Search results for: "Form"

  1. Page 44
  2. The Three Perceptions & Their Opposites
     … Watch out specifically for applying a teaching in the wrong way that forms an obstacle to the practice. Anything that denies the power of choice, or the distinction between skillful and unskillful choices, goes against one of the basic principles underlying everything we’re doing as we practice. And any idea that you’re going to be arriving at right view prevents you from … 
  3. Honest & Observant
     … As you do that, you begin to see some of the forms of fabrication the Buddha talks about. You need to talk to yourself to be generous. You need to have a perception that it’s something worthwhile. The same with virtue: You need to talk yourself into being virtuous. You need to see that it’s worthwhile. As you develop perceptions around your … 
  4. Recognizing Fools
    One of the verses we chanted just now—Asevanā ca bālānam, paṇḍitānañca sevanā, not associating with fools, associating with wise people—describes a form of maṅgala, which means both protection and blessing. This is one of the ways you protect yourself and bless yourself: learning how to recognize who are the fools and who are the wise people—because not all the fools are … 
  5. Pleasure Has a Price
     … This is a totally harmless form of pleasure we’re working on here. To get really good at it, to even approach it, you have to loosen up your attachment to a lot of sensual thinking. That’s because a crucial element in getting the mind to settle down like this is to be with the body and yet not think about the body … 
  6. What Is One
     … food for consciousness, which in some cases he divides up as physical food, contact, intentions, and consciousness itself. In other places, he identifies the food for consciousness with the other aggregates: form, feeling, perception, and fabrications. It’s only arahants who don’t need to feed on these kinds of food. They feed physically, but their minds no longer need to feed, because they … 
  7. Disposable Worlds
     … All this comes from what in the beginning seems like a very innocent process, “Let’s entertain the mind with a few thoughts.” Or you see a thought forming and you say, “Let’s see where this one is going to go.” Curiosity kills meditators in that way, or at least, kills their meditation. So we have to remind ourselves of the drawbacks of … 
  8. Change
     … It’s interesting that in Thai the words mindfulness and discernment, sati and paññā, form a compound that means intelligence: sati-pañña. Intelligence is not only wisdom but also the ability to keep things in mind. You’re both wise enough and mindful enough to remember what is important to keep in mind: the things that will protect you. This is why it’s … 
  9. Renunciation Isn’t Deprivation
     … So renunciation is basically freedom in its highest form. That’s where the practice is aimed: at a mind with that freedom. But in the meantime, before you get there, the Buddha also recommends two practices in particular. They compensate for the fact that you’re not able to indulge in the pleasures of the senses and indulge in your thoughts of sensuality—your … 
  10. The Treasure Hunt
     … The Buddha once said that insight is knowledge of sankhara, fabrication, and fabrication comes in three forms: physical fabrication — that’s the breath; verbal fabrication — the directed thought and evaluation that give rise to words; and then mental fabrication — your feelings and perceptions. When you’re focused on the breath properly, all these things are brought together. There’s the physical fabrication of the … 
  11. A Good Buddhist Ego
     … The fact that you’ve made the raft out of things on this side of the river means basically that you’re taking the aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness—and turning them into the path. Like we’re doing when we concentrate: You’re focused on the breath, which is an aspect of form. You’re trying to develop a feeling … 
  12. Reading & Meditating
     … Well, feeling and perception are together in the factor for fabrication, and they’re together in the factor for name and form. Sometimes the feeling is invading your mind because of the way you talk to yourself: directed thought and evaluation, also in the factor of fabrication. Sometimes the feeling is related to sensory contact. Sometimes it’s related to craving. Sometimes it comes … 
  13. Fixing the Present
     … It’s because we have these forms of fabrication—taking the raw materials and turning them into our experience of the present moment—that we can make a change in the present. This way, when anything unpleasant comes up, we can ask ourselves, “What’s the past potential that I’m feeding on right here, and how am I fixing it?” It’s like … 
  14. The Sublime Attitudes in Context
     … He reasons that these brahmans regard gaining union with brahma as their goal, so he teaches the brahman these four attitudes, not just in a simple form, but developing these attitudes toward all living beings of all kinds, in all directions without limit. The brahman follows the instructions, and when he dies, he’s reborn as a Brahma. When Sariputta goes back and sees … 
  15. Wisdom & Compassion
     … Sometimes we think of Buddha’s wisdom as very abstract and intellectual, but in its original form, that wasn’t the case at all. It was devoted specifically to this problem: the fact that everybody suffers, and yet we don’t have to. The question is, how to put an end to that suffering. Even though we live in a human world that’s … 
  16. Things Don’t Have to Be This Way
     … In severe depression, people have a very ill-formed sense of self. This is one of the real misunderstandings of the Buddha’s teaching: When he talks about not-self, he’s not telling you, “Don’t have any sense of self; try not to identify with your desire for happiness.” That’s not what he’s teaching at all. Because, if you think … 
  17. Three Levels of Concentration
     … But there’s enough continuity so that the phrases form a larger whole. The same holds true when you start trying to stay with the breath. You may stay with a couple breaths and wander off, say, maybe between the in-breath and the out-breath, or the out-breath and the in-breath, and then start up again. This is normal. The important … 
  18. Three Noble Truths Versus Four
     … That’s form. The feeling of pleasure that comes when you stay with the breath is feeling. The mental image, the mental label that tells you, “This is where the breath is. This is how the breath flows. This is where you should be focused”: That’s perception. The directed thought and evaluation that adjust the breath to fit the mind, adjust the mind … 
  19. The Precepts
     … You take your ability to think, your ability to form thoughts, and you put it to good use. It’s not that you’re just supposed to snuff out thoughts of past and future, and be totally aware in the present moment. Now, if you could do that, or if you did do that, you’d have to go down to the looney bin … 
  20. Respect for Concentration
     … This is the kind of concentration that forms a basis for discernment. In other words, you can begin to analyze the concentration. You can think, but it doesn’t knock the concentration off its foundation. When the Buddha talk about the concentrated mind, he called it “ mahaggattam cittam ,” which means an expanded mind. Not a narrowed mind. It’s an expanded mind. That’s … 
  21. Keep the Mind from Wandering
     … The potentials you focus on are the ones that tend to get emphasized, that tend to be stirred up—the Pali word is “provoked.” The potential was lying there very still or in a subtle form, and as you focus on it, you amplify it. We tend to do this in a very unskillful way because we’ve never thought about it systematically. We … 
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