Search results for: "Fabrication"

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  2. The Conditions for Goodwill
     … So we work with the breath and what the Buddha calls bodily fabrication. This is the energy that fabricates our sense of the body. Try to work with it in a way that feels refreshing so that you can have a basis for your goodwill. And then learn how to think properly about goodwill. What does it mean? You’re wishing that all beings … 
  3. In the Context of the Deathless
     … There’s fabrication, the way you talk to yourself about the breath. There’s consciousness, your awareness of these activities. Even though these concentration aggregates ultimately will show that they, too, are inconstant, stressful, and not-self, you’re trying to fight against those characteristics for the time being. Try to make your concentration as constant as you can. Make your mindfulness, your alertness … 
  4. Cooking the Present Moment
     … There’s the pain of fabrication. There’s the pain of the fact that things change. There’s the pain of simply unpleasant sensations. And it turns out that unpleasant sensation isn’t what weighs the mind down; it’s the fabrication. That’s what gets the mind, the fact that you’re making something out of the pain. You’re using your perceptions … 
  5. Tapping into the Breath
     … She was staying with an ajaan who didn’t have any background in Ajaan Lee’s method, and he told her, “Why are you adjusting the breath? It’s just a fabrication.” She told me that, and my response, although I didn’t say it to him, was, “Well, why are you washing your body? Why do you clean your body? It’s just … 
  6. Attahi Attano Natho
     … Each of us fabricates his or her experience, so our understanding of what he had to say, what he had to teach, is going to be filtered by the way we fabricate things. This is why the Buddha, when he was teaching Rahula, started out by saying, “Be truthful.” So try to register correctly what you experience and what you’re doing. Then be … 
  7. Hold on to Right View
     … Choose to bring the mind to a state of concentration, realize how things are fabricated, and then calm the processes of fabrication—like the Buddha explains in his instructions on breath meditation. That’s how things begin to get put together right.
  8. Universal Truths
     … In the Buddha’s analysis of suffering, ignorance conditions fabrication. Bodily fabrication is the breath. If you breathe with ignorance, it can be a condition for suffering. If you breathe with knowledge and awareness, it can help cut through suffering. It can help you see your ignorance more clearly. As you see your ignorance more clearly, you’re replacing it with knowledge. So when … 
  9. Perception
     … Another teaching from the ajaans is that when you focus on the five aggregates—form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness—you can start out with any one of the five and it will give you insight into all the rest. For instance, you can focus on the body, analyze your attachment to the body, and it will start spreading around to feelings and perceptions … 
  10. Discernment Is in the Doing
     … Then there are questions about how to gain insight into the process of fabrication—in other words, your participation in creating your own experience: That’s what fabrication is. He raises the questions, and you’ve got to learn how to come to the answers. This is a large part, again, of what a skill requires. So think of the three attitudes that the … 
  11. For the Cessation of Dukkha
     … The simple fact that there are things that arise and pass away that are dependent on conditions, fabrications, and there’s a stress inherent in the fact that those things are dependent on conditions and are inconstant.: That’s not the beginning of the practice. It’s simply a fact that’s out there. The practice begins when you focus instead on a particular … 
  12. Acceptance
     … all these ways of fabricating the present moment. This is why the Buddha’s teachings take the form they do. There are instructions on how to breathe. There are lots of instructions on how to think, how to talk to yourself. And then the Buddha gives you all those similes and analogies: Those are the mental fabrications, the perceptions he wants you to use … 
  13. Dethinking Thinking
     … The Buddha’s analysis of the aggregates, remember that? “For the sake of feeling-ness, for the sake of perception-hood, you fabricate a feeling, you fabricate a perception.” In other words, there’s a raw material there from your past kamma, and you turn it into actual feelings, actual perceptions, for the sake of having feelings and perceptions you can use. There’s … 
  14. The True Dhamma Has Disappeared
     … All fabrications are inconstant, all fabrications are stressful, all dhammas are not-self. Those things are always true. But teachings about the Dhamma are not always here. As the Buddha foresaw, his teachings would disappear. He called that the disappearance of the saddhamma, the disappearance of the true Dhamma. He knew that it would have to happen, just as it happened to the true … 
  15. Inner Strength, Inner Wealth
     … There’s form, feeling, perception, fabrications and consciousness. You can probably think of lots of other ways of dividing up the activities of the mind. But these five are especially relevant to the way you feed, both physically and emotionally, intellectually. Form would be, on the one hand, the form of your own body, which you need to keep going. Then there’s the … 
  16. To Comprehend Suffering
     … These are the activities of form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. But theimportant word there is the clinging, because there are places where he says that the aggregates on their own are experienced by arahants. Arahants have form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, consciousness, but they don’t suffer, because they don’t have the clinging. So, the first noble truth: To comprehend dukkha … 
  17. Clinging & Feeding
     … We convert our form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness into a state of concentration. We use the fabrication of thoughts to develop wisdom, the perceptions that the Buddha recommends to develop wisdom—the purpose of that wisdom being to develop dispassion and disenchantment. Then we feed the mind with conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, all of which are good food for the mind … 
  18. Abandoning Effluents (3)
     … It’s a sankhara, a fabrication, and as with all fabrications, it has a tendency to start dissolving away. So you’ve got to work at it. In fact, this pattern of destroying and developing can cover everything that we do in the path. In the sutta on the customs of the noble ones, the Buddha talks about delighting in developing and delighting in … 
  19. The Lightened Mind
     … It, too, has its drawbacks in that it’s fabricated. There’s a line of thought that says the path culminates in discernment or wisdom, but that’s not the case. The path culminates in release. Here release means release from all things fabricated, including the discernment that gets you there. This is how you ultimately lighten the mind. That’s when the mind … 
  20. Love Me, Love My Defilements
     … Feelings feel, perceptions perceive, fabrications fabricate the other aggregates into actual aggregates, and consciousness cognizes. These things are defined by their activity. And these activities are the raw materials from which we create our sense of self. In our delusion we tend to think of “self” as a thing we’re stuck with, either for metaphysical reasons or for social reasons. But that’s … 
  21. Determined Goodwill
     … This is where you have to think about the different kinds of fabrication. When you find yourself overwhelmed with thoughts of ill will, stop and ask yourself: “How am I breathing? How am I talking to myself about the issue? What’s wrong with what I’m saying? How can I change what I’m saying to myself?” And finally, “How can I change … 
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