Search results for: "Fabrication"
- Page 37
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- To Gladden the Mind… You’re not confined to whatever the body is already doing, because the breath is called the bodily fabrication, which means that it contains an intentional element. You can let the breath go on automatic pilot, but there’s something in the mind that monitors it. So you want to take advantage of that fact. At the same time, the mind is something that …
- The Core of Experience… And the things you’ve got—form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness, what the Buddha calls the five aggregates—are things that if you simply cling to them, are going to cause problems, going to cause suffering. In fact, the clinging will be suffering. But you can turn them into a path, which switches their role as part of the first noble truth, about …
- The Mind’s Eating Disorders… Then there are fabrications: all the activities you have to go through in order to get that food, starting with the search, and then, when you find it, what you have to do to fix it so that you can actually feed on it. And then consciousness, of course, is the awareness of all these things. And it’s interesting that we feed not …
- Protection for the Holidays… As the Buddha said, there’s an element of fabrication in terms of which feelings you’re going to focus on, and which ones you’re going to ignore. When you focus on certain potentials, you actually turn them into full-fledged feelings. So how are you going to fabricate something skillful out of the pleasures of being home? xx That’s what the …
- Food for Endurance… By the way we talk to ourselves, which the Buddha calls verbal fabrication, we can totally change our mood. And then in terms of *mental fabrication—*the perceptions and feeling we focus on—we’re totally free to perceive a situation in lots of different ways, all of which are true. Then we can ask ourselves: “Which of these ways is the most conducive …
- Discernment Requires Concentration… form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness. You see these things most clearly as you’re getting the mind to settle down and stay right here. So have some respect for concentration. It’s not just a matter of being dull and dead or unmoving. You’re actively trying to understand how to keep the mind still. And in that stillness, you begin to see things …
- Therapeutic Seclusion… Thought fabrications fabricate. Consciousness cognizes. These are activities we’re doing all the time. We’re addicted to doing them in ways that make us suffer, and we don’t realize it, probably because we haven’t seen anything better. So, just as psychologists have a scheme for treating addictive self-destructive behavior, so does the Buddha. One point they have in common is …
- True for What Purpose?… As the Buddha said, you could focus on how pleasant feelings and perceptions can be, or how much fun it is to engage in thought fabrication. As he admitted, these things do have their pleasures, but focusing on them in that way just gives rise to more passion, aversion, and delusion. Instead, you could focus on their drawbacks: that no matter how well you …
- Mindstorms… This is why we have to get the mind really, really quiet — both so that we can get closer and closer to the part of the mind that simply observes, and to get clearer about where these fabrications are coming from. When you can see that second part in operation, it offers no surprises. And when you get to the point where fabrications offer …
- Great Expectations… Whereas the Buddha said you’re not your feelings. “Feelings” here, in terms of emotions, come under sankharas, fabrications, in the five aggregates. He very clearly saw that there’s a greater happiness to be found by letting go of these fabrications. It’s possible to get beyond your feelings. So when he says to kill your anger, he’s not telling you to …
- Against the Grain… Then there are all the fabrications, mental fabrications and intentions that go into trying to find food and figuring out how to fix it. And then there’s the awareness of all these things. Those are the aggregates. And then we cling to them. And clinging, of course, is another word for sustenance. We take sustenance off this double level of feeding: the actual …
- Question Your Actions… Then, of course, there’s fabrication: What do you say to yourself, how do you talk to yourself about these things? Can you talk about them in a new way? So you take things apart like this. This is the Buddha’s reason for talking about the aggregates—form, feeling, perception, fabrication, consciousness—because they help you take your suffering apart. You’re just …
- Samvega Transformed… He was able to fabricate a path of practice, the noble eightfold path, that led to the threshold of the unfabricated deathless. And then, abandoning the path, he was able to enter into the deathless. He realized that that sense of the world closing in—with every opportunity for happiness already being laid claim to, the terror that he felt, the dismay—was something …
- Oneness is a Water Snake… But it’s fabricated. We’re not doing this to get you there and just leave you there. We’re getting the mind ready to do something else, which is to let things fall apart in a natural way. Part of the falling away simply comes from the fact that, as you’re working with the mind in getting it to settle down, you …
- Keep Your Options Open… As you get more sensitive to what the mind is doing to create this state of concentration, you begin to see that it really is fabricated, it really is put together. Then there will come a point where you’re ready to see the drawbacks of the fact that it is fabricated. And the mind will develop naturally at that point. It develops because …
- Load next page...
