Search results for: "Perception"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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