Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- To Make Suffering Crumble… All of that counts as fabrication. Then there’s awareness or consciousness of these things. If you find that you have trouble settling down, you might ask yourself, “Which of those five things is the problem? Is the problem with the breath? Is it with the feelings in the body around the breath? How about my perceptions? Can I change my mental image of …
- The Reasonable Path… He tells you to follow this line of action, which is something fabricated, but it can take you to something unfabricated. Logically, it may seem strange, that something fabricated can lead to something unfabricated, but the Buddha said causality works that way. And it turns out that modern studies in complex causality, chaos theory, chemical states that are far from equilibrium, work in this …
- Honest & Observant… As you do that, you begin to see some of the forms of fabrication the Buddha talks about. You need to talk to yourself to be generous. You need to have a perception that it’s something worthwhile. The same with virtue: You need to talk yourself into being virtuous. You need to see that it’s worthwhile. As you develop perceptions around your …
- The Raft of Concepts… Then you can start looking at the process of intention in a deeper way, to see exactly how intention happens, how much it shapes your present experience, how you fabricate your breath, how you fabricate thoughts, how you fabricate feelings and perceptions. You want to look into that. That’s how discernment is developed. You’re not going to maintain this kind of focus …
- Questioning Your Conviction… May they not be thus’?” The same with perceptions, thought-fabrications, consciousness: In each case, the five brethren said No. **So which is it? Can you do things, or can you not do things with these aggregates? Well, you can do some things. And it’s the **some things **that are important. It’s in that area of **some things that you can actually …
- The Sublime Attitudes in Context… But at the other end of the path, when you’ve fully developed these attitudes, the fact that they are constructed and fabricated is something you have to understand as well. Even equanimity, which is the most peaceful of them all, has its limitations. It’s something you do. It’s something fabricated. So in and of itself, it can’t be your true …
- Mindful of the Buddha’s Shoulds… It’s very subtle, but it comes and it goes because it’s all fabricated. You have to keep putting it together. So you have to start asking questions about these fabrications. Here again, you’re talking to yourself, but you’re asking questions. And you’re asking questions in line with the four noble truths and their duties again: Where is the clinging …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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.
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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