Search results for: "Perception"
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- The Buddha’s Program… What anticipations, what ideas, what perceptions, what assumptions are we bringing? You see this clearly in the breath: The way you picture the breath to yourself will have an influence on how the breath actually goes right now. How you tell yourself to focus on the breath will influence how the breath goes right now. This is why we try out different assumptions about …
- Disenchantment… You look for the origination of whatever desire you have—for forms, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness—and you see that it originates in the mind. What is it in the mind that wants these things? What wants to take the raw materials, the potentials in the present moment for these things, and turn them into actual aggregates? And then from the aggregates …
- Reflect on What You’re Doing… The perception would be the mental image you have of how the breath comes in and out of the body. Fabrication would be your intention to stay here. It starts out with directed thought and evaluation as you talk to yourself to get the mind to settle down, but even as you drop those activities, you’ve still got the fabrication of intention to …
- Unchanged by Loss… They’re perceptions you can use to start shaping your mind in a new way. He says to make your mind like earth. People throw nice things on the earth, people throw disgusting things on the earth, but the earth doesn’t react. Hold that image in mind, and remind yourself that whatever comes your way, you can stand it. Aging comes, you can …
- Your Inner Mob… It’s just that, at the time, your perceptions were skewed. The Buddha compares each of the hindrances to a different kind of water. Sensual desire is water with dye in it. Say there’s red dye in the water: The things in the water look red, but when you take them out, they’re not. It was just the dye in the water …
- Staying in Position… Hold that perception in mind. If there are parts of the body where the breath energy feels blocked, think of it as getting untangled. Think of that blockage dissolving. Or you can breathe around it, breathe through it—whatever way you find helps keep the breath flowing, keep the blood flowing. And let this perception cover the whole body. Sometimes a pain in one …
- Potentials… You probably know the passage where the Buddha says that you look at form, feeling, perception, fabrication and consciousness, and you ask yourself: “Are they under your control? Can you have them be the way you want them to be?” The answer is “partially.” Most people tend to think that there’s nothing you can do about them at all. You’ve just got …
- A Path of Skills… You’re focusing on the process of fabrication—how the mind puts its experience together—through the way it breathes, through the way it talks to itself, the perceptions and feelings it holds in mind. Even when the breath leaves you, that knowledge of the other types of fabrication will be there to sustain you, because you’ll need to know how the way …
- Make a Difference… All you need to keep the mind with the breath is just the perception of breath, or the perception of oneness with the breath. This is like going even beyond being a cowherd. You don’t even have to be the cowherd who’s aware of the cows wandering around: You’ve gone beyond cows entirely. This is the state in which the Buddha …
- Mindfulness of Death… Whatever perceptions are going to be helpful, you focus there. Keep in mind the perception that you’re making some important choices, so you don’t want to drift off. If you do find that you’re awfully sleepy and drowsy, remember other good topics as well, like goodwill. Remember that image the Buddha gives of the bandits cutting you up. At the moment …
- Gradually Sudden… If you aim too directly at the insights without getting the causes right, it turns into what we call vipassanā-saññā, perceptions of insight, which are not the real thing. Remember, perceptions are compared to mirages. You want to force yourself to have an insight, you’ve heard about what the insights are, and so the mind tries to create them. It’s the …
- The Need for Stillness… seeing whatever movements of thought, or feeling, or perception are going on, and also the part of the mind that seems to be humming along with them, or following along with them, commenting on them. You can see the first kind of thing arising and passing away, and that is an important element of insight, but the other element lies in seeing the part …
- Stake Out… In fact, that’s a good perception to hold in mind: that every cell in your body is breathing in, breathing out, and everybody is breathing together. See what happens when you hold that perception in mind. You can get more and more familiar to subtle breath energies in the body and to where the energy is blocked. Learn which blockages you can work …
- Passion for Nostalgia… The memory is composed of some feelings, some perceptions, some thought fabrications. Just tease them out: Which are the perceptions? What are the ways you’re talking to yourself about them? See those as separate components. The more you see them as separate components, the more you realize that they’re pretty ephemeral: hints, whispers, shadows of things—nothing really substantial. And yet you …
- Even Animals Can Be Trained… But in the meantime, how are you going to get there? Right view is made up of perceptions and thought fabrications. Right concentration is made up of all five of the aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness. But these are things eventually you’re going to have to go beyond. You’ll have to learn how to stop clinging to them, but …
- Against the Grain… There are others who are more perceptive and realize that you need something that’s going to be much longer lasting, much more solid. They train the mind. But then they reach a sense of well-being in the meditation. In some cases, you can relax into a sense of well-being and decide that’s enough and you don’t want to be …
- In Times of Danger and Fear… What kind of perceptions do you have of the breath? What kind of beliefs do you have about the breath? What sensations do you associate with the breath? Are those sensations necessary? Sometimes there are painful, tense sensations that go with your breathing, but they don’t have to be there. Yet you allow them to be there because, again, you’re ignorant. You …
- Fear of Concentration… Here it’s helpful to have the perception in mind that there’s breath energy filling the body, and if the body needs any energy in any part at all, in terms of breath energy, it’ll come. It doesn’t have to come through the nose. It can come through the pores, or from another part of the body. Hold that perception in …
- Mindfulness Like a Dam… This perception feeds on that perception. They are interconnected, but they are somewhat distinct. And you want to see them as separate from one another, and separate from you. That, he said, is how you get past ignorance. You learn how to see things in the six senses and all the processes around the senses as something separate. So there are many currents to …
- Positive Capability… The Buddha teaches us the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, not-self, not just to say, “This is how things are,” but to point out the drawbacks of the things we find attractive, and to figure out why, even though we’ve run into their drawbacks many, many times, we still go for them. Like the case of the king, King Koravya: Ven. Ratthapala had …
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