Search results for: "Perception"
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- Free Not to Suffer… Then there are perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are labels you hold in mind, images you hold in mind, or words that help you identify that this is this and that is that. Feelings are feeling-tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Those are mental fabrications. So, when something unskillful comes up in the mind and simply looking at it doesn’t make …
- More than Mindfulness… What was the difference? He saw that there was a perception of the attractive and a desire for the perception of the attractive. It was that desire that was the problem, so he focused on that. That was when he had the experience that actually cut through things. There has to be an intensity to your quest. There has to be some ardency in …
- Dignity in the Face of Hardship… We can fabricate the perceptions that we bring to the meditation. When we learn these skills in the meditation, we can apply them to everything else. Whatever happens in life, we can see: How are we breathing? How are we talking to ourselves about this? What perceptions, what feelings are we focusing on? It’s through those fabrications that we maintain ourselves both in …
- Firmly Intent… So that perception doesn’t work. Try a different one. Try a different message. Think of the body as being like a big sponge, with holes all around. As you breathe in, the breath can come in through all the pores. Just hold that perception in mind. See what happens. Keep on sending that message. You get the idea. Part of it is just …
- The Right to Repair Your Mind… When you’re sitting here, try not to bring into the concentration the perception that you’re facing forward. Your eyes may be facing forward, and we live in a world where we think that we’re facing in one direction and we tend to carry that perception into the mind, that the mind is facing in one direction, too. But as soon as …
- What Should & Shouldn’t Be Done… We can create them out of the different perceptions we have. So what is the perception that’s holding you in those states? Look at that action and the perception and you begin to see that that action is inconstant. And so this awareness that you’re holding onto is basically inconstant, too. The inconstancy may be very subtle, but it’s there. So …
- Basic Wisdom… He gets you sensitive to feelings of pleasure, the energy of rapture, and the perceptions that go around rapture. Sometimes rapture can be perceived as something really pleasant and positive, and sometimes the same sensation can freak people out. You’ll notice the effect that the perceptions and feelings have on your mind, and then you try to calm that effect down, just as …
- Learning Through Healing… the perceptions you hold in mind. When you breathe in and out, what is the mental picture you have of the breath? Where does the breath start? Where does the breath come in? What does it do when it comes in? Where does it go in the body? When you breathe out, how does it go out? Does it need to be forced out …
- Analysis of Dhammas… What did you do when it went up? What did you do when it went down? What was the perception that made it go up? When the perception dropped, did it go down? Maybe they’re connected. Check it out. There’s lots to gauge: the perception, the point where you’re focused, the quality of the breath, the range of your awareness. There …
- The Raft of Concepts… Even when you’re in concentration, once you drop directed thought and evaluation, you still have perceptions. In fact all the states of concentration up to the dimension of nothingness are based on a perception — the label you hold in mind that keeps you in that state of stillness. Even though there’s no discursive thought, there’s still a concept there. So the …
- Looking in Three Directions… how it clings to things, how craving can motivate different perceptions. So simply in the act of protecting your meditation—watching over what you’re doing and evaluating how things are going—you gain a lot of insights. Sometimes we’re programmed to say, “Well, it’s not really insight until you see things as inconstant, stressful, and not-self.” But there are lots …
- Constant, Easeful, Self… Now, it may seem strange that he put these at the beginning of the meditation because these perceptions, these contemplations, are contemplations of discernment. The implication, though, is that even as you’re practicing concentration, you’ve got to apply some discernment to what you’re doing; to understand what you’re doing and to understand how to get past distractions to your practice …
- All Fabrications Are Stressful… Everything else—even the deva worlds, the Brahmā worlds—has to be filtered through form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, consciousness. And the simple fact that they’re fabricated in this way—whatever the experience is—means that they’re going to be stressful. You can’t take them as a place where you can really rest. That’s one level of stress, one level …
- A Sense of Yourself… You’re just looking at, “What are the talents, what are the skills I have at hand, so that I can actually master this path? And what are the things that are getting in the way?” Those are the things that you apply the perception of not-self to. And it’s easier to apply that perception and have it work when you have …
- What Are You Doing in the Present?… A little stirring of energy in the body and the mind, and then you slap a perception on it, put a label on it: This is a thought about x, it’s a thought about the future, a thought about the past, this person, that person. You should ask yourself, where did you get this line up of perceptions you slap on things? Where …
- Attention & Intention… So to get to work on our duties, we start looking at the things we hold on to, the things we cling to, the things we crave, in light of the three perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self. It’s a choice we make. Here again, there’s an intention involved. As the Buddha said, fabricated things do offer their pleasures. Sights, sounds …
- A Snare of Death Laid Out… It means the mind’s fascination with planning them, all the embroidery we create around them, all the perceptions and feelings and thought constructs—verbal and mental fabrications. Often that’s where our craving is focused. Often, when you desire a person, it’s not the person you desire. You desire your perceptions and thoughts of the person. So you want to get the …
- Karma in the Present… Now, to do this requires perceptions, which is one type of mental fabrication. The other is feeling: You’re creating feelings of ease with the breath, and it’s all done by holding in mind a perception of the breath, preferably the breath as a full-body process. The whole nervous system is involved. In this way, there’s a greater sense of ease …
- The Image of the Raft… You hold in mind your image of how the breath runs through the body and you try to choose a perception that allows the breath energy to flow freely so that the sense of ease you get from the breathing can flow throughout the whole body— that’s perception. You talk to yourself about which ways of breathing are skillful, which ways of breathing …
- Artillery All Around… Then there are the feelings and perceptions you also bring: That’s mental fabrication. We’re doing this all the time. Every experience we have is taken from some raw materials from the past, which we then fabricate into a present experience. It’s like baking a cake. You don’t just have a ready-made cake appear out of nowhere. You’ve got …
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