Search results for: "Perception"
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- 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 …
- A Becoming Critic… You do it through the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, the perceptions you use—the images you hold in mind or the words by which you label things—along with the feelings you focus on. Notice how you put these things together to make a state of becoming. It’s like learning to be a film critic. You don’t …
- Attachment to the Body… The Buddha goes on to have you meditate, focused on the breath, inducing a sense of rapture, a sense of pleasure, getting sensitive to mental fabrication, in other words, your feelings and perceptions: the perceptions you hold in mind as you visualize the breath to yourself, as you visualize the breath moving through the body, and then the feelings of ease that you’re …
- Your Tranquility & Your Insight… As the breath gets more gentle, more subtle, you hold in mind the perception that the breath originates from inside, so that you don’t feel so much the need to pull it in from outside. You let it radiate from within. As good breath energy fills the body, the need to breathe in and out gets less. Of course, as the mind settles …
- Discernment on the Path… Can you develop a more refined perception of the breath? But if you find that asking these questions is beginning to destroy the concentration, drop them for the time being. An important principle in practicing is having a sense of time and place. When are you ready for a particular stage? This requires trial and error. You try analyzing things a little bit, and …
- Being Somebody, Going Somewhere… His teachers taught him the dimension of nothingness and the dimension of neither perception or non-perception—very refined attainments. But he had a clear idea of where he wanted to go. He wanted the deathless, and he could see that neither of these were deathless. When he saw that these weren’t what he wanted, he moved on. If he hadn’t been …
- Meaningful Freedom… You’ve noticed that holding certain perceptions in the mind will have an immediate impact on the breath. With other perceptions, you hold them in mind, and it takes a while for the effect of the perception to take hold. So you’re working with causes of both kinds. And that’s a lot of the skill of the meditation right there: figuring out …
- Desire… He tells you when there’s a perception in mind that allows for stillness, you try to settle the mind and make it stable, make it confident in that perception. The more solidly you can develop concentration, the easier it is to let go of other things. If the concentration is still wobbly, you’re half holding on to the concentration, and half holding …
- The Stakes Are High… Even though you’re right here, you begin to realize the extent to which you create your sense of the body through your perceptions. The perceptions are the ones that tell you where your hands are right now, so if you need to do something with your hands, you know which muscles to activate. But as you’re sitting very still, you don’t …
- Strong-hearted… Sometimes you hear it expressed as the three characteristics—seeing things as being inconstant, stressful, not-self—but those the Buddha calls perceptions. And those perceptions have meaning within the context of the framework provided by the four noble truths, which is that you’re trying to comprehend suffering and abandon its cause. So anything that would give rise to the desire to cling …
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