Search results for: "Form"
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- Feeding on Ardency… It’s because of intention that you take the raw material for an experience of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, or consciousness, and turn it into an actual experience of those things. So there are many layers of feeding that go on in our experience, and because we can’t simply stop feeding, the Buddha’s path gives us something good to feed on. Think …
- The Limits of Control… So what we are doing as we’re meditating is to find out exactly how much control we can exert over form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. This is the point of all the aspects of the practice. Generosity, for instance: One of your first experiences of freedom is when you have something that’s yours, but you decide you want to give it …
- Why Mindfulness… good answer? Sariputta’s answer is interesting: “Our teacher teaches the abandoning of passion and desire.” And the follow-up question is: “Passion and desire for what?” For the five aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and sensory consciousness. There’s another follow-up question: “What danger does your teacher see in having desire and passion for those things?” The answer: When you have desire …
- The Heart to Keep Going… Part of your approach is to keep trying to develop a sense of the pleasure that can come from form, the way you feel the body from within. Whether or not the pleasure comes automatically, the fact that you’re aiming in this direction—trying to think of the breath, trying to think of the body right here, right now, as you feel it …
- The Rewards of Right View… Goodwill is a form of mundane right resolve. When the Buddha talks about mundane right view and mundane right resolve, mundane right resolve grows out of right view. Mundane right view, of course, is about karma and rebirth: teachings that the West has hated for so long. This hatred goes back to the eighteenth century, when people began to learn about Buddhism and right …
- The Conditions for Goodwill… When the Buddha talks about goodwill, he says it’s a form of mindfulness on which you should be determined—with mindfulness meaning something you keep in mind so you don’t forget. And you’ve got to be determined. You’ve got to keep working at it. You’ve got to be wise in how you understand goodwill and how you apply it …
- Who’s in Charge Here?… They’re there in potential form. And the Buddha shows that if you develop those potentials, they can take you far. So you take him as an example. You take the Dhamma, you take the Sangha as an example and try to bring those qualities into being within you. You find that you have a refuge that you can depend on inside. As for …
- Right Resolve & Right Concentration… And of these three forms of right resolve, the latter two are the easiest to see as good things. Even if you can’t bring yourself to follow through with them, it’s easy to see that they’re good. But giving up sensuality: People have a lot of problems with that one. They think, “What’s wrong with sensual pleasures? Are you saying …
- Antidotes to Craving… That’s one form of craving you’ve got to watch out for. If you find yourself clinging to it, you’ve got to learn how to pry loose the fingers of the mind. They keep wanting to hold on. Then there’s craving for becoming. You think about the different things you didn’t get to do or be in this lifetime, and …
- Right Fear… What he talked about was the precepts, because they form the foundation for any meditation practice that’s going to work. The details of when you’re going to meditate during the day and how you bring breath meditation into your daily life: Those are things that each person has to explore for him or herself. Which techniques work at which particular time: That …
- Shoulds & Wants… It’s a pleasure of form. When he realized that, that was when he got on the right path. Many of us have the attitude that if we’re enjoying the meditation and there’s a sense of pleasure coming up inside, there’s something wrong with us. We’re not doing what we should be doing. I remember when I was getting some …
- Unfabricated Happiness… As the Buddha said, it’s true happiness, harmless happiness, blameless happiness—one of those rare forms of happiness that really is more than worth the effort that goes into finding it, both for your own well-being and the well-being of people around you.
- Recollection of the Buddha… As he said, the qualities that allowed him to find that true happiness are qualities we all have in potential form, simply that we need to develop them. And developing them is something we can do on our own. Those facts have lots of implications for all of us, in terms both of the sense of the world in which we live and of …
- Priorities in Life… And he can’t even stay focused on an issue long enough to form a proper question or to really take the answer and do something with it. All he says is, “Hmm, that makes sense. That sounds reasonable.” Then he moves on. It’s a picture of the drawbacks of being in a position of power. You have to think about this as …
- Potentials for Good… When Ajaan Lee made those comments, he was talking about one of the forms of right resolve, which is to be resolved on harmlessness. You don’t focus on your bad points; you don’t focus on other people’s bad points. You try to focus on the good points. When you see somebody suffering, you focus on the potentials they have to become …
- Analysis of Qualities… It’s a practical question, answered with a practical form of discernment or wisdom. I was recently reading a footnote on the factors for awakening in a sutta anthology. The author was saying that the factor of analysis of qualities is the wisdom factor in the set—“although,” he said, “it’s defined as looking into what’s skillful and what’s not skillful …
- Mindfulness & Perception… That comes under the aggregate of form. There are going to be feelings of pleasure and pain, so you learn how to cultivate the breath in such a way that gives rise to pleasure. Use a perception to remind yourself to stay here. Then there’s fabrication, especially in the first stage of right concentration: You’ve got to keep directing your thoughts to …
- Values of the Noble Ones… So, look at your clingings as a form of addiction, and look at the problem of addiction as a failure of the imagination. One way to improve your imagination is to step back from situations and ask yourself, “What am I assuming here about this situation that’s actually keeping me trapped?” “What am I assuming about myself that’s keeping me trapped?” Those …
- The Focus on Suffering… In particular, there’s one form of suffering that’s very important to look at. It’s the suffering we’re causing ourselves. We tend to be more interested in the suffering coming from other people: the things they say, the things they do, their attitude towards us. That’s what gets us all worked up. And because we’re paying attention outside, we …
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