Search results for: "Perception"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. Control
     … And then your perceptions: You ignore the flashing red lights. Stay with the perceptions of the breath as something that can permeate everything, that can flow anywhere you want. And use your directed thought and evaluation to improve things. The way the breath is going, the way the mind is relating to the breath, you can make these adjustments. Then you can direct your … 
  11. Wisdom for Dummies
     … You can learn how to breathe in a comfortable way, to think in a comfortable way, to fashion your thoughts and your perceptions so as to shape a greater sense of wellbeing. You don’t have to invest any money. Just take time and use your powers of observation. That’s what it all comes down to. These are very simple things, very simple … 
  12. Meditation as Play
     … And what’s the best way to know the mind? By trying different things, using different perceptions, focusing on different parts of the body. Try to get a sense of what it means to focus. Can you focus without tensing up around the focal point? And when you focus, are your eyes involved in the process? Can you do it without** involving the eyes … 
  13. Issues of Control
     … In the same way, as we deal with our aggregates—form, feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness—there are unskillful ways of trying to control them and there are skillful ways. You can actually turn them into the path. All five aggregates, for instance, are involved in concentration. Form, of course, would be the breath. Think of the breath going through the whole body. Feeling … 
  14. Oppressed by Old Kamma
     … You can start playing with your perceptions of the moment, playing with your perceptions of your distractions. If the sound of somebody breathing is bothering you, well, you can think of it as the sound of an animal. If an animal were breathing that way, would it bother you? No. Well, then, what’s the difference? “Well, an animal can’t help itself, but … 
  15. New Feeding Habits
     … We were talking earlier about how unskillful qualities come from the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, the perceptions you hold in your mind, but skillful qualities can come from the same things—the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, the perceptions you hold in mind. The difference lies in whether you do these things in ignorance or … 
  16. The Desire for Things to Be Different
     … You’ll find that the use of your perceptions will make a big difference: how you visualize the breath to yourself, how you pay attention to the different parts of the body, how you react to the parts of the body where there are patterns of tension. Can you focus on them in a way that begins to disperse the tension? Can you spread … 
  17. To Disturb Your Complacency
     … What’s this? What’s happening here in your mind right now? What’s your experience of form right now? What kind of feelings do you have right now? What are your perceptions right now? What are your thought constructs, your intentions? How about your consciousness right now? How do you experience these things? Are you suffering from them? If you are, what are … 
  18. Four Determinations
     … You desire a certain perception around the person. Or you desire a certain status: Like that old commercial about the BMW chill. A guy comes up to the top of a parking garage, he steps out the door of the elevator, sees his BMW in the midst of all these other old jalopies, and he just shivers, because it’s his BMW. In that … 
  19. Protection Through the Practice
     … You have unskillful attitudes, unskillful perceptions, and they don’t want to be questioned. So they try to discourage you, they try to look bigger than they are, like those frogs that puff themselves up or like the lizards that do pushups to look bigger. But if you’re bigger than they are, then you begin to see how puny their pushups are. You … 
  20. Standards for Thinking
     … What’s the breath doing right now? What impact does it have on the way you feel your body? And how are you perceiving things right now? Because our perception of the breath, the way we imagine the breath to ourselves, is going to have a huge impact on how we breathe, how we experience the breath in the body and what we can … 
  21. The Big Picture
     … And there’s mental fabrication, perceptions—the labels you put on things—and then feelings: feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Pay careful attention to that. These are the things you use to take the raw material provided by your past karma and turn it into your experience of the present moment. And they’re all right here. The breath is … 
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