Search results for: "Perception"
- Page 43
- The Power of Your Actions… They may be true about some things, but our views are made out of perceptions, and as the Buddha said, perceptions are like mirages. They contain a little bit of reality and a lot of unreality—but that’s what our views are made out of. The same with our ideas about habits and practices that we should and shouldn’t do. Even our …
- Making an Effort… The kind of happiness that comes through ordinary effort in terms of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, ideas, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness: There’s effort in all of these things. The basic building blocks of our experience, the five aggregates, require fabrication. Even before we sense things, there’s an element of fabrication going on in the mind. If the mind weren …
- A Multilingual Mind… What kind of breathing is skillful breathing? What kind of breathing is unskillful breathing? What kinds of perceptions are skillful, what kinds are unskillful? The breath and the questions about the breath are all elements in the process of fabrication. When you’re talking to yourself as you meditate, what kind of talking is skillful, what kind of talking is not? The meditation points …
- Oneness… It’s simply a matter of the perception you hold in mind. After the fourth jhana, you drop the perception of the form of the body — the still breath allows you to do this — and you can focus on the sense of space permeating the mist of sensations that remains. After that perception of space is unwavering, you turn to focus on what’s …
- Discernment Is in the Details… Does the breath feel comfortable? Where does it feel comfortable? If it doesn’t feel comfortable, what can you do to change? Do you change the rhythm of the breathing, the depth, the heaviness of the breath? Do you change your concept or perception of the breath? If you feel that you have to pull the breath in through some tiny nasal passages that …
- Concentration & Renunciation… the discernment to see what kind of perceptions you’re applying to the pain, in your relationship to the pain, that are aggravating it, that are actually forming a bridge from the physical pain into the mind, where they turn it into a mental pain and make it more than it has to be. So the meditation is here to help you not be …
- The Path Is in the Details… There’s a potential for form, for feeling, perception, fabrication, consciousness, but with your present intention you choose how to put those things together and turn them into actual forms, feelings, perceptions, and so on. This is something very quick. We’re very adept at it. Because it’s so quick, it’s hard for us to catch sight of it. And because we …
- Admit Your Stupidity… Then you have mental fabrications, which are perceptions and feelings. The perceptions are the images you hold in mind; feelings are feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. So you can ask yourself what kind of perceptions would be useful to get the mind to settle down. In fact, this is one of the ways in which you can develop tranquility and …
- To Discern Suffering… The perceptions, the labels you give to things: saying, “This is pleasure, this is pain, this pleasure I can handle, this pleasure I can’t handle.” Thought-fabrications add even more complex layers of likes and dislikes and analysis on top of things. And then there’s consciousness, your awareness of these things. We hold on to these things. This is how we suffer …
- Lust… feelings and perceptions. Again, this can relate to the breath. You create a sense of ease and wellbeing in the body; that feeling makes it a lot easier to let go of the need for immediate gratification through your defilement. You can say, “Look, I’ve got this pleasure here. Why not focus on the pleasure that’s already here, rather than on the …
- The World of the Noble Truths… What are you clinging to? What are you feeding on? Why? What’s the allure? And what are the drawbacks? It’s in this context of trying to comprehend suffering and abandon its cause that the Buddha teaches those three characteristics or three perceptions—the perceptions of inconstancy, suffering, not-self. That’s where they fit into this larger framework. All too often you …
- Not Getting What You Want… You grow confident, steadfast, and your mind gets released into its perception of just being with breath. The whole body: Think of every sensation you have in the body as being related to the breath somehow. Make a survey through the body: When you breathe in, where do you feel it inside? When you breathe out, where do you feel it? Is there a …
- Four Mountains Moving In… They can skew our perceptions, and our perceptions can skew our actions, distorting things so that even when we think we’re acting rightly, we’re actually following the wrong course and creating more trouble for ourselves, more trouble for others. So we have to watch out for these dangers. The dangers that can come from outside are real, but we can’t let …
- Calm in the Storm… verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself—what he calls directed thought and evaluation; and then mental fabrication, your perceptions and feelings—feeling tones, here, of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. As I said, if you do these things in ignorance, they lead to suffering, but if you do them with knowledge, they can actually become part of the path to the …
- Standing Outside Your Thoughts… He also gives you analogies, perceptions to hold in mind to remind you of the different ways you can relate to distractive thinking so that it doesn’t have to take over. Instead of going into the thought, you stay out of the thought. And as you’re staying out, you can stay out in various ways. In terms of the first method, the …
- Shaping Your Breath, Shaping Your Life… So, play with your perceptions. Adjust them. Perceive things in one way for a while; perceive them in another way for a while. Play with your sense of the form of the body: Breathe in one way for a while; breathe in another way for a while. You’ll get a sense of how different perceptions and different ways of breathing have an impact …
- Perfection in an Imperfect World… A lot of that has to do with your perception of what resources you have. There was that time when Ajaan Fuang announced out of nowhere one day that we were going to be sitting up all night. We’d been working pretty hard that day, so I said to him, “I don’t think I’ll be able to do that.” He looked …
- Trust in Heedfulness… The oneness itself is a disturbance; it’s an intention based on a particular perception. So what do you do? If you let go of the oneness, if you go back to having your mind scattered all over the place, that’s not skillful. The skillful thing is to go forward to more subtle states of oneness, based on more subtle perceptions. In other …
- Mindfulness as a Goad… When it applies a perception to something, you see precisely the moment when the perception gets applied. When you start thinking about something, talking to yourself about something, you begin to realize how many different voices there are in there. That’s because you’ve gotten very quiet but alert at the same time. And the mindfulness is what tries to keep you alert …
- Occupy Your Body… Because you’ve learned how to maintain one perception in mind—the perception of the breath, the perception of the whole body—and then allow your awareness to expand at the same time. This skill is what allows you to go solidly into the formless states, where the sense of the body disappears. You are sitting here. You haven’t gone anywhere else. If …
- Load next page...
