Search results for: "Perception"
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- The Path Is and Isn’t the Goal… I found all I had to do was just shift my perception of where the breath was coming in, where it was going out, and so different muscles got engaged. The process of breathing became a lot less laborious, a lot more energizing and nourishing. That’s another way of dealing with the breath: Ask yourself, how do you perceive the process of breathing …
- The Equanimity of a Victor… Your perception of form is something you have to keep up. Feelings, perceptions: you feel, you perceive. You fabricate thoughts and you’re aware. These are things you’re doing, and you cling to these actions in ignorance. That’s the suffering. It’s an active verb. Most of us don’t think of it that way. It’s because we don’t think …
- Cooking Skills… You’re aided in this by your perceptions, the images you hold in mind. So what image do you have of the breath? You can think of it as the air coming in and out through the nose, or you can think of it as an energy flow: the flow of energy through the blood vessels, the flow of energy through the nerves. Hold …
- Living Honorably… He talks about three perceptions, or what are often called the three characteristics. Yet the Buddha teaches them as perceptions. They’re perceptions for testing things: to gauge if something you’re focusing on is really worth taking as a goal, if it’s really an answer to the question of discernment. The first test is that if it’s not constant, it’s …
- Cutting the Fetters… You’ve got the perception that holds you with the breath — how you visualize the breath coming in and going out, where it goes in the body, how it goes in the body, which sensations in the body can be labeled as breath sensations: All that is perception. Then there’s the intention to stay here, and the directed thought and evaluation as you …
- The Body In & Of Itself… Sometimes when you’re feeling really light-headed, you want to think, “solid, heavy.” Or when you’re feeling depressed, think, “breath-energy flowing through the body.” It’s interesting that just by bringing those perceptions to mind and holding on to them steadily, you can foster corresponding sensations in the body, nourish them, strengthen them in the body, bringing things back into balance …
- Happy to Be Here… the perceptions you use to hold the breath in mind. Have a sense of how the breath can flow in the different parts of the body—down through the spine, down through the legs, all along the nerves, all along the blood vessels. If you’ve ever seen any diagrams of the body inside, see if they can give you some guidance. Try to …
- For Your Benefit Here & Now… When you’re analyzing the body parts, the questions are, “What are the perceptions I’m forming right now, what are they doing to the mind?”—the perceptions that you’re using in your analysis. You want to learn how to see which kinds of perceptions are there for the sake of saying, “I want this to be beautiful,” and the ones that say …
- The Buddha’s Vipassana… Feelings and perceptions that lurk around the mind, those are another kind of fabrication, too. When you’re getting the mind into concentration, you’re going to be using all those fabrications. You’re going to be talking to yourself about the breath and using perceptions—images you hold in mind about where the breath comes in; where it goes out; where you are …
- Marshalling the Emotions… And what is it that controls the breath? There’s an intention and there’s a perception. Can you be clear about your intentions and perceptions? Can you change your intention to be more sensitive to what the breath really needs? Can you change your perception of the breath so that the way you control it actually causes less stress, does less harm? What …
- Just Events… But even if you haven’t attained that level in your concentration, you can simply hold that perception in mind: The awareness is one thing; the object is something else; the feeling is something else; the body is something else. Learn how to separate these things out, and there will be a lot less struggle when you encounter things that are beyond your control …
- Appropriate Attention… And when we contemplate it in terms of the three perceptions, the purpose of those perceptions, of course, is to make you see that the things you’ve been clinging to are not worth it; the things you’ve been craving are not worth it. In that sense, the whole set—inconstancy, stress, not-self—is meant to make you see that things are …
- The Uses of Fear… feelings and perceptions. Your perceptions are the labels you apply to things. In the case of the breathing process, this has to do with how you perceive what’s going on when you breathe. When you visualize the breathing process to yourself, what is that visualization like? Is it helpful or does it actually cause harm? If you think of the body as a …
- Two Kinds of Middle… In other words, the pleasure becomes a basis for understanding a lot of the mind’s strange perceptions, replacing them with new perceptions, trying out new perceptions to see how they fit. This is how you get off your normal continuum. Ask a different question. Look at things from a different way. Get outside the box. Pleasure is something you can actually use as …
- Our Variegated Minds… Mental is feeling and perception. These are the things we’re trying to train here as we concentrate on the breath. Take the breath as your object; That’s bodily fabrication. You direct your thoughts repeatedly to the breath and you evaluate the breathing, so that it becomes more comfortable. In other words, you bring knowledge and awareness in terms of the four noble …
- Contentment… Then finally there’s mental fabrication, which is feeling and perception. You’ve got the physical feelings that arise with regard to the breath and the mental feelings of happiness or sadness or equanimity that come along with the breathing. Then there’s perception, which labels things. Your main labeling job here right now is labeling the type of breath and labeling the type …
- Where the Mind & Body Meet… It’s something other, but it is to be found by fully inhabiting your body, right here, right now, and getting very clear about the perceptions in the body and the intellect, what it’s doing. And the perceptions and the intellect and the body they all meet right here at the breath. So every time your thoughts go casting out for something else …
- Mindful of Your Potentials… So as we’re meditating, on the one hand, we’re paring down our mental activity, so that we can be just aware of the breath, just aware of the perception of the breath, the perception of the body. As for any other mental chatter, let it go, let it go. There will come times in the meditation when you do have to pose …
- Making Yourself Worthy of Trust… Hold that perception in mind. And remind yourself also that the breath was there first—see what that perception does. You may ask yourself, “Can I trust these perceptions?” As long as they make the breath comfortable, they’re fine. Then give the mind some time to settle in. This will become the foundation for insight. And as with any foundation, you want to …
- Investing Your Intention… feelings and perceptions. The path consists of comprehending these things. You’ve got them all gathered together here. You’re directing your thoughts to the breath and evaluating the breath. You’re also noticing the feelings and perceptions related to the breath. You perceive the breath in a particular way, and it gives rise to feelings in the body. It’s all right here …
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