Search results for: "Perception"
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- 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 …
- Healing & Protection… That way, when a physical pain comes up, you notice that the perceptions you have around the pain are the major cause for why that physical pain torments the mind, burdens the mind. You’ve been pulling the pain in through your perceptions, by laying claim to the pain, saying, “This is me,” or it’s invaded something that the mind has laid hold …
- Feeding While You Work… What is the perception? What is it that makes one perception attractive and another unattractive? Where does this idea of attractive and unattractive come from? It’s not from the body. It’s from the mind. When you’re thinking about death, death itself is not the problem, the problem is your attitude to what you’re doing right now. The methods of meditation …
- Safety… Mental fabrication – perceptions and feelings. You need the perception of the breath filling the body. You need to work on a feeling of ease and well-being. It’s all right here. Then as you get the mind still, watching yourself do these things right here, you’re learning how to do these things with knowledge. Then you can take that knowledge and you …
- Ask Yourself the Buddha’s Question… When the Buddha’s giving instructions on meditation, he asks you to find a perception—in other words, a mental label—that allows you to settle down and then you stick with it for a while until you can settle in. Then you ask yourself, “Is this good enough? Is there still some disturbance here? What am I doing that’s disturbing the stillness …
- Right but Wrong… For instance, with the three characteristics or the three perceptions: They’re useful for developing dispassion for suffering, developing dispassion for the origination of suffering. That’s why they’re there. If you use them for another purpose, you’re gone wrong. If you see that the pleasures of sensuality are very undependable and they involve a lot of stress, you’re using the …
- Moods Are Not-Self… bodily fabrication—the way you breathe; verbal—the way you talk to yourself; and then mental—the perceptions you hold in mind and the feelings you focus on. Those are the things that went in to create the mood you’re in, so you can change them. There are lots of ways you can change them. Think about those lists of topics the Buddha …
- There Is This… Which is why we have to develop this ability to be aware of something, see our perceptions around it, and see the thing and the perceptions as separate—and see our awareness as something separate, too. This applies to the good things in the meditation as well, all the way up through the path to find an escape. We’re going to run into …
- The Gatekeeper Doesn’t Just Note… This is where the contemplation of the three perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self come in. You see that whatever it is that pulls you away, it’s got to have one of these problems. It’s inconstant, stressful, not-self—in other words, you can’t control it. And those are just the main categories of the different perceptions you can apply …
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