said, right concentration is the heart of the path. The other factors are its requisites. And for discernment to do its work of insight in the present moment, the heart of the path has to stay healthy and strong. You have …
- Tending the Flame… You begin to see layers of fabrication in the mind peel away. This is how you maintain your concentration. You get more and more still, and at the same time there’s less energy put in, but more energy comes out. You could say you’re just getting more efficient at getting your mind to settle down. That’s how people can maintain concentration …
- Brahmaviharas at the Breath… about the way you’re breathing; about the way you’re talking to yourself; about the perceptions you hold in mind, the way you relate to your feelings—all three forms of fabrication. The Buddha lays them out as a list of alternatives: bodily, verbal, mental fabrications. If something’s going wrong, it’s with one of these. Which is it? If you’ve …
- Load next page...
