Search results for: "consciousness"
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- Distractive Thoughts… Even though there’s chatter going on in the mind, the breath is still coming in, still going out, so you hang out with the sensation of the breath and you consciously ignore the thoughts. Like a beggar coming to you: If you pay any attention to the beggar, the beggar’s got you. Or a crazy person coming to talk to you: Even …
- Inconstant, Stressful, Not-self… learn how to develop some dispassion for these processes—these forms, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and moments of consciousness—that we crave, that we keep going after, that we fabricate again and again and again. We want happiness, but we keep looking for it in processes that will disappoint us, that keep us stuck with aging, illness, and death. If you bring some wisdom to …
- Interdependence & Death… Even if you’re not consciously thinking about contemplation of death, the fact that you’re trying to get the mind settled with the breath, using the proper perceptions, the proper ways of talking to yourself, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world, putting aside any reference to who you think you are, and just looking at the problem of suffering …
- At the End of the Day… This is when you can consciously adjust the breath until you find a way of breathing that’s engaging. You can also think of the breath energy going into parts of the body that it rarely goes to, or in directions that you ordinarily don’t think about. If the back is feeling tired from the day, think of the breath energy coming from …
- Heedfulness… That’s the consciousness aggregate. So all the aggregates are right here. In the beginning, we use them to create a good state of concentration. Then, when the concentration is solid, we can begin to let them go. As you can see, there’s a lot to be interested in here. There’s a lot going on. Even as you try to get the …
- Not-self as a Raft… form, which is your sense of the body; feelings of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain; perceptions, the labels that you put on things; thought fabrications, the way you put thoughts together; and consciousness, which is aware of all these things along with itself. These are all activities and we cling to them. That’s what the suffering is: the act of clinging. We …
- Love is Conditional, Goodwill Is Not… You have to make up your mind you’re going to have that attitude and you develop it consciously in spite of what you may feel about other people, other beings. When you can make it unlimited like this, the Buddha said, it’s your protection. Psychologically, it protects you because you realize that if you do meet up with someone you dislike and …
- Four Bases of Success… So if you find yourself having these little spells of blanking out, very consciously expand your range of awareness and keep it expanded. And notice: At which part of the breath cycle do you tend to let the awareness shrink? For most people, it’s during the out-breath. If that’s the case with you, be especially careful during the out-breath, that …
- Questioning Your Unconscious Actions… But to what extent is that rhythm caused by things going on in the mind that you’re not fully aware of? The best way to see that is to consciously change the way you think about the breath, to change the way you breathe, to go against what’s subconscious. That’s how you dig up some subconscious assumptions. There’s a resistance …
- Hope… The same with perceptions, thought-constructs, even consciousness: All of these things have an element of fabrication. There’s an element of doing, an element of intention in all of these things. And we tend to miss that, which is why we miss the point where we can make a difference. So always keep that in mind. Your feelings have an element of doing …
- Hold on for All You’re Worth… Sometimes not, in which case you consciously ask yourself: Would longer breathing feel better? Or shorter? Deeper? More shallow? Focus your effort on the in-breath. Let the out-breath take care of itself. As you get more sensitive to the rhythms of the body, the body itself will tell you when you need to start breathing in again. And if the mind slips …
- Mastery… As long as you find that you can control things like form, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness—the five aggregates—you do exert control over them. You do develop a sense of self around them on the path: the self as its own mainstay, the self as its governing principle. But you try to develop it, not in the sense of trying to …
- Right View Comes First… You’ve got feelings, you’ve got perceptions, thought-constructs, consciousness—and you cling to these things. That’s the suffering. Suffering is not something that you’re passively receiving. You’re actually doing the action that constitutes suffering. Think about that. And why do you do that? Because of craving: either craving for sensuality, craving for a state of becoming, or craving to …
- The Battle of Your Selves… That’ consciousness, the fifth. These are the basic component factors of your meditation. And you get to know them well as you’re putting your concentration together, and also as you begin to notice how the mind slips off from concentration, because it’s also the aggregates that slip you off and try to put you in another world. Sometimes you get to know …
- Worldly Narratives… So if you allow yourself consciously to play with the breath, experiment with what this kind of breathing is like, what that kind of breathing like, you get more and more in touch with what your intentions are in the present moment. What used to be an unconscious process becomes a conscious process. When it’s conscious, you can see it—see it in …
- The Graduated Discourse… So it’s not that he’s denying the fact of the pleasures, but as he says, it’s because of the pleasures of form, feeling, perceptions, fabrication, and consciousness that we’re stuck on them—that’s the problem. But still, he wants people to have a sense that, yes, he does appreciate that there are pleasures in life. Then, when he gets …
- Victory over Death… The things we take to be really solid in the world, when you look at them carefully, are just instances of form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness. And when you look carefully at these aggregates, seeing how ephemeral they are, you begin to realize: How could you construct anything really reliable out of them? The one reliable thing you can construct out of …
- The Right Piece in the Right Puzzle… Then there’s consciousness, which is aware of all these things. You have to see that these things, too, once you’ve mastered the concentration, are stressful, and inconstant—and they’re based on craving. So you have to let go of the craving even for the concentration. Even for your discernment: You have to let go of that craving too. That’s when …
- The Rewards of Stream Entry… It’s called consciousness without surface. The Buddha’s image is of a light beam that doesn’t land on anything. Because it doesn’t land, you can’t see it. It’s only when a light beam lands on something and reflects that you can see the light. Yet even though you can’t see a beam that’s not reflected, that doesn …
- A Poker Mind… Ultimately, there is another kind of consciousness that lies on the other side of concentration and that comes as a result of the discernment. That’s something else entirely. This is a point that so often gets confused. People think you get this sense of just the knower or just “being the knowing” and that somehow you’ve reached the unconditioned. It’s still …
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