Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- Fighting Spirit… Then look at what the Buddha calls verbal fabrication – the comments you’re making on things as you’re doing them. Are you making good comments or bad? Oftentimes the comments we’re making on things are the worst part of the mind’s suffering. If there’s a pain, a difficulty – your mind’s not settling down and you’re chattering to yourself …
- Lessons from Stilling the Mind… As the Buddha said, you get to the point finally where bodily fabrication is still. What that means is that the sense of the in-and-out breath just stops. It’s not because you’ve lost touch with the body. You’re fully aware of the body. Think of the Buddha’s image of the man wrapped with a white cloth. Just as …
- The Kamma of Self & Not-self… This is where the Buddha teaches us to look at all fabricated things as inconstant, stressful, and not-self. In particular, the state of concentration you’ve worked on: Once it’s good and solid, you can see, “Where is there a disturbance here? What am I doing?” Part of the disturbance is going to be a sense of the “me” or the “I …
- Concentration Work… Where are there still any disturbances in the mind, even in the concentration? Concentration, after all, is fabricated. It’s made of your intentions. Even though you try to make your intention as steady and unmoving as possible, still there’s going to be some wavering. Only if you’re really still can you see that. And only if you’re really earnest will …
- Mindfulness Aims at Concentration… You’ve heard that there is a cessation of suffering that comes when you let go of all fabrications. You realize any stage of concentration, any topic of concentration you could focus on, is fabricated, and so would be inconstant. And the mind has had enough of that. How do you induce that sense of enoughness? By doing the concentration again and again, clearing …
- Perceptions & Potentials… Perception is one of the fabrications of the mind. Insight means gaining understanding of how fabrications work. The insight is not so much trying to see things as they are, but seeing things as they function. So, you’re seeing the function of perceptions. You’re seeing the function of feelings. You’re seeing how the mind puts these things together. All of that …
- Joy in Getting It Right… That requires verbal fabrication, mental fabrication, all the components of a good state of concentration. Generosity, virtue, and developing universal goodwill are the traditional forms of puñña, which is usually translated as “merit,” but is better translated as “goodness.” All too often, these forms of goodness are treated as something totally separate from the practice of meditation. But goodness and meditation are closely intertwined …
- Metacognition… You step back a bit and you notice how the concentration is fabricated, how it’s composed of aggregates. You learn to regard them as inconstant, stressful, not-self, alien, empty—whatever perception allows you to see that the concentration, even though it’s better than other ways of managing the mind, still has to be maintained, still has to be directed. It still …
- Developing the Path… You put together the raft out of what? Twigs and branches on this side of the river—in other words, your fabrications of the five aggregates. You put them together in a way that will take you across the river. And while you’re crossing, you hold on. Then, when you get to the other side, that’s when you let it go. After …
- Use Your Defilements… It’s one of the most important lessons you’re going to learn about karma and the whole process of fabrication anyhow. So that’s two of the aggregates. Then you’ve got perception, the images you hold in mind, both of how the breath comes in, how it goes out, and of how you can play with those perceptions. You realize that the …
- Training Your Moods… You begin to realize that what the Buddha taught about fabrication is a really applicable lesson right here. Because your mood is composed of what? The way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, the perceptions you focus on, the feelings you focus on: in other words, bodily, verbal, mental fabrication. So when a mood begins to take over the mind, begins to …
- The Wisdom of Ardency… What intentions was he focusing on in his own mind? What were they doing? That’s how he saw that the present moment is put together through your fabrications. What happens if you stop the present-moment fabrications? Everything opens up. And that’s when he found the end of suffering. He found the deathless. So he kept asking the right questions and being …
- The Power of Present Karma… You’ve been fabricating your experience all the way up to now; try to fabricate it so that it fits in with the different factors of the path. And remember that right view is not just seeing things in terms of the four noble truths or knowing the duties, but it’s also remembering that the whole purpose of this is to find the …
- The Luminous Mind… The path is something you fabricate. It’s something you will—a truth of the will. In other words, if you don’t will it, it won’t become true for you. So this is what we’re working on right now, trying to give the desire for what’s skillful more power over the mind, so that there can be more moments of …
- Skillful Selfing… The path that did work was to focus his desires on taking these aggregates, these raw materials from which we create our sense of self—the form of your body, feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness: taking these things that we normally grab onto to create a sense of self in a particular becoming, and turning them into a path. Even though there may …
- Broaden Your Range of Choices… What bad habits have I developed here? How can I change those habits? What perceptions was I holding in mind? That’s when you get into verbal fabrication and mental fabrication: the way you talk to yourself, and then the perceptions and feelings you use to spark things. There may be a perception that you’re a victim, or that you’re being hemmed …
- Focused on Your Duties… See what it is that you’re doing to keep this going and ask yourself, “Is there something that’s quieter, something less fabricated?” But before you get there, you first have to learn how to do battle with all the other things that have in the past pulled you away from concentration. Make sure you know all of their tricks and deceits, because …
- The Dhamma Wheel… Feelings feel, perceptions perceive, fabrications fabricate, consciousness cognizes. And we cling to these activities—in other words, we feed off of them. That’s where the suffering is, so that’s what we’ve got to focus on. Knowing the suffering or knowing that first noble truth is one level, then there’s knowing the duty with regard to it, which is to comprehend …
- Teachings to Rahula… When he talks about what are called the aggregates, there’s feeling—like feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain; perceptions—in other words the labels you apply to things; thought fabrications—the thoughts you put together; and then your consciousness of all these things. These are the terms that the Buddha has you use as you try to figure out what …
- Eight Principles… Learn to understand what this bodily fabrication is. It has an impact on feelings and, of course, feelings have an impact on the mind. And as you think about the breath and evaluate the breath, you learn about perceptions. All these fabrications—bodily, verbal, and mental—are intimately connected. And when you’re doing concentration, they’re all right here. You can see ways …
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