Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- Wise about Pain… It’s a past fabrication, and you have to patiently wait until it goes away on its own. Neither of those approaches is in line with what the Buddha said about feelings, which is that they come from past actions and present actions together. There are some cases where, no matter what you do in the present moment, the pain isn’t going to …
- 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 …
- Comprehending Clinging… And you have to look into to see, well, what exactly is this you? Look at the identities that would pull you away from the path and notice that they’re simply constructs made out of form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness: things that come and go. It’s like building a house out of frozen meat. As long as it’s frozen, you’re …
- Alertness: What Are You Doing?… If you pose the right questions, the question is always, “What am I doing right now? What’s maintaining this?” You learn to see that maintaining even that knowingness involves some fabrication. That’s how you learn how not to get stuck on things. Always look for that question, “What am I doing right now? How can I change?” The alertness that lets you …
- Analysis of Qualities… This is in line with the Buddha’s instructions where he says you want to be sensitive to mental fabrication, i.e., feelings and perceptions, and then to calm them. Which perceptions are most calming? One that I find very calming is, instead of thinking of the breath coming in from outside, thinking that there’s breath energy originating in the body, and it …
- Learning from Determination… an intentional element in the way you breathe. Without that intention, you wouldn’t have form. The others are more obvious. Feeling is something you do. Perceiving is something you do. Fabricating thoughts is something you do. Consciousness: You may not be aware that you’re doing it, but there is an intentional element in being conscious. You’re not going to find it …
- 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 …
- Oozing Bodies, Oozing Minds… So try to compare the two, the sense of well-being that comes from the stillness, and then the charge you get out of creating those narratives, fabricating those thoughts about the body and about how you might get somebody else to lie down next your body, or whatever. Just keep comparing those two, and try to see them in an objective way: Which …
- Savor Your 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 the door, and you pluck at it. You discover a few things …
- Present-Moment Intelligence… You calm bodily fabrication. You breathe in ways that gladden the mind, steady and concentrate the mind, release the mind. This doesn’t happen on its own. It’s a training. In the course of the training, you’re going to be talking to yourself as you give yourself directions: “Do this, do that.” Then you learn from what you’ve done. This is …
- What Is One… form, feeling, perception, and fabrications. It’s only arahants who don’t need to feed on these kinds of food. They feed physically, but their minds no longer need to feed, because they don’t identify themselves as beings. To be a being, you have to be clinging to something, attached to something. But arahants have no attachments, no clinging, so they’re not …
- Craving & Desire on the Path… You fabricate the processes of directed thought and evaluation to settle in, and you’re aware of all these things. Well, that’s the five aggregates right there—creating right concentration. Then there are four forms of clinging around the aggregates. One of them you don’t use on the path, which is clinging to sensuality. But then there’s clinging to habits and …
- The Buddha Didn’t Play Gotcha… Repeatedly, the Buddha talks about analyzing the concentration in and of itself, seeing what in the concentration is form, feeling, perception, thought fabrication, or consciousness. You realize that even when you let go of outside aggregates, or the grosser aggregates, there are still these subtler aggregates inside. It’s right here that the work can be done. So the Buddha’s teachings are very …
- Commit & Reflect All Around… That’s called the fact of fabrication. Then you want to get a sense of its value. When you’re making something—as when you’re putting together a state of concentration—is it worth it? For the time being: Yes. You want the mind to have a place to settle down. In the process of settling down, you’re going to learn about …
- Three Noble Truths Versus Four… 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-self. You’re making the mind more constant, you’re finding a sense of ease and pleasure, and you’re getting the mind …
- Ultimate Reality… We’re out looking for things, constantly fabricating. That’s the very beginning of causality in our experience: putting things together, trying to figure out what’s the best way to gain happiness. When you focus here, on useful knowledge, that’s really satisfying. Think about the different visions of ultimate reality that people start out with: They often are very limiting. Some of …
- Negative Emotions… And you have to make the mind really as still as possible, so that you can catch these emotions as they begin, before the curtains come down to hide all the dressing up and the fabrication that goes on—before the emotions come on in full dress, full-blown. This is why the practice of concentration is so important—and why it’s an …
- To Comprehend Pain… That would come under fabrication. One of the worst things you can do is sit here and say, “I’ve been sitting with this pain for *this *amount of time, and there’s *that *much more time that I have to sit with it.” You’re weighing down the present moment with past and future, and that’s more than it can bear. Remind …
- Equanimity in Action, Equanimity at Rest… You train yourself to breathe in a way where you’re aware of the whole body, or where you can calm bodily fabrication. Breathe in a way where you can be sensitive to rapture, sensitive to pleasure. These things don’t happen on their own. They come from seeing what you’ve got, accepting what you’ve got, and then seeing that there are …
- Feeding on Ardency… It’s because of intention that you take the raw material for an experience of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, or consciousness, and turn it into an actual experience of those things. So there are many layers of feeding that go on in our experience, and because we can’t simply stop feeding, the Buddha’s path gives us something good to feed on. Think …
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