Search results for: "Perception"
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- Like a River Full of Water… What does the mind do that takes the pain of the body and makes it an issue in the mind? What perception of the pain does it have? How does that perception create a bridge into the mind? Can you drop that perception? What happens when you do? Try to develop the qualities of mindfulness, alertness, concentration, and discernment, so that you can see …
- Toward Release… In steps seven and eight, he tells you to breathe sensitive to mental fabrication—feelings and perceptions—and then to calm mental fabrication. Now, seeing things in terms of fabrication is one of the basic principles of insight and discernment: getting sensitive to how the actions of the breath fabricate your sense of the body, and how the actions of feelings and perceptions fabricate …
- Food Insecurity… Look at how you’re developing comfortable feelings through the way you associate with the breath, and at the perceptions you use to keep yourself with the breath. If these things are done in ignorance, they’re going to lead to suffering. If they’re done in knowledge, they’re going to lead to the end of suffering. You want to be confident in …
- Because the Mind Is Purposeful… And then mental fabrication—perceptions, the labels you put on things, and then feelings: feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. As you’re working with the breath, getting the mind to settle down, you’re getting hands-on experience with all three of these kinds of fabrication: the perceptions for instance, that you have of the breath as a whole-body …
- Dissolving Distress… Mental fabrication deals with your perceptions and your feelings, which shape the state of your mind. As you’re trying to stay with the breath, keeping it in mind, you realize you have to use certain perceptions, that you’re trying to generate certain feelings, and that both the perceptions and the feelings have an impact on the mind. At the same time, the …
- Defabricating Anger… bodily fabrication, the in-and-out breath; verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself; and then mental fabrication, the perceptions you hold in mind — the images or labels you place on things giving them meaning — along with feelings, feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. That’s what we’re doing right now. We’re trying to bring some knowledge to …
- Think… These are perceptions. You use these perceptions on the path, but when you get to nibbana, you’ve got to let go of all perceptions.” As he was delivering this answer, he kept saying, phicaranaa si, which in Thai basically means Think! Use your brains. It’s a theme throughout the forest tradition. Of course, it’s a theme in the Buddha’s teachings …
- Realities Right Here… feelings, perceptions, contact. Learn to see them on those terms, because that’s what you directly experience in the mind. When you get into a feeling or a thought world, you don’t see them in those terms. But when you can step back a little bit and can observe your mind, you begin to realize that’s actually what’s going on. So …
- Metacognition… If you’re totally lost in a particular thought world—your perception of things, your understanding of who you are—the world you perceive is going to be colored by that thought world. It’s like being in a bubble. Some bubbles are pink, some bubbles are blue, and as long as you’re in the bubble, everything you see, even outside the bubble …
- Cut, Cut, Cut… There’s some bodily fabrication, which is the breath itself; there’s a little bit of internal discussion, which is verbal fabrication; and there are some mental fabrications, which are the feelings and the perceptions—the labels you put on things. Those are all here. But they’re all here around something really simple. It’s when you keep things simple that you see …
- Fighting off Ignorance… As you hold that perception in mind—the perception of breath energy flowing without obstruction—you find that the actual experience of the breath gets a lot more comfortable. A sense of fullness can develop. What you’re doing here is taking the power you have to shape your experience of the present and learning how to use it with awareness. Not with ignorance …
- The End of Karma… Do they have to be that way?” This is why this is a useful perception, because it opens up possibilities for loosening up a lot of the tension you may feel in the body. Just hold that possibility in mind, because we’re trying to make the present moment here a good place to be, so that as we settle in with the breath …
- Reflections… The Buddha says it’s usually connected to a perception of some kind. There are different ways of perceiving the breath, some of which allow the mind to settle down more fully than others. Thinking of the breath as a whole-body process—your whole nervous system is involved—changes the way you relate to the feelings of the breath coming in, breath going …
- Acceptance & Equanimity… Take them apart in terms of your perceptions or in terms of your bodily, verbal, mental fabrication around the pain—how you breathe around the pain, how you talk to yourself about the pain, the perceptions you apply. Does the pain have an intention? Does it have a shape? Does it have a color? Is it solid? Call these perceptions into question. And simply …
- The Easy Way Out… You can take other people’s beautiful concepts—emptiness sounds wonderful, Oneness sounds wonderful, interconnectedness all sounds wonderful—but they’re just words, ideas, perceptions. You’ve got to learn how to question perceptions as part of the practice—and you need to develop your own sensitivity if you’re going to see things as they’re actually happening. That means looking at things …
- Around in Circles… Helping your sense of the body in the present moment is important too, but ultimately you’ve learned a lot more about what it means to be attentive, what role of perception plays, what role your thought constructs play, the questions you ask. All of these things you learn just by going over the same old territory over and over and over again. After …
- The Buddha’s Cost-Benefit Analysis… It often has to do with your perceptions about the person, the storylines you make up involving you and that person, or simply the perception of you in relationship to that person—all kinds of things that have nothing to do with the actual person. This is why our interpersonal relationships are so unreliable. We’re all caught up in our thought worlds, and …
- Fabricated Path, Unfabricated Goal… There were teachers who taught nothingness, or neither perception or non-perception—very refined levels of concentration—and as far as they were concerned, that’s all you needed. The Buddha noticed, “There’s still something stressful in here. There’s still something that’s not totally deathless, that’s not totally reliable in here. There must be something better.” It was his ability …
- Possessiveness… You focus on your breath; you talk to yourself about the breath to adjust it in ways that make it a good place to be; you focus on perceptions of the breath and perceptions of the mind that allow you to settle down with feelings of pleasure and ease. That’s what right resolve does: It takes the knowledge of right view and uses …
- The Joy of Renunciation… that what we experience in terms of form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness is based on what we’ve fashioned out of the potential for these things. We have certain intentions that make us fashion these aggregates. That applies to feelings of pleasure and pain. The pleasure you’re going to find in the precepts is something you have to fabricate. You do that …
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