Search results for: "Perception"
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- The Endurance of a Long-distance Runner… The comfortable breath energy runs down the leg, through the knee, and out through the foot, so that there’s no perception of a wall there in your knee. Then you can further investigate your perceptions. Is the pain a solid block, or can you see it as individual moments? Try to hold the perception of individual moments in mind. When it’s individual …
- Using What You’ve Got… Then you’ll notice that perception is what keeps you tuned in. And what keeps that perception going? There’s an element of will, embodies in two types of activities. The first is directed thought. You keep reminding yourself to stay with the breath, stay with the breath. The second is that you adjust the breath. That’s called evaluation. You adjust it and …
- Don’t Clap Hands with Pain… Learn how to hold that perception in mind. This is where you begin to see the power of perception. As the Buddha said, just the fact that you’re experiencing the present moment already involves some fabrication. The fact that you’re breathing involves some fabrication, and there are perceptions, and there are thoughts, and there are intentions: All of these things are types …
- Pain… Those are just perceptions. Drop those perceptions. See what happens. Is the pain a solid block or just momentary flashes of pain arising and passing away? If you have the perception of momentary flashes, ask yourself: When it comes flashing in, does it come at you or does it go away from you? Try to hold in mind the perception that as soon as …
- You Should Heed These Shoulds… In other words, you use the aggregates of form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness to create a path. Your practice of the precepts will involve these five aggregates. Your practice of concentration will involve them. Even discernment—the perceptions and thought constructs you use for discernment—will involve the aggregates, especially perceptions. And you have to hold on. And if it involves a sense …
- Your Territory… The Thais have a good insight into the word perception as they’ve adopted the word sañña from Pali. In Thai it came to mean not only perception in the way we think of it in English, but also agreement or contract. And that’s a lot of what perception is in the mind: You have an agreement that this means that, that means …
- A Meditation Karma Checklist… Then there’s the perception. What perception of the breath are you holding in mind? What perception of the mind are you holding in mind? Where are you, for example, in your body right now? It’s best to hold in mind the perception that there’s already awareness all the way throughout the body. In other words, there’s an awareness of your …
- Working Through the Breath… There’s the perception and the feeling that goes along with the perception. You start thinking about and evaluating the situation in light of that perception. Then your body gets involved as well. There’s an effect on the way you breathe. We all do this unconsciously—in fact, so unconsciously that we think our emotions are our basic states. They’re almost what …
- To Comprehend Suffering… That, too, counts as a perception. Learn to see these perceptions as events separate from the pain, because the perceptions arise and pass away. The perceptions arise and pass away and will have an influence on the amount of suffering you have around the pain. Sometimes a perception actually influences the actual experience of physical pain as well. So you want to look for …
- Questions of Skill… Within that context, the teaching on not-self is not about not-self as a characteristic, it’s actually a perception, a perception of not-self. Again, a perception is something you* do*. The question becomes: When is the perception of self skillful? When is the perception of not-self skillful? What kind of self perception is skillful? What kind of not-self perception …
- Fourth Truth, First Duty… Then you train yourself to calm the feelings and the perceptions. In other words, you try to see which perception of breath is most calming to the mind, which feelings are most calming to the mind. If you have any background in what the Buddha said about the first noble truth, you begin to realize you’re dealing directly with some of the aggregates …
- Good for What Purpose?… when you take on your perceptions and your views with an eye to what they will lead to—what they lead you to do and what the consequences of those actions will be. Because we’re proactive, we come into the world, we learn a few perceptions, and then we start pasting them onto things. And the question is—the perceptions we have that …
- The Kamma of Meditation… He never taught that there is a self, but he did teach that there is the perception of not-self, there is the perception of self. Those perceptions have to be understood in the context of kamma, as actions. When you have a perception of self as capable, responsible, that you’ll benefit from the practice—those are perceptions of self that the Buddha …
- Exploring Fabrication… Your perceptions of the breath grow more refined. For instance, you think of the breath as an energy filling the whole body. If it can maintain its fullness—everything is so connected in the body that you don’t need to breathe in or breathe out—then you move to even more refined perceptions: perception of space, consciousness, infinite consciousness without any end. You …
- When Attacked by Distractions… What are the feeling tones and perceptions you’re holding in mind that make this kind of thinking attractive? The same applies to anger, the same applies to whatever thoughts you find addictive: What perceptions do you hold in mind? The Buddha offers a few alternative perceptions, say, for sensual desire, to help you see through its allure. He says it’s like a …
- Distinctions That Make a Difference… You go to the state of neither perception nor non-perception: Perceptions fall away. So, as the mind settles in, these things separate out, and you begin to see clearly exactly where you were focused—where your craving was focused. Because that’s when you can do the analysis that comes with seeing things arise, seeing them pass away, seeing their allure. If you …
- Energizing Your Meditation… So here again, you have to work with the way you breathe and with your perceptions. If long in and short out is giving you more energy, try to think, “short in and long out” to calm things down. If your perceptions are giving rise to a sense of energy flowing everywhere, use your perceptions again, but this time think of excess energy flowing …
- Calming Mental Fabrication… That’s a perception you can hold in mind, too. From there you can go to the sense of awareness: just knowing, knowing, knowing. That would be the perception you hold on next. And finally you let go of the perception of oneness—the oneness of the knowing—and it’s replaced by a sense of nothingness; again, a perception. This, the Buddha said …
- Walking Meditation: Stillness in Motion… Look for whatever you can recognize as form, feeling, perception, thought construct, or consciousness within the concentration, and then contemplate its behavior. One simple way is contemplating the activity of perception. To what extent does the perception you’re using as a marker for your concentration create stress or disturbance for the mind? Learn to observe that perception, the label you place on things …
- Appropriate Attention… In the Canon they call them perceptions. There’s the perception of inconstancy, the perception of stress, and perception of not self. They’re never called characteristics in the Canon. The sutta that we call the *Anatta-lakkhana Sutta: *That name there is not in the Canon; it was something applied later. These are perceptions that you apply to the clinging-aggregates so as …
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