Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Refuge… There’s fabrication, your internal conversation about the breath, your directed thoughts and your evaluations of what’s going on; and then consciousness, which is aware of all these things. There you’ve got them all here, the five aggregates, and you turn them into the path. They become your home right now, a much more solid home than any other one you could …
- When Nothing’s Happening… The fact that there is a present moment there, that present moment is conditioned by fabrication. Remember the Buddha’s statement about the different aggregates. Each aggregate is a potential coming in from the past, and then it’s fashioned through fabrication into an actual experience of the aggregate. That’s how you have the present moment. This is one of the tests for …
- A Good Path to Be On… The in-and-out breath is what’s called bodily fabrication, and fabrication contains an element of intention. So the way you breathe already has a subconscious element of intention. The best way to realize that is to try to breathe in different ways. Consciously change the way you breathe. Find a way of breathing that’s comfortable, interesting, soothing when you need to …
- The Six Properties… You breathe so that you’re aware of the whole body, so that you calm bodily fabrication, i.e., calm the in-and-out breath, even to the point where it stops. You breathe in ways that gladden the mind. You breathe in ways that concentrate the mind, release the mind. That’s proactive. It’s a skill you’re developing, but you can …
- Questioning Your Way to Certainty… You see form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness, and you ask yourself, “Are these things constant?” Well, no. And the Buddha here is not asking in the abstract. He’s asking you to look: to look at your sense of form, your sense of the body that you’re experiencing right here as you sit here. Look at the feelings that arise and pass …
- Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice… In both cases, you’re learning how to look at the role of perception in your mind, along with the role of feeling and fabrication, which are the central aggregates in any attempt to free the mind from the aggregates. That makes you more and more sensitive to what the mind is doing to deceive and create unnecessary suffering for itself. As for which …
- The Will to Awaken… This is one of the paradoxes of the teaching, but one that the Buddha is very upfront about—you’re looking for something unfabricated, but you have to fabricate the path. As he said, the highest of all fabrications—which is another word for the highest of all things you can will—is the noble eightfold path. There is a dhamma higher than that …
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