Search results for: "Fabrication"
- Page 43
- The Noble Truths Come First… Not just all fabrications, but all dhammas—all phenomena, fabricated or not—are not-self. That’s the perception you apply to that experience. That’s when you’re totally free. You can develop dispassion for that, too. That may seem like a subtle issue: Which comes first, the four noble truths or the three perceptions? It may sound like it’s applicable only …
- Respect for Emptiness… When it’s not disturbed, you can look into it more carefully, to the point where you see that even the emptiness of concentration is fabricated. It, too, is empty of anything worth taking as you or yours. When you see this, you lose the passion that keeps you fabricating it, and in that way the mind is released. That’s when these two …
- New Feeding Habits… So you use these forms of fabrication and you can be mindful to get the mind to settle down. Once it’s settled down, there can be strong states of concentration and you can feed off the sense of well-being that comes from the concentration. As you do this, you’re getting to understand your mind in terms of the factors of fabrication …
- The Desire for Things to Be Different… You don’t stop with equanimity, because you see that it, too, is fabricated, and there must be something better. You finally reach the chariot that takes you to where you want to go, a place with no limitations at all. It’s the end of desire. It’s the end of wanting things to be different—not because you’ve told yourself that …
- Matters of Life & Death… In the Buddha’s instructions on breath meditation, you learn how to calm bodily fabrication, which is your in-and-out breath, and you calm mental fabrications, which are perceptions, and feelings. These perceptions are going to be the big thing you’ve got to learn how to deal with. As you grow old, there will be the perception of your getting old. As …
- Training Your Selves… You latch on to something—to form, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, fabrications, consciousness. In latching on to these things, you make yourself subject to things that you don’t want. So there is a way out that doesn’t involve just being accepting or resigning yourself to the way things are. We were talking today about the translation of dukkha sometimes as unsatisfactoriness. It …
- A Path of Skills… You’re focusing on the process of fabrication—how the mind puts its experience together—through the way it breathes, through the way it talks to itself, the perceptions and feelings it holds in mind. Even when the breath leaves you, that knowledge of the other types of fabrication will be there to sustain you, because you’ll need to know how the way …
- What You’re Bringing… They’re just perceptions turned into fabrications. That’s all they are. When you can see them as that’s all they are, then it’s a lot easier to let them go, because they’re de-personalized. Otherwise, it’s very hard to let them go. But when you see these are just instances of what the Buddha was saying—fabrications of different …
- Protection Through Mindfulness Practice… After all, these are things that we fabricate. We’re really good at putting them together. A little sensation here, a little sensation there, you tie them together, and there you are: Lust is overcoming you. It’s laid claim to your body and to your mind. You’ve suddenly got all that pressure inside that you’ve got to do something about. The …
- The Equanimity of a Victor… You fabricate thoughts and you’re aware. These are things you’re doing, and you cling to these actions in ignorance. That’s the suffering. It’s an active verb. Most of us don’t think of it that way. It’s because we don’t think of it that way: That’s why we’re defeated by it. Ajaan Lee’s image is …
- You Are Not Powerless… And although it’s true that you can’t make a fabrication permanent, you can make fabrications that lead to well-being in this life, in future lifetimes, and the ultimate well-being, which is nibbana. In fact, the teachings are all about the powers we can develop. Look at the Buddha’s life. He was told again and again that his desire for …
- Skillful Judgment… But our feelings are fabrications just like anything else. You can learn how to fabricate them skillfully or unskillfully. This falls in with the next aspect of a person of integrity’s knowledge, which is the knowledge of groups of people. In other words, when you’re with this group of people, how do you speak? How do you act? What are the appropriate …
- Perceptions of Self & Not-Self… On the one hand, there’s the teaching that, as we chanted just now, form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness are all not-self. The six senses are not-self. The eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind are not-self. But then, as he pointed out, there’s the phrase another passage that we chant again and again, “I am the owner …
- Dwellings… When you see that, the mind tends to finally say, “Well, maybe what the Buddha says about dispassion for fabrications is a good idea, worth listening to. Maybe it would be better to find something unfabricated.” So you look around. You don’t want to leave concentration because the fabrications of an unconcentrated mind are even more burdensome. So you think about that analogy …
- Questioning & Acceptance… breathing in long, breathing out long, breathing in short, breathing out short; figuring out how to breathe aware of the whole body; noticing how the fact of the breath bodily fabrication can be brought to stillness, how it can give rise to a sense of rapture, how it can give rise to a sense of pleasure. There’s an active element of exploring aspect …
- Intelligent about Change… After all they’re part of the path, and the path is fabricated. But the goal isn’t fabricated. Once attained, it doesn’t fall away. The path doesn’t cause the goal. It takes you there. And the goal is something else entirely. So even when the factors of the path fall away, the goal remains. It’s like climbing a ladder up …
- The Third Frame of Reference… This backs up a little bit into the second frame of reference, where you’re aware of the process of mental fabrication. Among the mental fabricators are feeling and perceptions. This points to the fact that feeling can have an impact on the mind. If you can produce a sense of ease, a sense of wellbeing, a sense of fullness in the body, that …
- The Fourth Frame of Reference… In particular, you want to learn how to identify each of the clinging-aggregates—form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness—as events, activities, to see what spurs them into action and how they stop. Then you try to notice how you’re clinging to them: how you keep compulsively repeating them. Then you take your clinging apart. If something’s disturbing your concentration, take …
- Experimental Intelligence… There’s an element of will in all this, an element of fabrication in which you intentionally cause things to happen. That’s important for not only getting the mind to settle down with a sense of ease, but also for developing insight — because insight comes down to a matter of seeing cause and effect. I think it was Aristotle who defined intelligence as …
- A Good Foundation… Where does that come from?” It must be a thought-fabrication. What is that fabrication aiming at? In this way, you start with the body, and from there you start digging around in the different aggregates. The same when you’re dealing with pain: A huge part of the problem of pain is the perception that claims the body, that part of the body …
- Load next page...
