Search results for: "Fabrication"

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  2. Ignorance
     … All these processes of fabrication are conditioned by ignorance. This is why paying attention to that simple question of “What am I doing right now?” is not just a means for being heedful, which is one of the reasons the Buddha has you ask that question. It’s also directing you to the spot that you need to work on in order to put … 
  3. Putting out the Flame
     … Attachment to form, feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness: Wherever there’s attachment, there’s going to be a being. You’ve taken on the identity of being a being through your attachments. But by taking those attachments apart, you go beyond being a being. When you’re a being, you have to feed. Just as a fire feeds off the wind, you’re going … 
  4. True Protection for the World
     … All things fabricated, all things conditioned, are inconstant. They’re stressful, not self. You have to think long and hard about that. When you do, you realize that the only way to respond to that reflection is to try to find something of solid worth inside. That has to be your top priority, so that you can find a goodness that’s unassailable, something … 
  5. The End of the World
     … It’s the fabricated path to the unfabricated. The complexity of kamma makes that possible. And so, like King Pasenadi, you focus in on your actions right now. As things get swept away in the world, you want to make sure that you focus on what’s really important, what you really are responsible for, which is what you’re doing right now, what … 
  6. Make the Most of Right Now
     … When the Buddha says that the objects of the senses and the senses themselves are fabricated, it’s not simply that they depend on conditions, but that you play a role in getting engaged with them, shaping them. And it’s because you still find delight in these things that you keep coming back. So, in the meantime, he says to delight in the … 
  7. Renunciation
     … The Buddha talks about learning how to see form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness as something separate; sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations as something separate. There’s an awareness that’s not touched by any of these things. You have to dig deep down into this awareness right here right nowto get to that level of awareness. But this is how you find … 
  8. Perceptions of the Breath
     … As the Buddha said, two of the factors of the first jhana—directed thought and evaluation—are verbal fabrications, the way the mind talks to itself. As you get the mind to settle down, there doesn’t have to be a lot of conversation. It can be like the conversation between people who know each other very well. One or two words is enough … 
  9. Mindfulness & Perception
     … Then there’s fabrication, especially in the first stage of right concentration: You’ve got to keep directing your thoughts to the breath and evaluating it. What feels good right now? How is it going along? Is the mind settling down? If not, what can you do? And then there’s the consciousness of all this. There you are: You’ve got all five … 
  10. Patience
     … As the Buddha says, we engage in different activities that he classes under the aggregates, and each of those aggregates — whether it’s form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, or consciousness — is something we fabricate for the sake of something else. In other words, we have means and we have goals. The goals are either directly or indirectly aimed at happiness. This is how we … 
  11. Fangs in the Static
     … the form of the body, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness—all very ephemeral things. How could you build anything lasting out of things that are ephemeral like this? Now, not all those perceptions are negative. The Buddha also has you think of the positive perceptions of how the cessation of these things would be a good thing, dispassion for these things would be a good … 
  12. Study & Practice
     … The path is something you fabricate, you put it together. And so try to develop an artisan’s sense of pride in your work. That’s what you want to keep in mind.
  13. Worldly Effort
     … Yet the nature of the causal system is complex, it’s chaotic, and every causal fabrication, even where it falls into neat order, contains the germs for its dissolution. So even Brahmās have moments of mindlessness, and so they fall. They can’t keep up that skillfulness all that time. There have got to be lapses. The only ones for whom this doesn’t … 
  14. The Uses of Pleasure & Pain
     … You’ve got aggregates of form, feeling, perception, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. Learn how to treat them as tools, showing them the proper care and attention that tools need, but also realizing that they’re not the be-all and end-all of life. They’re processes, not things. They’ve got their uses, but they’re not ends in and of themselves. Once … 
  15. Energy Channels
     … You want to get to the unfabricated but you have to use fabrication. That’s a very clever strategy and it’s the only one that works. Many of us think all we have to is let go, let go, let go, and there we are: “let go’ed.” But it doesn’t work that way. You focus on developing certain qualities of mind … 
  16. Discernment
     … form, feeling, perception, fabrication, consciousness. If you look at the suffering in those terms, takes a lot of the sting out. Because as you see the perception that it’s “my” suffering or that “I’m” suffering is just that: it’s a momentary event in the mind. But it brings a big sting with it. So you have the choice not to say … 
  17. Solidly Here
     … You can understand the intentions that form around sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, feelings, perceptions, fabrications—the whole gamut. They’re going to form right here and they’re going to play out right here. If you don’t stick with them, you don’t see how things play out. You don’t see how a cause leads to an effect—or even … 
  18. Energizing Your Meditation
     … You’ve learned how to use the processes of fabrication and, at the same time, you’ve found a quality of alertness and stillness that give the mind some genuine rest.
  19. Just Events
     … form, feelings, perceptions, or thought-fabrications, if you can see the act of consciousness as something separate from these things, and see the consciousness itself as something you can step back from—not that you go unconscious, just that the consciousness of things is something you can step back from—then as these things change, there’s no suffering. So learn to be fluid … 
  20. Doing Meditation
     … There’s an activity of fabrication going on. You’re creating the path, putting the path together. The discernment comes in learning how to do it more and more skillfully, with more and more precision, more and more finesse. And that comes from observing. Sometimes we hear that meditation means that you stop doing and just simply “be the knowing” or “be with” things … 
  21. Pain & Patience
     … form—the way you create the sense of your body, inhabit the sense of your body; feeling—feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain; perceptions, the labels you put on things, either words or images; fabrications—the thoughts you create around things; and then finally, consciousness, which is aware of all these things. These are all activities you’re engaged in. And … 
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