Search results for: "Perception"
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- Potentials for Awakening… Okay, what kind of perceptions would be calming for you right now? Perceptions with regard to the breath, with regard to the mind—give them a try. You think of the whole body breathing in without effort. It’s very calming. Think of your mind being willing to stay and not get bored or antsy. Whenever there’s any sense of “I’ve got …
- Determined Goodwill… You look at the way you breathe, you look at the way you talk to yourself, and you look at your perceptions and feelings. When you have the sense that you’d like to see somebody suffer, ask yourself, “How are you breathing? Is it aggravating your anger? How are you talking to yourself? Is it intelligent? Is it wise? Or are you just …
- Observe Your Concentration… A question came up recently, “When the Buddha was on his quest, he was able to recognize that even in the attainments that he learned from his first teachers—the dimension of nothingness, the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception—were not the deathless. How was he able to see that these things were not the deathless? Was it because he’d become …
- The Choice Not to Suffer… When the Buddha talks about events in the mind, he focuses on the cluster of intention, attention, perception, and feeling. So try to analyze your thoughts in those terms. Learn to look for the perceptions, the mental labels. How are you labeling the issue? That’s the perception. What do you want out of the issue? That’s the intention. What are you paying …
- The Skill of Stillness… Identify with the sense of being centered—happy to be centered—with the perception that everything inside is connected. The breath is going to calm down when you hold that perception in mind, so hold on to it steadily. This is the general pattern of the concentration: First you have to do your cleaning up work around the body, and then you get the …
- Clinging to Karmic Diarrhea… If it’s the breath, what kind of breathing do you like? Where do you like to focus on the breath? What kind of perception of the breath helps you settle down? This is something you have to evaluate for yourself. If not the breath, then what other topic do you find engaging? It’s important that you find something you like and that …
- The Reality of Your Thoughts… through physical fabrication, i.e., the breath; verbal fabrication, the thoughts and evaluations we make of a particular situation; and then mental fabrications, which are feelings and perceptions. The feelings here are feeling-tones: pleasure, pain, and neither-pleasure-nor-pain. As for perceptions, those are the labels we apply to things, the labels we apply to people; and it’s these labels that …
- The Solvent for Sticky Narratives… You happen to breathe in a certain way, talk to yourself in a certain way, certain perceptions come up, and all of a sudden you’re back in that old thought world. Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. You can breathe in a different way, think in a different way, hold different perceptions in mind. Take the narrative apart. Create something …
- Take Nothing for Granted… As the Buddha said, we fabricate our experience for the sake of having form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness, and then we use those things for the sake of happiness. So we have to remember why we’re here. Keep that in the background, and then set your mind on doing what needs to be done to reach to that goal of happiness, of real …
- The Mind’s Eating Disorders… There’s perception, your perception of what kind of hunger you’re suffering from. Is this a hunger for something salty? For something sweet? And then you look out and try to perceive what kind of foods out there would satisfy your hunger, trying to figure out what, to begin with, is edible and what’s not. Then there are fabrications: all the activities …
- Perspectives & Priorities… You begin to see the power of your perceptions—that there are certain ways of perceiving pain as being totally separate from your awareness, in which case, it can be there, but your awareness is not affected. This is why, in meditation, the seclusion we develop is based not only on tranquility but also on insight. You begin to ask questions about the perceptions …
- Food for Consciousness… There’s the perception of what kind of hunger you have, and of what food you need to satisfy the hunger. Then you look around trying to find things that fit in with that perception. Then there are all of the activities, the intentions to go after that food and make it edible—those are fabrications—and finally there’s the consciousness that feeds …
- Timeless Dhamma… This makes you more sensitive to how your perceptions affect your experience of even simple physical processes like the breath. This turns your awareness more and more inward, to the way the mind moves, to the way the mind’s intentions and perceptions, i.e., the labels it puts on things, have an impact on how you experience things, in particular your experience of …
- Secluded from Sensuality… Hold that perception in mind and see what it does. Sometimes the breathing will slow down dramatically when you do that. Areas that haven’t had much refreshment in the energy suddenly have a chance. The important thing is you get interested here, this breath element in the body. The more you get interested in it, the more you find that there are potentials …
- Respect for What’s Noble… The perception of what kind of hunger we have; the perception of what kind of foods out there will satisfy our hunger. Fabrication, trying to figure out how to find that food, and then when we’ve found it, how to fix it, how to maintain a source of food that goes on into the future. And consciousness, our awareness of all these things …
- Established in Full… This is where you bring in your perceptions of what’s going on as you breathe. For the most part, we think of the body as being a solid lump with some liquid, and the breath is air coming in, going out of that solid lump. But what if you were to change your perception: that your most immediate perception of the body, your …
- Open Are the Doors to the Deathless… When he talks about perception, you focus on your own perceptions. The same with thought constructs and consciousness: You look at these things as they’re happening, as he talks about them. And ask yourself, “How do I cling to these things? What’s the passion? What’s the desire I have around these things? Why is that?” Part of the mind will say …
- One Thing at a Time… Finally, there are perceptions and feelings. You’re trying to create a feeling of ease, and you hold in mind whatever picture of the breath in the body is helpful for getting you to settle down with that sense of ease. You can think of the body as being like a big sponge: As you breathe in, the breath is coming in from all …
- Death Is All Around… feeling, perception, thought constructs, and consciousness. You turn these things into a path. Focus on the breath, develop feelings of ease, spread them throughout the body. You use your perception of the breath to focus your concentration. You use your directed thought and evaluation, which are thought constructs, to keep your mind on the breath and to evaluate the breath. Then you’re aware …
- Body & Food… But you’re trying to catch the mind to see how it puts certain things out of mind so that it can fashion that perception of “attractive.” The perception of attractiveness has to have a big blind spot, and it’s willed. If you can catch sight of that, see how the mind can lie to itself, that’s when it gets a lot …
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