Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- 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 …
- A Timeless Foundation… Then what the Buddha calls bodily fabrication will begin to grow calm. Your mental fabrication—different perceptions and feelings—will begin to grow calm as well. The mind moves from a sense of being glad to be here, to getting concentrated, and then being released from disturbances. Ideally, all three tetrads work together. If there’s any disturbance, if your mind can’t settle …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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