Search results for: "Perception"
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- What Are You Taking into the Future?… It’s a strange expression, it’s hard to say why the Buddha says it’s for the sake of “formness” or “feelingness” or “perceptionhood.” The Commentary tries to explain this way of phrasing the issue away, saying simply that we fabricate form as form, feelings as feelings, perceptions as perceptions, and so on. But that misses something which is very clear in the …
- Raise Your Standards… What did you do? What was the perception, the change in perception, change in mental fabrication? What caused the stress to go up? Letting go of what caused it to go down? Things you didn’t even realize you were doing suddenly become clear. That’s how you can see where you’re causing unnecessary stress. A lot of it we simply assume to …
- Action & Result… When you cling to form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrication, or consciousness, there is some pleasure. The Buddha doesn’t deny that. But the clinging itself can turn things into pain and can lead to more suffering. We go around defining ourselves this way all the time. This is why we get reborn. We find that the things by which we define ourselves are falling …
- Savor Your Breath… So play with the breath, play with your perceptions around the breath. Play with all the different kinds of fabrication that go into making up your sense of the present right here, right now. It’s in playing with them that you get to know them. It’s like learning how to play a guitar. You take the guitar into your room, you close …
- Present-Moment Intelligence… one, how you breathe; two, how you talk to yourself; and then three, the perceptions and feelings you focus on. Often these things are underground. Most people go through life without paying much attention to their breath. As for the way they talk to themselves, they take it for granted: This is the conversation, this is how it tends to be, these are the …
- The Treasure Hunt… physical fabrication — that’s the breath; verbal fabrication — the directed thought and evaluation that give rise to words; and then mental fabrication — your feelings and perceptions. When you’re focused on the breath properly, all these things are brought together. There’s the physical fabrication of the breath, there’s directed thought and evaluation directed to the breath, and there are the perceptions of …
- Commit & Reflect All Around… What you need is what the Buddha calls, “penetrative” knowledge, in which you understand some activity of the mind, good or bad; notice what’s causing it; notice its diversity—as the Buddha calls it—which means seeing what ways it’s good, what ways it’s bad; what’s the range of suffering or happiness that this particular phenomenon—like feelings or perceptions …
- Noble Right Concentration… form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness. Where are you going to see those aggregates? You see them in the concentration. The breath is part of form. The feeling of pleasure that arises as you stay focused: That’s feeling. The mental image you have of the breath: That’s perception. Directed thought and evaluation as you try to adjust the breath, play with the breath …
- Three Noble Truths Versus Four… That’s perception. The directed thought and evaluation that adjust the breath to fit the mind, adjust the mind to fit the breath: That’s fabrication. And then there’s the consciousness that’s aware of these things. You turn those five aggregates into a state of concentration. And in doing so, you’re fighting against those three perceptions of inconstant, stressful, and not …
- Discernment Fosters Concentration… Then hold in mind the perception that breath is an energy that originates in the body—it’s not something you have to pull in from outside—and this change in perception allows the mind to settle in. The breath can grow more and more calm until finally it stops. You don’t feel starved of breath, you don’t feel like you’re …
- Things as They’ve Come to Be… Again, there’s a real sense of well-being that can come from managing the breath element in the body through your perceptions. Then learn to appreciate the feeling of well-being that can come that way. So there you are: all three kinds of fabrication related to the breath. It’s one of the reasons why the Buddha uses the terms bodily fabrication …
- Producing Discernment… working with the breath, working with the way you talk to yourself, working with the perceptions you hold in mind. See how these things can get the mind to settle down and be with the breath as consistently as possible with as much of a sense of ease as you can manage. There’s the potential for ease here. Try to find it and …
- Do Jhana… One is keeping track of one perception or one sensation, such as the breath or an activity of the body. And the second is putting aside greed and distress with reference the world. In other words, all your emotions around the world; concerning the world: You want to be able to put them aside, at least for the time being. You want to give …
- The Basic Pattern… They make all sorts of assumptions based on that perception. Or they can go into the state of non-perception, where there’s nothing there at all, and make assumptions based on that, forgetting to look at the fact that the state of concentration was something they did, and now they’re experiencing the results. Like any other action, the concentration has to be …
- Get Outside Yourself… form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. But those things—now that you’ve gotten good at them—you want to see them in terms of the fact that they’re inconstant, stressful, not-self, a void, a disease—whatever perception you can think of to induce dispassion, until it really hits home that these things do have their drawbacks. You want something better. You …
- Meaning & Becoming… There’s bodily fabrication, the way you breathe; verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself with directed thought and evaluation; mental fabrication, perceptions and feelings. We turn these into states of becoming all the time. We do that very easily. The process is very quick, as you’ve noticed when you fall asleep and enter a dream world. It’s almost effortless. But …
- What Makes Concentration Right… All your thoughts, all your feelings, perceptions—everything is right here. We try to bring all these things together right here so that you can observe them, to see what it is in the present moment that leads to suffering or stress. And you can watch this either when you leave concentration and pick up other objects, other topics, and see there’s going …
- Defilements Are Real… So you have to question the perceptions you apply to these things. When something gets you angry, take the perception apart. Is what that person has said or done really all that bad? And even if it is all that bad, is anger justified? Or rather: Is it helpful? If it’s something you really have to deal with, anger’s going to get …
- Persistence… And finally, what perceptions are you holding in mind? One perception that’s all too common is that someone does something repeatedly and you just tally up, tally up, tally up, add it on, add it on. You say, “Why is this person always doing that?” Well, the person isn’t always doing that. They may do it repeatedly, but they’re not doing …
- Control… Forms arise, but they have to pass away; the same for feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness. You can’t always say, “I want my body to be like this. I want my feelings to be like that,” and expect them to be that way. Simply telling them to do things doesn’t necessarily make them do it. You can tell the body not to …
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