Search results for: "Perception"

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  2. Reading & Meditating
     … How is it related to these other aspects of what’s going on in the mind? Sometimes a pain might be bothering you because of a perception. Well, feeling and perception are together in the factor for fabrication, and they’re together in the factor for name and form. Sometimes the feeling is invading your mind because of the way you talk to yourself … 
  3. The Power of Intention
     … As the Buddha said, our past karma gives us the potential for different experiences of form, feeling, perception, thought fabrications, and consciousness. Then with our present fabrications—our present intentions—we turn these potentials into something actual for the sake of having an actual experience, and then, of course, for the sake of whatever activities we want to do with those forms and feelings … 
  4. Your Higher Power
     … We cling to our feelings, our perceptions, our thought constructs, and our consciousness. And when these things turn on us, we’re stuck with what we’ve clung to. But if you learn how to let go—and letting go means first fashioning more skillful versions of these things, more skillful perceptions and thoughts to give rise to feelings in the body that are … 
  5. Generosity of Spirit
     … You’ve got the breath, that’s your bodily fabrication; you’ve got directed thought and evaluation, verbal fabrication, and your feelings and perceptions are mental fabrication. For the most part, as we go through life—especially if we have little training in meditation—we wound ourselves by the way we fabricate the present moment. We breathe in ways that are uncomfortable. We talk … 
  6. Worldly Equanimity & Its Uses
     … I think I’ve said other times that of the four brahmaviharas, equanimity is one that requires some discernment, so you can figure out, “What things are beyond my control? There are people I’d like to see happy, but they’re not going to be happy.” This gets into another perception that the Buddha taught Rahula, which is the perception of not-self … 
  7. Using Your Many Minds
     … And the question gives you a context for employing those perceptions. The Buddha never talks about three characteristics. The actual term does not appear in the Pali Canon. It’s there in the commentaries, it’s all over Buddhist writings, but the Buddha himself never mentioned it. He talks about these things as three perceptions. And basically there are three questions you ask about … 
  8. The Limits of Control
     … What use is that perception? If you’re feeling one with things, can you change them to be better? Can you exert control over them? And even though there may be a sense of wellbeing that comes with that oneness, how lasting is it? The Buddha himself pointed out that the highest sense of oneness is the sense of consciousness being totally one and … 
  9. Delight in Striving
     … And then there’s mental fabrication, which is perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the labels you’ve put on things—that identify what they are, what they mean, how important they are. Feelings are feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. These are things that we *do *fabricate. We may think that our feelings just come at us ready-made, but they … 
  10. Equanimity Isn’t Nibbana
     … Does it need to be gladdened? Does it need to be steadied? Does it need to be released from anything it’s holding on to? How do you breathe in a way that helps accomplish that? How do you play with your perception of the breath, your perception of your feelings, in order to accomplish that? What other topics—like the Buddha, Dhamma, and … 
  11. The Power of the Mind
     … It’s just a perception, so you’ve got to change your perceptions. The mind comes before the breath; the breath comes before all the other elements in the body. Think in those terms. So, as Ajaan Suwat would say every time we would meditate as a group, “Okay, dress your mind.” Or: “fix your mind.” The word in Thai is taeng, which is … 
  12. Understanding Through Developing
     … Once it does feel good, then how can you maintain it? How can you spread it around? To do this, you’re going to have to use some perceptions, the images you hold in mind about where the breath goes in the body, your perception of what feels good and what doesn’t feel good. As you engage in these fabrications, you get to … 
  13. Grounded in the Elements
     … It’s simply a matter of learning how to use your perceptions in a different way. For a lot of us, the body is the solid part, the earth part. The breath is something we have to force into the body. But from the Eastern point of view—the point of view of, say, Thai medicine or Indian medicine—the breath is the first … 
  14. Choices
     … There are lots of different ways you can breathe, and lots of different intentions can take with regard to the breath and your perceptions of what’s happening as you breathe in. Where is the breath coming in? We’ve all learned that it comes through the nose. But when you feel the breathing energy, where does it feel like when it’s coming … 
  15. Cooking the Present Moment
     … The author pointed out that most of us, if we were to draw an eye, a nose, or a mouth, would basically be drawing our perceptions of those things: the kind of cartoon ideas we have about what an eye or a mouth should look like. Often, as a result, our drawings are not that realistic. So she recommended drawing the spaces between these … 
  16. Overcoming Complacency
     … The raw material comes in from the past, but we’re constantly working it into this feeling or that perception. And then we experience the consequences of our actions. Think of the five khandhas or aggregates: The Buddha says that the khandha of fabrication or sankhara, is the one that molds the others from potentials into an actual experience of the khandhas. From the … 
  17. As They’ve Come to Be
     … We use different perceptions to get the mind with the breath; that’s also mental fabrication. And here again, you get sensitive to that and then you try to calm it down. So, you’re combining tranquility and insight in that way, seeing things as fabrications—they’re put together. The nature of fabrications is that they’re going to be inconstant, but here … 
  18. Ingenuity
     … Sometimes the perception of not-self or the perception of emptiness will hit home. There are lots of different ways of developing dispassion. The tools are there not for you to say, “Oh yes, this is the way things are: inconstant, stress, not-self. What’s next?” That’s not the point. The point is trying to get the mind still enough so that … 
  19. Skillfully Shaping Your Life
     … your perceptions and your feelings. As the Buddha points out, simply focusing on the breath changes the types of feelings you have in the body. Feelings, here, are not so much emotions as they’re feelings of pleasure, pain, or neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Sometimes when you focus on the breath you put too much pressure on it, which creates a feeling of dis … 
  20. Mindfulness in the Driver’s Seat
     … Sometimes it has to do more with your perception—or lots of different perceptions around the object. Or your perception of your relationship to the object. Or just the desire for desire itself. Once you can locate the focal point of the desire, then you can figure out what to do. So, you have to be observant, you have to be alert, and you … 
  21. Permission to Play
     … i.e., through the breath, through directed thought and evaluation, and through feeling and perception. But to will skillfully, you have to bring these fabrications together in a way that makes the path pleasant to follow. Otherwise you can’t stick with it. This is why right concentration is such an important part of the path. It gives you a good place to stay … 
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