Search results for: "Perception"
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- 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 …
- Right Here, Right Now… feelings and perceptions. Perceptions are the labels you put on things. Feelings are the feelings of pleasure, pain, neither-pleasure-nor-pain that you feel both in body and in mind. Well, those are right here as well. So what else do you need? You’ve got all the raw materials. It’s just that the mental qualities you need to bring to them …
- The Third Frame of Reference… Among the mental fabricators are feeling and perceptions. This points to the fact that feeling can have an impact on the mind. If you can produce a sense of ease, a sense of wellbeing, a sense of fullness in the body, that can have a nice soothing or energizing effect on the mind. There are topics or perceptions you can think about that are …
- Feeding on the Breath… We’ve got the feeling that comes when we stay with the breath, the feeling of ease, as the mind settles down with the breath, along with the perception of breath that we hold in mind, the mental picture that we have of where the breath flows. Then there’s fabrication in the way we adjust the breath, learn about the breath, explore the …
- Trust in Heedfulness… Rather, it’s learning how to sort out inside you which perceptions and which thought constructs are actually more trustworthy than others. And you can test them, if you get really clear on what you’re doing and what the results of your actions are—in other words, if you’re really alert. Those instructions that the Buddha gave to Rahula—even though he …
- Where Your Mind Gravitates… Why? You realize that it has a lot to do with the perceptions you build up around it. As the Buddha said, when you want to understand craving, you have to understand where its real location is. There’s that passage where he asks: A sight that you haven’t seen, a place you haven’t seen: Do you have any lust or desire …
- Experimental Intelligence… So one way of learning how to let go of clinging is to see things in light of those three perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self. You don’t stop with just seeing things in terms of those perceptions. At the same time, you have to learn the right time and place to apply them: when they actually serve the purpose of leading …
- The Strength of Conviction… how it focuses on things, how its attitude can change an experience from pleasant to painful, from painful back to pleasant—all depending on your perception, all depending on the feeling, all those elements of fabrication or the elements of name in name-and-form. What you see as important, what you see as unimportant: This can really change how you experience the body …
- Using Right Resolve Rightly… There will be a perception going on in the mind, “This is breath, breath, breath,” or “Still,” or “Here, here, here,” or whatever keeps you here. But it’s a very simple perception. There’s no discursive thinking going on at all. The mind really does get a sense of rest and energy from that. And from the second jhana, of course, it can …
- The Light of the World… It’s from that question that the Buddha set forth three perceptions that are useful to know as you’re checking on anything to see if it really counts as a worthwhile happiness. One, is it constant or inconstant? If it’s inconstant, of course, it’s not going to be long-term. Two, is it easeful or stressful? If it’s stressful, then …
- The Fourth Noble Truth… There’s not much thinking around that sense of oneness, aside from simply the perception that holds you there. But for the fifth factor, the Buddha gives images of a person sitting, looking at someone lying down; or of a person standing up, looking at a person sitting. In other words, your focal point shifts slightly to the mind observing your mind as it …
- When You’re Discouraged… That’s partly a false perception, but also it’s a perception driven by pride. Meditation sometimes requires the humility that “There’s a lot here to learn and I’m not there yet.” So you nurture the desire to do what you can as best you can and find satisfaction in the little steps of progress you make. Not the kind of rock …
- Lessons from the Breath… You understand that when you think, when you have feelings and perceptions, if you do that with ignorance, it’s going to cause suffering. But if you do it with knowledge, it goes in the other direction and helps form a basis for your other intentions as well. When you’re going to act—when you’re going to say things, do things, or …
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