Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- The Wisdom of Ardency… Others require what he calls the fabrication of exertion, where you have to figure out how the way you’re breathing is contributing to the problem, how the way you’re talking to yourself is contributing to the problem, how the perceptions you hold in mind, how the feelings you pay attention to are contributing to the problem. From there, you learn how to …
- Factors for Stream Entry… Then the Anathapindika points out that if you hold on to any of those things, those things are inconstant, stressful, put together, fabricated. Things of that nature are stressful, so if you’re going to hold on to them, you’re going to be holding on to stress. So they ask him, “What is your view?” He says, “I see that whatever is fabricated …
- Meaning & Purpose… We suffer because we’re attached to form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. But we can use those things to create the path, and we hold on as long as we need to. The Buddha makes a comparison with relay chariots. You take one chariot, you hold on, and it takes you a certain distance. Then you get into another one and that takes …
- When Things Aren’t Going Well… When you learn how to bring them under control, then this process of fabrication, for example, can turn into the path. Many of the elements of dependent co-arising have the potential to become path factors. Attention, in name-and-form, can become appropriate attention. Fabrication can become the comfortable breathing and directed thought and evaluation of right concentration. So it’s all right …
- Control… Once you understand the process of what the Buddha calls fabrication, the intentional actions around the breath, that sharpens your sensitivity, so that you begin to see other kinds of fabrication as well, particularly in the way the mind talks to itself, the feelings and perceptions that it creates in the present moment. Some of these are the results of past actions, but a …
- Respect for What’s Noble… form—this body of ours, which is constantly changing—feeling, perception, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. These are all activities that are involved in feeding: The form is the form of the body, the form of the food we eat. Feeling, in the feeling of hunger that drives us to eat, and in our desire for the feeling of pleasure that comes when we’re …
- All for the Sake of Freedom… There’s the fabrication, the directed thought and evaluation, and then there’s consciousness of all these things. All five of these things—form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness—are aggregates. Even when they form a state of concentration, they, too, are inconstant, stressful, and not self. And when the mind is really ready, it can then let go of all these things. At the …
- Defilements at the Door… name and form, or fabrication. What perceptions fuel your greed, anger, and delusion? What intentions fuel it? What ways of paying attention to things fuel these things? Look into those, because that’s where you can make a difference here in the present moment. You may not be able to choose who’s going to appear at your door or who wants to get …
- Why We Bow Down… And is it really worthwhile to say that these things are not-self, that you’d be better off not trying to lay claim to things? When you fabricate a really good state of concentration, what proof is there to deny that that’s best there is, so that you should maintain what you’ve got and never let it go? After all, there …
- Tough Goodwill for a Tough World… These are fabricated things, but you can make them strong. This is how brahmas become brahmas. They started out as human beings and learned how to make their goodwill strong, so that they were able to feed off of that goodwill. That then got them to the brahma realms. Ideally, though, you want to find something better still, something that’s not fabricated. In …
- Something to Stand On… If you want something really dependable, you’ve got to find something that doesn’t change—something that’s not fabricated, something that’s not conditioned. But in the meantime, we can work on the path, which is fabricated and will get us to where we want to go. It’s like one of those old cartoon films where people are riding along in …
- Goodwill & Kamma… Every perception, every fabrication, even plain old consciousness contains an intentional element. Something is fabricated out of a potential, coming from past kamma, and turns into an actuality. Just like the issue of past kamma in general: What you focus on is going to become the actual kammic result you experience. And so it’s the intention there that’s important, the intention to …
- Not Resolved on Self… You see the deathless by getting more and more sensitive to how you fabricate your experience until you begin to reflect on what it means to fabricate an experience. In other words, you look at the question of skillful and unskillful actions until that becomes your focus. That’s where you’re resolved. Right resolve is not resolved on deconstructing your sense of self …
- Stress… In the same way, you turn around and look at what the mind is still doing in this process of fabricating a state of concentration that still feels burdensome, even though the concentration itself is extremely light in the sense of not requiring all that much effort. Still, there’s a fair amount of fabrication going on. You look at some of the suttas …
- Train Your Hunger (The Sea Squirt)… That’s basically saying that there’s no true happiness to be found through fabricated things, so just give up on the whole idea of happiness and just be equanimous. That’s defeat. As the Buddha said, though, one of the names for the noble eightfold path is unexcelled victory in battle. You battle the ignorance that’s been guiding your hunger, and you …
- Pleasure & Pain… As you begin to take apart all these various strands of fabrication in the mind, you’re going to run across something that’s unfabricated, at the point where the mind has no intentions at all to weave things together. When that happens, it’s very dramatic. Things open up in a totally new way. That’s one of the main benefits that come …
- Firmly Intent… I’ll try to calm the fabrication of the body”—which is basically the breath, the impact that the breath has on your experience of the body—“I’m going to calm that down.” Okay, those are the messages you’re going to send to yourself. Try to be as consistent and as thorough and as persistent as possible in those messages. Those messages …
- Right Speech… It’s called verbal fabrication: the way the mind chatters to itself. What you’re trying to do as you meditate is to learn how to make this chattering, which is often a problem, actually part of the path, an element of your concentration that helps the mind to settle down with a sense of interest, a sense of comfort, a sense of wellbeing …
- Basic Wisdom… If really refined fabrication, really refined action is preferable to grosser action, how about no action at all? And it turns out there is a way you can get the mind to the point where there is no intention whatsoever. That opens you up to something that’s even more radical than the gradations of refinement. So it may be a logical step, but …
- When You’ve Played Enough With the Breath… The last two steps in the second tetrad tell you to be sensitive to mental fabrication and try to calm mental fabrication: You’re breathing in such a way—you’re using feelings and perceptions in such a way—to calm the mind down. In the third tetrad, you’re focusing directly on what kind of states you want the mind to have. The …
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