Search results for: "consciousness"
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- Remembering Ajaan Lee… And all these things that are not-self, the Buddha learned how to take them—feeling and perception, form, fabrications, consciousness, all these aggregates that are ultimately beyond our control—and brought them under enough control to turn them into a path. He used the path as a place to stand so that he could look at his other fabrications of the mind and …
- Dwellings… This house is built out of very flimsy materials—the form of your body, which is constantly changing; your feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness—things that are falling apart all the time. So we can’t let ourselves get nostalgic about the body. We look after it so that we can use it to practice, but we have to find a better dwelling inside …
- Fear of Death… The Buddha calls these strategies the process of “I-making” and “my-making.” Whatever way you form a sense of self around form, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, or consciousness, it’s all just fabrication. In the process of fabrication there’s stress. If that’s all there were in life, you’d be willing to put up with the stress, for without your self …
- Questioning & Acceptance… And you go through the feelings and the perceptions and the thought fabrications and the consciousness that’s aware of all these things. You examine each of these things in the same way. Even when there seems to be just a very bright, bright awareness, you still have to question it: Is there any inconstancy in this awareness? And sometimes the concentration can be …
- Breathing Easy… The beginning of concentration comes when you focus on one thing within the range of your awareness and very consciously say No to the other things. You’re not going to go there. Then as that one thing becomes more and more comfortable, more and more refreshing, you think of it spreading out to fill the rest of your awareness, first your physical awareness …
- Free from Buddha Nature… The Buddha said that part of comprehending suffering is to see that we cling to these five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness. Each of the aggregates is defined by a verb; it’s an activity. We build a sense of who we are around the activities, and that gets in the way of seeing which activities are skillful, which ones are …
- Selves with Skills… It’s the ultimate bliss, freedom, a state of consciousness that doesn’t depend on anything. It’s a truth—you can rely on it, it’s not going to change—and it’s the ultimate. There’s nothing better. Everything else in the world exists for the sake of something else. But here there’s no “for the sake of” anything—it’s …
- Feeding Frenzy: Dependent Co-arising… Form, feeling, perception, thought fabrications, and sensory consciousness: These are the things we feed on. When we’re meditating we’re trying to create a good bhava, a good place for the mind to stay in the present moment. If you create a world for yourself that maintains its reference to the present, then it’s a lot easier to see what that world …
- A Refuge from Death… If that doesn’t work, you can consciously ignore the anger. Think of it as being one voice in the committee of your mind, and let it be in the back corner. Don’t put it on front stage. In other words, you know it’s there, it’s chattering away, but you just decide you’re not going to focus on it. If …
- Anupassana… So you try to bring them up into consciousness. Ask yourself: “I’m deciding when to breathe in, when to breathe out, so how can I do that well? How can I find a sense of ease and well-being through the breath? And then how can I calm the effect of the breath on the mind?” The same pattern applies to feelings. Feelings …
- Path & Raft… You’re identifying with form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness—all the five aggregates—building a sense of self around them. Either you identify with a particular aggregate or group of aggregates, or you feel that they belong to you. You have a self that owns these things, or your self is in these things, or these things are in yourself. Any of these …
- Fire Escapes… The three formless attainments—infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness—build on the fourth jhana. Even though they’re formless, they’re all right here. Where do you experience them? You experience them right where you’re experiencing the body right now. See that the breath gets really, really refined. Your mind gets very still, and all the energy channels in the body get connected …
- Appropriate Attention… Very consciously say to yourself, “I’m going to stay here with the breath.” Only when you set up an intention like that and try to maintain it do you start seeing other undercurrents of intention in the mind. The intention that wants to think about issues from the day, saying, “Here we have a whole hour free time, let’s think about family …
- Imagine… I want that,” but you get more and more sensitive to the signs, the sensations that tell you that certain parts of the body are starved of breath energy, and you can consciously breathe into them. The third step is inspection. You look at the state you have in the body: Are there places where it’s still uncomfortable, places where it still feels …
- Generosity First… Of course, what generosity are you going to look back on if there is none? This is why it’s important that you approach the meditation having practiced generosity very consciously. Many times we ask, “How do I take the meditation back into the world?” But it’s also important that you bring good qualities of the world into your meditation, good qualities of …
- Comprehending Suffering… That’s the fifth aggregate, which is consciousness. So you’ve got all the aggregates right here. That’s an important step in learning how to comprehend suffering. As you develop concentration, you’re getting ready to comprehend suffering more and more. Because the Buddha didn’t say something useless like “Life is suffering,” or something bland and also useless like “There is suffering …
- Training for Dispassion… form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness.” Then the next question those people would ask would be, “Why? For what purpose?” The answer is that if you haven’t abandoned desire and passion for those things, then when they change, there’s going to be sorrow and lamentation. But if you have abandoned desire and passion, then when those things change there won’t be any …
- The Dhamma Wheel… And then consciousness, which is aware of all these things. He says we cling to these things, and that’s the suffering. The word for “clinging,” upādāna, can also mean, “to feed, to take sustenance.” We go around feeding all the time, trying to find happiness in these things. Yet there’s always a sense of frustration because the happiness that they provide doesn …
- Walking Meditation: Stillness in Motion… Look for whatever you can recognize as form, feeling, perception, thought construct, or consciousness within the concentration, and then contemplate its behavior. One simple way is contemplating the activity of perception. To what extent does the perception you’re using as a marker for your concentration create stress or disturbance for the mind? Learn to observe that perception, the label you place on things …
- Perceiving the Breath… You have to learn how to ferret out what you want to pay attention to and consciously ignore anything else.” In the same way, you find that a lot of these thoughts, if you don’t pay them any attention, begin to lose interest. They’re like stray cats and stray dogs. They come to you for a little food. If you pay them …
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