Search results for: "consciousness"
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- The Regularity of the Dhamma… In one analysis of dependent co-arising, he describes these factors as name and form on the one hand, and consciousness on the other. These two influence each other. Form is the form of the body. For example, you’re sitting here right now with the form of the body, your sense of the body, how it feels from within. That sense of form …
- The Six Properties… earth, water, wind, fire, space, and consciousness. It sounds like medieval chemistry. We’d do better though, to look at these properties as ways of categorizing the sensations that make up the way the body feels from the inside. The earth sensations are feelings of heaviness or solidity; water would be cool sensations; fire is of course warm; wind is the motion back and …
- If at First You Don’t Succeed… First is that it’s a type of consciousness, a consciousness without object, a consciousness without passion, a consciousness without limits. It’s not in space; it’s not in time. It’s something outside of the six senses. That’s one of the qualities. The second is freedom. This is where nibbāna fits in. In those days, when they saw a fire going …
- Learning by Doing… It starts with ignorance, and then there’s fabrication, consciousness, name and form, then you get to the sense organs, and then you get to the contact. This fact illustrates a principle the Buddha laid out in the first verse in the Dhammapada: All phenomena are preceded by the mind. It’s what’s going on in the mind prior to sensory contact that …
- Admirable in the Beginning, Middle, & End… It is a type of consciousness. You’re not blanking out. He calls it consciousness without surface. The image is of a sunbeam: If it lands on something, you can see the light. We look out at outer space, and a lot of it looks black. But every spot that looks black to us actually has light going through it. It’s simply that …
- Dreams & Voices… We talk about the committee of the mind; Ajaan Lee talks about all the different consciousnesses that are in your body: your consciousness, the consciousnesses of the worms and the germs, and those of the various spirits that are in or around your body. It’s easy to get them mixed up. They slip into the mind, either consciously or just barely subconsciously. They …
- What Are You Doing Right Now?… Then consciousness is the seed. For the time being, your consciousness is focused on the breath. You want to be focused on something positive, but the fact that you’ve got that seed, that nucleus, that spot where you’re focused: That’s important, because this is how your mind moves around from thought world to thought world. The same process happens when you …
- Respect for Tranquility & Insight… And they pointed out that just being with awareness is what? It’s your aggregate of consciousness. If you’re staying there, you’re clinging to consciousness. You’re clinging to the aggregates. The stress may be subtle, but it’s there. In that case, you want to learn how to peer into it and see: What are you doing? When does the stress …
- Potentials… The word for “property”—dhatu in Pali—can also mean “potential.” He could see the potentials in the world, everything from physical potentials such as the potentials for fire, water, earth, wind, and space, all the way to mental potentials, such as the potential for consciousness. There are potentials in the mind, like the potential for sensuality. It may lie latent, but it doesn …
- Heedful of Death… Sariputta tells him, “Try to detach your consciousness from sights, from sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. Detach it from the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind.” He goes through a long, long list, even to the extent of: “Detach your consciousness from the consciousness of these things.” In other words, anything that comes up as the object of your awareness, you try and let …
- Perception… So if you want to understand perception, the first thing you’ve got to do is learn how to do it consciously. The more consciously you stick with a particular perception — such as “breath” or “space” — the more you can understand how the mind fashions perceptions. You begin to detect where to look to see the less conscious perceptions, the ones causing stress and …
- Your Actions Are Yours… Stream-enterers have abandoned the idea that “I am this” with regard to the aggregates—either identifying with the aggregates, or identifying yourself as the owner of the aggregates, or believing that you’re in the aggregate—that is, for example, you might have a sense of infinite consciousness and you’re there inside the infinite consciousness, or you’re in there in the …
- Discernment in Concentration… Then of course, there’s consciousness, which is the awareness of all these things. So, there you are: You’ve got all five aggregates. And you get to know them because you’re using them—consciously. As you become more conscious of them as you play with them, you get familiar with them, and that sense of being familiar with them carries over into …
- Who Are You Trying to Please?… This is particularly an issue when you hit the infinitude of consciousness. You say, “Wow! This must be it! Everything just arises from here and passes away, and this consciousness, this awareness spreads everywhere, it’s not touched by anything. Everything comes out of this consciousness and returns to it.” If you forget that this, too, is an action, that this state is something …
- Truth Without Air Quotes… No perceptions, no thought constructs, no feelings, no sensory consciousness, no awareness of the body. As the Buddha said, it’s the ultimate happiness. And it is a state of knowing, even though you’re not engaged in the six senses. As he said, this consciousness is not experienced through the six senses. It’s something outside. The image he gives is of a …
- The Politics of Arising & Passing Away… You have consciousness that feeds off of craving, and the craving feeds off of consciousness, and these processes just go around and around and around. They keep each other going, along with all the other factors of dependent co-arising. You see that even little tiny things in your mind—which, as you simply watch them arising and passing away in the present moment …
- Is the Buddha’s Wisdom Selfish?… We feed off of form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. We feed off other people, too. And if we don’t learn how to get past this habit of feeding on other people, or our ideas of other people, it’s going to taint any efforts we make to help them. If you want your help to be totally free and totally pure, you …
- Strength of Conviction… Actually, the process of consciousness, as long as there’s craving, can keep on going because consciousness and craving keep feeding each other. This was an insight into time: that time has gone on for a long time, and it can go on for a long time into the future, too. Think about that. Like that character in Through the Looking Glass who liked …
- Skillful Attachments… So you have to consciously reopen this area of your awareness. Explore how the breathing feels in the back, how it feels in your legs, because it does relate to every part of your nervous system. The breath is what keeps the nerves going, keeps them sensitive, and there are many levels and layers of breath in the body. There’s the in-and …
- What Is One… There’s also the food for consciousness, which in some cases he divides up as physical food, contact, intentions, and consciousness itself. In other places, he identifies the food for consciousness with the other aggregates: form, feeling, perception, and fabrications. It’s only arahants who don’t need to feed on these kinds of food. They feed physically, but their minds no longer need …
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