Search results for: "Perception"
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- Dhamma Medicine for Free… Then there’s mental fabrication, feeling and perception. Feeling would be the feelings of ease or dis-ease associated with breath. Perception includes the mental labels, the images you have in your mind about the breath. When you breathe in, where do you think the breath comes in? When you breathe out, where does it go out? Is there one spot where comes in …
- A Mind Like Earth… The little tiny mind that says, “I can’t take it, I can’t take it,” that’s a perception that’s getting in your way. What is it as you’re sitting here that you’re asked to take? Well, the results of the meditation may not come as quickly as you want. You may have to figure things out. The Buddha doesn …
- Inner Worlds… Notice the feelings you’re focusing on and the perceptions you’re holding in mind. Try to bring these things together in a good way: Breathe in a way that’s nourishing. Talk to yourself in a way that’s nourishing. If the chatter in the mind weighs you down, pulls you down, blames everything on things outside, you’ve got to counteract it …
- Patience Is a Skill… But you can speed up the process a little bit by being as skillful as you can in your breathing, in how you talk to yourself, and the perceptions you hold in mind: those three fabrications. Keeping the image of farming in mind, of plants growing, is one useful perception to help with the process. As for skillful qualities that are actually getting in …
- Talking to Yourself… It’s called mental fabrication, *saññā *or perception: the words you use to label things, the images you use to present things to yourself. What kind of image is good to hold of the breath energy in the body? Do you want to be aware of the breath energy along the skin? Or do you want to have it go deeper into the different …
- The Courage to Set Yourself Free… Can you learn how to take apart the perceptions that would tell you otherwise? And make sure you don’t view yourself as being victimized by the pain. This is why I like that perception of the pain as being discrete moments of pain and, as each moment arises, it’s not coming at you. It’s going away. That way, you’re not …
- The Role of the Observer… Then there are perceptions and feelings—the labels we put on things and the feeling tones we focus on—pleasant, unpleasant, neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant: Those are mental fabrications. Those are our tools, our weapons in our internal battle over those thoughts that come into the mind and just seem to hang on because there’s part of the mind hanging on to them …
- Noble Wealth… Then he goes on to talking about breathing in a way to give rise to rapture, breathing in a way that gives rise to pleasure, breathing in and out sensitive to mental fabrication—feelings and perceptions—and then calming them. There again, you’re working with potentials you have, and you’re learning how to put them together in the right way so that …
- Quiet in Every Way… When you can stay on these topics, they’re called perception-attainments. At that point your thinking isn’t called directed thought and evaluation. It’s simply perception , the labels you put on things, which hardly qualify as verbal sankharas. They’re mental sankharas. Verbal sankharas are sentences; these are simply words. But still they count as a kind of disturbance. Stay with that …
- Thinking About Rebirth… Actually, the perception of not-self is the shadow side of any perception of self. When you have a definition of who you are, there’s going to be something that you are not. The two go together. And the question is, where are you going to draw the line? We’re drawing these lines all the time. The Buddha simply wants you to …
- A Sense of Yourself… After all, the way we shape our experience in the present moment uses images, perceptions, and the Buddha’s giving you some good perceptions to play with. You can take what he’s got. Then you can think about other ways in which people try to get what they want in the wrong way. You might ask yourself, “To what extent am I doing …
- Give of Yourself… When something comes up in your mind that entails suffering, how does it relate to the way you’re breathing? How does it relate to the way you’re talking to yourself? How does it relate to the perceptions and feelings you’re focusing on? How can you change those things, so as to get rid of that cause of suffering? That’s for …
- A Good Place to Stay… You notice them as a little stirring in one part of the breath energy in the body, and then a perception gets slapped onto it: “This is a thought about this; that’s a thought about that.” And then you go running off. You want to catch that before you’ve run off. So, anyplace where there are little stirrings in the breath, try …
- The Power of the Mind… thoughts, intentions, perceptions, fabrications of various kinds. These are the things that shape our experience now and on into the future. Because the mind has power, we can use it in various ways. We can exercise choice in how to use it. If we didn’t have choices, the power would be meaningless. But this is a power for evil or for good—or …
- Thoughts About Thinking… Your discernment is going to require perceptions and thought-fabrications. So if you come across a perception, how do you know whether it’s part of the problem or part of the solution? You ask some questions. You look at its behavior. This is an aspect of the Buddha’s teachings that’s really distinctive: looking at the behavior of those activities in the …
- Taking the Long View… But the Buddha is saying that if you really want to comprehend clinging, you have to see that all of those things are composed of just form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness—things that are pretty ephemeral. When you see how ephemeral they are, you realize that this reality you cling to so much may not be so real at all, not so dependable …
- To Comprehend Suffering… What was the movement? Usually it’s a perception: the way you label things, saying this is this and that’s that. You see how that labeling creates a bridge between the physical pain and the mind. This insight teaches you a lot of lessons on how you cause unnecessary pain and suffering for the mind. It’s through your perceptions. It also gives …
- Farming Your Body & Mind… Or you can pay attention to your perceptions: These are the labels you have in the mind, the way you picture reality to yourself. Those play a role here, too. How do you picture the breath to yourself? Is it just the air coming in and out through the nose? Or is the flow of energy through the nerves, through the blood vessels? Which …
- Reflect… At some point you’ll have to realize that the problem is not the body, the problem is the perceptions of the mind, the intentions behind the perceptions of the mind. Why would you want to perceive the body as beautiful even after you’ve contemplated its unattractive aspects? Keep that image of the mirror in mind. In the very beginning when the Buddha …
- The Buddha’s Wisdom… When you finally get there, you find no perceptions at all can do justice to it. But you’ve used perceptions—as you’ve used all the other aggregates—as part of the path to get you headed in the right direction. But the goal itself is something beyond. That’s the wisdom of the Buddha, he points you there. He’s training you …
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