Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- Beyond Natural Suffering… form as a clinging aggregate, feeling, perception, fabrication as a clinging aggregate, consciousness as a clinging aggregate. The usefulness of the synopsis is that you realize that clinging to these five things: That’s suffering. The clinging is the problem. So when you have any experience of suffering, you have to look for the clinging. You look for what it is that you’re …
- The Buddha’s Investment Strategy… As you apply these qualities to the process of breathing, you’ll see that it’s a kind of fabrication. There’s a willed and intentional element in there. And because there’s an element of will, you can change it. You can find ways of calming it down. This way you give rise to discernment as well, leading to concentration. These two qualities …
- The Image of the Raft… The Buddha identifies suffering as clinging to the five aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions, thought-fabrications, consciousness. And there are four ways of clinging. You can cling in terms of sensual pleasure, sensual desire; you can cling in terms of your views; you can cling in terms of your ideas of what should and shouldn’t be done; and then you can cling in terms …
- A Meditation Karma Checklist… Then you calm the fabrication of the body. In other words, you calm the way the breath has an impact on the body. These are things you choose to do. Always have it clearly in mind what you’re going to be doing. Otherwise, you sit here and the mind wanders there a bit, wanders back, comes here, goes there, deals with the pain …
- Breath Energies… At the same time, you learn a lot about this process of fabrication: how the in-and-out breathing has an effect on the different parts of the body; how your perceptions have an impact on the breath, in addition to an impact on the mind. They talk about perceptions being mental fabrications, having an effect on the mind, but they also have an …
- On Being Non-reactive… That leads to the fourth step, which is to breathe in and out calming what the Buddha calls “bodily fabrication,” which is another term for the in-and-out breath. The reason he uses that term is because he wants you to notice the extent to which you’re actually shaping the breath through your intentions, and how you can calm those intentions down …
- Not-selfing Your Selves… But the fact that we see the identity as a useful strategy, a useful tool, means that we’re going to hold onto it regardless, no matter how many times people point out the fact that form is inconstant, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness, are all inconstant. Still, we feel, “Well, at least they’re constant enough for us to use.” And the effort that …
- Skills of the Dhamma Wheel… You don’t dig deeper to see, “Wait a minute, what’s going on here? Is there an element of intention here? Is this fabricated or is it not?” In one of Ajaan Maha Boowa’s Dhamma talks he tells you to test everything, to be willing to destroy everything that comes up, because whatever is really true and really unconditioned is not going …
- Appropriate Attention… You’re clinging to the five aggregates of form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness. And why are you doing that? Because of craving. Now, that right there is pretty radical. Most of us, when we suffer, tend to focus on the causes coming from outside. This person did that, that person did this, the society’s like this, the weather’s like that …
- The Brightness of Life… Even the five aggregates—form, feeling, perception, thought-fabrications, and consciousness: The Buddha says that they do have their pleasant side. They’re not all suffering. So his understanding of life, his understanding of the world, had a lot more nuance—and was a lot more useful. He didn’t say life is suffering. When he made his shortest explanation of suffering, he says …
- Over the Pass… Right after ignorance comes fabrication, and after fabrication comes consciousness, and then name and form. These are just events. Form is your sense of the body as you feel it from within. Name is a whole collection of mental events: feelings, perceptions, acts of attention, acts of intention, contact among these things, without any reference to whose they are. When they first arise, that …
- What Are You Doing Right Now?… You begin to see that this, too, is fabricated, put together through intention, and because it is fabricated, it can’t really last. So even though the stillness, the peace you may gain this way may seem very elemental, it’s still constructed. Some people get the idea that they’ve reached the ground of being, when the body is filled with awareness, your …
- Patience & Urgency… It’s totally your fabrication. And if it’s a fabrication that’s causing you to suffer, why do you want to keep doing it? Why do you want to hold on to it? These are some of the questions you can ask. But you may find that as soon as you bring up the issue, all those questions just disappear, and you move …
- Don’t Objectify… Feeling feels, perceptions perceive, fabrications fabricate, consciousness cognizes: That’s how he defines these things. So they are activities too. And yet we turn them into things, latch onto them, turn these things into our self, and then they turn on us, entangling us in conflict. The same with the world. He says that our basic ideas about the world come from our six …
- To Sustain Your Practice… This is where those three types of fabrication that we’ve been talking about come in. One is learning how to breathe in a comfortable way. That gives you a sense of well-being, being on the path. Viscerally, it feels good. You may be in difficult situations, but you can learn how to breathe in a way that doesn’t add to the …
- 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 …
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