Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- When Aging Closes In… You’ve got a body that’s created out of fabrication. It’s going to go. But you can make sure that your mind doesn’t have to suffer from this. Part of that is accepting that this is the nature of bodies, this is the nature of karma. Still, there’s always that aspect of present karma where you really can make a …
- Intelligent Effort… It’s fabricated. Its nature is to slip away. So we have to be constantly shoring it up, protecting it. Have a sense of its value. Ajaan Lee’s image is of a dish of food. You want to keep it covered. Make sure the flies don’t come in and land on it. So, to protect your concentration as you go through the …
- Two Kinds of Middle… Then start asking yourself: “Where am I in the body? What fabrications have I built up around that sense of where I am in the body?” You can begin to take these things apart. In other words, the pleasure becomes a basis for understanding a lot of the mind’s strange perceptions, replacing them with new perceptions, trying out new perceptions to see how …
- The Best Place to Practice… What are you going to do with it? Are you going to give in? At the very least, can you watch it? Can you—in the Buddha’s terms—exert a fabrication against it? In other words, how does your breathing affect it? How does your thinking affect it? What thoughts are you thinking about when this defilement comes up? What perceptions are you …
- Fix Your Views… So the teaching on all fabricated things being stressful may always be true, but it’s not always useful. It’s not always right for the context. Then, of course, there are the many teachings on taking yourself as your mainstay, using yourself as your governing principle. If you try to bring in the teaching on not-self and say, “Well, everything’s supposed …
- A Concentration Checklist… What’s form, what’s feeling doing right now? What’s perception doing? What’s fabrication doing? What’s consciousness doing? How do these things work together to create a state of concentration? Can you see that? Look. Take an interest—and you’ll realize there’s nothing to get bored about. All the processes by which the mind is creating suffering for itself …
- Skilled in Leaving Concentration… You develop the base of power based on desire and the fabrication of exertion. Once you arrive, then you can put that desire away.” That’s one instance. Another passage is where he tells a nun that even though we practice for putting an end to craving, we have to use craving in order to get there. The desire to get there is what …
- Concentration that Bears Great Fruit… As the Buddha said, consciousness doesn’t have to depend on the body; it depends simply on fabrication and craving. It can find a new body that way. The question is, how does it go from here to there? Actually, consciousness never leaves “here.” It’s always “here.” It’s just the question of which body is “here” right now for you. It’s …
- Using What You’ve Got… Your directed thought and evaluation are sankharas or fabrications. And then you’re conscious of all this. What better place to settle down so that you can learn about the five khandhas? You’ve got all of them present here. You’ve got them all acting—because this is what the khandhas are. The aggregates are activities. The Buddha defines them with verbs. So …
- Specifically… It also appears in fabrication, where it’s hanging out with the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, and again with perceptions. All of this means that the factor that’s actually making the pain invade the mind right now could be any of its friends in the different factors of dependent co-arising. So there are lots of things you …
- Strong Against Anger & Fear… This is why it’s useful to think about the different kinds of fabrication that go into an emotion. There’s the way you breathe, there’s the way you talk to yourself, the images, the perceptions you hold in mind. You have to realize that you can breathe in different ways, you can talk to yourself in different ways, you can hold different …
- Meditate to Win… You train in how to breathe calming bodily fabrication, which basically means calming the breath itself. And, as a couple of suttas say, you get to the point where the breath stops. That’s when it’s really calm. Similarly with training in feelings, mind-states, mental qualities. So when you come here, you’re submitting to a training. We often translate those passages …
- Not-self Is a Value Judgment… Even when he was talking to people on the verge of becoming arahants giving them that questionnaire, notice how he phrased the questions: “Form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness: Are they constant or inconstant?” — “They’re inconstant.” “If they’re inconstant, are they easeful or stressful?” — “They’re stressful.” And then the final question is not, “Then is there a self?” No, the question is …
- Dhamma Is a Quality of the Heart… And we use true perceptions as we speak, because otherwise, what would we have to direct our practice? We’re already fabricating our experience through our perceptions, so the Buddha’s giving us new perceptions to use. But notice, they’re there to be used. We’re not trying to arrive at a true perception. The Buddha makes this point many times in the …
- Doing… The same with feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness. He doesn’t tell you just to give to up and say, “Well, that’s not my self, so I’ll just learn how to accept things as they are.” That short-circuits the whole path. You never get anywhere. He says to try training these things into a state of stillness, a state of well …
- Equanimity on the Path… You’ve got to realize that equanimity itself is a fabricated state. It’s put together from certain perceptions and feelings, and if you look at it from that point of view—in other words, you’re satisfied in one area of the mind, but another part of the mind is not yet satisfied, because there’s got to be something better: That way …
- Asalha Puja – Completeness… So there’s an element of fabrication, an element of intention, in everything we experience. So apply the four noble truths to this realization. Look at your intention in the present moment to see if it’s causing suffering or leading to the end of suffering. Everything comes down to the quality of the intention, the quality of the desire behind the intention. The …
- A Memorial to Your Life… It is possible that you can peel away all the levels of fabrication there might be in the mind. Then you go to a place that’s very different. So there’s a lot to explore here, but the important thing is that you learn how to observe your mind in action. Only then can you comprehend suffering, let go of the cause, fully …
- What’s Worth Doing?… After all, everything that’s fabricated involves some stress. And every state of becoming, where you take on an identity in a particular world of experience, is going to involve some stress and suffering, too. Now, you need to do that in order to create the path. So the actions of the path are actions that are worth doing. As for actions that lead …
- A Promise to Yourself… You could sit there and just bliss out in the concentration and decide, “Well, this is good enough for me.” But then you have to remember what the Buddha said about fabricated happiness. The fact that you’re sitting here with the mind quiet, nothing happening, is not going to last. Either something outside will come to disturb it or you’ll get tired …
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