Search results for: "Form"

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  2. See Your Thoughts as Strange
    See Your Thoughts as Strange August 17, 2018 Try and settle into the body—the body as you feel it from within, what the texts call “form”—and try to find a sense of pleasure here. Explore the breath to see how it feels, and adjust it so that it feels just right: not too long, not too short, too deep, too shallow, too … 
  3. How the Tree Leans
     … In other words, look at the process by which the thought is formed. Look at the process by which a decision is made around the thought. That helps to prevent you from falling in. If it’s something you genuinely want to go with—you see it’s going in the right direction—okay, go with it. But even then you have to make … 
  4. Doing, Maintaining, Using
     … As you gain that feel for it, then the various elements of form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, and consciousness begin to separate out. You can watch them for what they are. Then when you let them go, it’s not that you throw them away. You’ve simply learned that you don’t have to identify with them. You can pick them up when … 
  5. Calm & Insight
     … the form of the body as you feel it from within. Feelings, which are feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions—the labels you put on things, either as individual words or as images. Thought fabrications, where you put things together and think in full sentences. Then, consciousness which is aware of all these things. These are said to be fabricated … 
  6. Stick to Your Duties
     … Why is there the desire? Why is there the passion? What is the allure? Then you take the desire and passion and you separate them from the form, or the feeling, or the perception, the thought construct, the act of consciousness that you’re holding on to, so that you see just the desire and the passion in and of themselves: That’s what … 
  7. Meditation as Play
     … There’s the form of the body in the breath. Feelings of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions, images of the breath that you hold in mind, that you try out: images of the body that you hold in mind; images of the mind that you hold in mind. Where is your mind right now? All too often, we have the sense that … 
  8. The Buddha’s Encouragement
     … You’ve got the form of the body, the feeling of pleasure that you’re trying to develop, the perceptions that hold you here, the intentions, the thought fabrications that keep you here, and your awareness. All the aggregates are right here. They’re all doing their thing. And of course, we want to learn about the aggregates, so this is a good place … 
  9. Potentials for Rapture
     … All the forms of what they call fabrication are right here when the mind is with the breath. All the potentials for the path are right here as well. It’s simply a matter of familiarizing yourself with the potentials you’ve got here and, over time, making the most of them. That’s how the practice works.
  10. Don’t Leak Out Your Ears & Eyes
     … But whichever form of mindfulness immersed in the body you practice, you’ve got to use it as your foundation post. That’s the Buddha’s image. He says our mind is like six different kinds of animals, and they all go off in their different directions through the six senses. If you were to tie them all to a leash, but there was … 
  11. Selfing & Not-selfing
     … And what have you got? You’ve got these five aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness. The Buddha calls them twigs and branches. You bind them together as a raft. And one of the ways of binding them together, of course, is to get the mind into concentration. You’ve got the form of the body. You’ve got the feeling of pleasure that … 
  12. Serenity
     … But this form of well-being is skillful. It’s worth developing. The danger of getting stuck here is extremely minor compared to the dangers of looking for your pleasure elsewhere. Because the nature of the mind is that it wants pleasure. If it can’t find it inside, it’s going to go looking outside. If you can’t produce your own food … 
  13. The Bright Tunnel
     … There’s form affected by clinging, feeling affected by clinging, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness, all of which are affected by clinging. The clinging is what turns them into suffering. The clinging is what tries to wring a happiness out of them that they simply don’t have to offer. Having to run around clinging to things all the time puts the mind in a … 
  14. Seeing with the Body
     … A lot of the Buddhist texts, when they talk about the knowledge you gain from meditation, express it as a form of vision, something you see. You’re working toward knowledge and vision, they say. The first experience of Awakening is the opening of the Dhamma Eye. Full Awakening comes with knowledge and vision of things as they have come to be. But there … 
  15. Self Esteem
     … And it’s one of the few forms of self esteem that actually keeps you open to change. For many of us, self esteem means thinking that basically we’re good people — which means that we have to keep trying to look back on our past actions to see evidence of that. And then, of course, we run across things that don’t support … 
  16. A Quality of the Character
     … Those are the qualities that form the context of the Dhamma, and it’s within those qualities that you then learn about specific instructions: how to analyze things, how to focus on the breath, how to develop concentration. But it always has to be within that context of virtues. And these are best picked up by being around people who are virtuous. Part of … 
  17. Pay Careful Attention
    We live in a culture where people tend to be careless about what they say—saying things that are not true, saying things that are divisive, saying things with the intention of hurting other people’s feelings, or just opening their mouths and saying whatever comes out—all of which are forms of wrong speech. When people are careless of what they say, we … 
  18. Equanimity & More
     … As the Buddha pointed out, there are skillful and unskillful forms of equanimity. So do your best to develop the kind of equanimity that really is skillful. That gets you focused.
  19. To Disturb Your Complacency
     … What’s this? What’s happening here in your mind right now? What’s your experience of form right now? What kind of feelings do you have right now? What are your perceptions right now? What are your thought constructs, your intentions? How about your consciousness right now? How do you experience these things? Are you suffering from them? If you are, what are … 
  20. Wilderness Lessons
     … Civilization formed the islands, and the wilderness was the sea. We have a slight taste of that here in the monastery. We’ve got chaparral on three sides. We live in an orchard but it’s an orchard surrounded by wilderness. There are wilderness animals out there, and often they come infiltrating into the orchard, foraging for what they can find. They draw no … 
  21. A Refuge in Mindfulness
     … This is how a thought forms.” And then you see, “Where is this particular thought going?” Is it going someplace that will actually be useful? Okay, you can step in, but always be ready to step out when it starts getting weird. As for thoughts that you know are unskillful to begin with, you have to ask yourself, “Why am I cluttering my mind … 
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